Politics has entered religion, no way around it. In Ohio the radical right-wing clerics had a little gettogether:
Against a large U.S.-flag backdrop and flanked by large projection screens, Ohio Restoration Project founder Russell Johnson brought his 10-city Patriot Pastors tour to the Akron-Canton area Tuesday.
A choir and a gospel quartet brought the audience to its feet with praise songs as images of American landmarks, heroes and troops moved across the screens.
Johnson warned that Christians have allowed a ``secular jihad'' to remove prayer, the Ten Commandments and the Bible from public places.
He likened it to Nazi Germany, where church congregations would sing so that they could not hear the passing of trainloads of crying Jews headed for a nearby concentration camp.
Too many Christians lead ``Neville Chamberlain lives,'' Johnson said, referring to the British prime minister who signed a neutrality pact with Adolf Hitler.
A picture of Hitler and Chamberlain flashed on the screens.
``We're calling God's people to pray, to serve, to shine and to be salt and light,'' he said.
Johnson criticized the ``handful of our religious friends on the left who have formed an unholy alliance with the secular left'' to challenge the religious exemption of his organization.
And guess who spoke at this shindig, too? No-one else but the one and only Kenneth Blackwell, the man who gave us George Bush. What did he say? This:
Blackwell spoke of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s call to be more than observers. He said Christians must ``define, fortify, help shape, influence the mores'' of the culture.
He said Christians must be on the front line, causing change. They must bring behavior in line with what they say they believe.
"They must bring behavior in line with what they say they believe"? Whose behavior? Their own or our behavior?
Now do you believe me when I say that we are on the road to Margaret Atwood's Gilead?