Politics and Forgiving
Nov. 29th, 2007 01:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyjadwigaThe day after the Amish School shootings in Nickel Mines, an lj-friend of mine was unfortunate enough to post a link to a piece of religious-right propaganda about school shootings that's been going around for the past couple of years. (I was, to put in bluntly, rabid in denouncing that document.)
The religious right is still using that propaganda, claiming that it is the dissolution of the moral fiber in this country, especially as evidenced by the 'removal' of the Christian God from the schools, that causes these things. In fact, anti-abortion activist, and father of one of the Columbine victims, Brian Rohrbough went on the air at CBS in the wake of the Amish School shootings to advance that theory. I don't find any evidence that he ever apologized to those whose tragedy he had used-- the victims' families or the shooter's family. A flash presentation from American Family Radio still uses it: "We Kicked God out of the Schools" http://www.afr.net/newafr/wekickedgodout.asp .
But while they still talk on the news about Columbine, Virginia Tech, and a multitude of other schools, they don't mention Lancaster County or Nickel Mines. In fact, the Religious Right want people to forget the shootings at Nickel Mines. They don't fit the pattern, you see.
Not only were both victims and shooter Christian and Christian-educated, in a Christian community, but the families of the Amish victims did what Christians are supposed to do. They forgave. They supported and comforted the family of the shooter.
I just wish I could forgive what was done by the conservative media with the situation.
The religious right is still using that propaganda, claiming that it is the dissolution of the moral fiber in this country, especially as evidenced by the 'removal' of the Christian God from the schools, that causes these things. In fact, anti-abortion activist, and father of one of the Columbine victims, Brian Rohrbough went on the air at CBS in the wake of the Amish School shootings to advance that theory. I don't find any evidence that he ever apologized to those whose tragedy he had used-- the victims' families or the shooter's family. A flash presentation from American Family Radio still uses it: "We Kicked God out of the Schools" http://www.afr.net/newafr/wekickedgodout.asp .
But while they still talk on the news about Columbine, Virginia Tech, and a multitude of other schools, they don't mention Lancaster County or Nickel Mines. In fact, the Religious Right want people to forget the shootings at Nickel Mines. They don't fit the pattern, you see.
Not only were both victims and shooter Christian and Christian-educated, in a Christian community, but the families of the Amish victims did what Christians are supposed to do. They forgave. They supported and comforted the family of the shooter.
I just wish I could forgive what was done by the conservative media with the situation.
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Re: Martin Luther
Date: 2007-11-29 09:28 pm (UTC)Be that as it may, Luther kicked open the door for everyone else, and that's all I was so clumsily trying to say. (The "accept Jesus, be saved, proselytize" idea is at least 400 years old; many of the Puritan sects advocated this, as did some of the Huguenot groups -- at least according to my history books and some further reading as suggested thereby.)