Wouldn’t You Know It!

Just as you might expect the tragic shootings at a missionary center and a church in Colorado that left four people dead (including two teenage sisters) and five wounded has been laid at the footsteps of the “secular media” by Tony Perkins, President of the ultra right-wing Family Research Council.

At the carpetbaggerreport.com (and as reported on Keith Olbermann tonight) Steve Benen writes that:

Under a headline that read, “An Assault on Faith,” Perkins told supporters in a weekly email newsletter:

“It is hard not to draw a line between the hostility that is being fomented in our culture from some in the secular media toward Christians and evangelicals in particular and the acts of violence that took place in Colorado yesterday.”

I’m not sure what’s more twisted — Perkins seeking to exploit a tragedy to advance his religio-political agenda, or his bizarre belief that the “secular media” is responsible for fomenting hostility towards evangelicals.

In both instances, Perkins, a prominent religious right leader, has the story backwards. Murray, who was obviously suffering from severe mental illnesses, wasn’t immersed in the “secular media,” he was home-schooled in “a deeply religious Christian household."

Exactly! If there ever was a case of “the pot calling the kettle black” this is it! The murderer was reared as a Christian fundamentalist not a secular humanist. His on-line ravings against Christianity were the result of his intimate association with the evangelical New Life Church formerly led by the disgraced hypocrite Ted Haggert. The killer’s actions were antithetical to the principles of secular humanism but perfectly consistent with the vengeful Abrahamic creed he was exposed to. Which is not to say that all Christians should be blamed for the slayings. The shooter was said to have heard voices and was obviously psychotic.