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E.W. Jackson Whines That Religious Tests Only Apply to People He Doesn’t Like

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We recently met E.W. Jackson, a former minister who happens to be Virginia’s Republican nominee for lieutenant governor. Jackson wants us to believe Democrats are slave masters and that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim.

A secret Muslim slave master, apparently.

But what really upsets E.W. Jackson besides secret Muslim slave masters, gay people, yoga, and rap and rock music, is people talking about him talking about secret Muslim slave masters, gay people, yoga, and rap and rock music.

To quote the late-great Harry Carey, it really “frosts his *ss.” In fact, what it really is, he says, is persecution of Christians.

Yes, talking about what E.W. Jackson said as a minister is a form of persecution. And he went on Bryan Fischer’s show yesterday to say so.

Watch courtesy of Right Wing Watch:

It’s a sad commentary on our media and culture today that anybody that expresses a Biblical worldview is marginalized and, frankly, not to put too fine point on it, persecuted for doing so. And I think that’s a sad commentary.

But look, it’s an attack ultimately on every church-going, Bible-believing Christian out there who holds to a traditional worldview and frankly, I think one of my goals is to champion their right to hold their views without being persecuted for it.

What Jackson is really saying here is that he should have a right to say anything he wants about anything or anybody he wants, no matter how demeaning, insulting, and cruel, and nobody should be able to disagree with him, or even talk about it. Because that’s persecution.

What really upsets Jackson, obviously, is that if we all talk about what he says, everyone will discover that Virginia’s possible lieutenant-governor-to-be is a whackadoodle. But Jackson wasn’t done with his self-righteous whining:

I think Americans are tired of being told that holding to Judeo-Chistian values somehow makes you an idiot, as you put it, makes you backwards, makes you ignorant and unless you buy into the sort of contemporary morality play of the day, you are a person to be shunned.

Well, Mr. Jackson, let’s be fair here: the GOP is yearning for a return to the thirteenth century. Wouldn’t you admit that is just a wee bit backward? But Jackson goes all David Barton and says,

Our Founding Fathers believed that there should never be a religious test and yet that’s what you’re seeing today. We’re seeing people apply a religious test and they’re saying anything you believed or said as a minister disqualifies you from serving as Lt. Governor because you hold to these Biblical views.

This is hilarious on so many levels. Jackson, who regularly attacks gays and lesbians, Muslims, atheists, and others (and don’t forget yoga), feels he’s being attacked if people hold him to account for saying all those awful things about other people.

Actual religious tests – the same supported by the so-called Religious Right – are just fine, Jackson believes. You’re going to hell for yours, but how dare you object to his!

What is of substantially more significance here than Jackson’s whining is that, as Right Wing Watch pointed out, Bryan Fischer neither disagreed nor informed Jackson of his own contradictory views on the subject, as expressed on his blog in April 2011: “Voters can use any religious test they want to”:

Let’s be done with the nonsense that asking questions about a candidate’s faith is inappropriate. It certainly is not. In fact, in some ways, the faith questions are the most important, because they go right to the issue of a man’s most deeply held convictions and values.

We need to know what those values are, because we are prepared to hand over to him enormous power to implement policies that will impact virtually every detail of of our lives, including policies on abortion, marriage, and sexuality in the military. We need to know what value system is driving him at the deepest level. In fact, it would be irresponsible not to seek to know all we can about a candidate’s moral and religious values.

I wrote yesterday that it would be smart of the American people to insist that our next president fit the profile of the Founders. The first two parts of that profile are a sincere belief in Christian orthodoxy and a sincere belief in a Creator rather than in evolution.

A president may be eligible for the presidency without passing a religious test from the federal government. But voters will have a religious test of their own, and whether a candidate passes that test may determine whether he makes to the White House. The Constitution determines who’s eligible for the Oval Office, but voters determine who’s qualified.

There you have it, Mr. Jackson, from your host, though he lacked the testicular fortitude to disagree with you yesterday. Or is it that just as religious freedoms apply onto to Christians, only Christians have the right to have a religious test? Fischer was defending his own right, after all, to judge Mitt Romney’s Mormon religion, just as he has previously judged Muslims and Pagans and atheists.

I think we all know the answer to that question.

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Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen's Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.

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