Re: Holyrollers gather at Virginia Beach, VA; their goal: Make America a theocracy; destroy freedom of religion
- From: zeez <UltimaUW@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2007 04:27:27 -0700
On Jun 9, 7:12 pm, "Joe S." <non...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In late April of 1607, three ships of English adventurers landed at Cape
Henry in what is now Virginia in search of fame and fortune. Although their
primary motivation was gold, not God, they erected a wooden cross, and
Anglican priest Robert Hunt led a prayer service.
Four hundred years later, the Rev. John Gimenez stepped onto the sand at
nearby Virginia Beach to reenact that historic event. This time, Gimenez, TV
preacher Pat Robertson and a host of their Religious Right allies erected
an array of small plastic crosses and claimed America for their version of
Christianity.
"We are gathered to say we're back!" Gimenez shouted. "We've come back to
proclaim and reclaim, Amen. We are proclaiming that this is the day that the
Lord has made and we are claiming the covenant that was established here 400
years ago."
While some pundits have heralded a new breed of evangelical activists who do
not want a Christian theocracy, speakers at Gimenez's "Assembly 2007"
apparently didn't get the memo. Indeed, the April 26-29 conference, hosted
by Gimenez's Rock Church International in Virginia Beach, was all about
advancing a "Christian nation" agenda, riling up evangelical Christian
voters and raising lots of money.
A multitude of famous, and not-so-famous, Pentecostal preachers trumpeted
the 400th anniversary of the founding of the Jamestown colony as proof
positive that America was created to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Speaker after speaker at the conference, which slipped under the news media's
radar, extolled 1607 as the year America was "birthed" and when a "covenant"
was formed with God that our nation would be Christian.
"This monumental covenant with God laid the foundation for the birth of a
nation founded on Christ!" the Assembly 2007 brochure states. "Today, all
Americans have benefited from God's blessing on this land."
But according to many of the preachers who came before the audience, which
peaked close to 2,000 on the final day, America has drifted from its
religious moorings and evangelical Christians must now renew the covenant
with God. Additionally, the preachers argued that only born-again Christians
are equipped to yank the nation back from a moral abyss to its Christian
heritage.
Gimenez, a longtime ally of Robertson's, has spearheaded numerous religious
gatherings in the past, ostensibly with the goal of sparking a national
revival. In 1980, Gimenez coordinated his first "Washington for Jesus"
rally, where a cavalcade of evangelical Christian leaders, including
Robertson, took the stage in the nation's capital to urge federal lawmakers
to advance Religious Right values and to blast the U.S. Supreme Court for
its rulings on prayer in the public schools and other social issues.
The 1980 rally came as the Religious Right was burgeoning and it drew
about 200,000 participants. Similar events in 1988 and 2004 drew smaller
crowds and less media attention.
Gimenez's rallies, including the recent Assembly 2007 gathering, have all
come during election seasons, and many observers think they have the obvious
intent of mobilizing the Pentecostal wing of the Religious Right on behalf
of Republican candidates and causes. The Virginia Beach pastor and his
allies have used fear and fervent religious appeals to persuade the faithful
that born-again Christians are meant to rule the land and that they risk
being persecuted if they don't turn politically active.
Pastor John Blanchard, the Gimenezes' son in-law and emcee of Assembly 2007,
repeatedly asked God to prepare the gathering for the task of taking back
the nation for Christ.
"Heavenly Father, we thank you for our foundation of the cross," Blanchard
prayed. "And, God, we want to take this land back. God, I pray this weekend
you will empower us, Lord, through the irresistible force of the Holy Ghost.
God is going to anoint your people, Lord, to blow the trumpet and, Lord, to
declare that we're the lords of this generation."
Throughout the conference, the attendees were provided a simplified and
historically challenged version of the English settlers at Jamestown. Many
of the conference speakers claimed that Chaplain Hunt and the other settlers
landed on the shores of Virginia Beach on a mission to dedicate the new land
to God.
None of the conference's speakers mentioned the fact that religion was
actually not the top concern of the Jamestown settlers and that the only
religion they were concerned about was propagated by the Anglican Church.
Indeed, as historians have noted, most of the Jamestown settlers had left
England in search of a greater possibility of wealth. As The Washington Post
put it recently, "part of their mission was" religious, but "mostly the
Jamestown colonists came here to get rich."
Also, religious freedom as we know it today did not exist in Jamestown. The
colony's leaders established the Church of England by law and penalized
dissenters (including the forbears of the group that gathered in Virginia
Beach last month). In Church, State and Freedom, First Amendment scholar
Leo Pfeffer noted that the Jamestown colony's governor signed a decree in
1612 that mandated the death penalty for those who spoke "impiously of the
Trinity...or against the known articles of the Christian faith."
Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and other visionaries among the nation's
Founding Fathers changed all that in the 18th century. They pushed through
legislation in Virginia in 1786 - Jefferson's Statute for Religious
Freedom - that guaranteed religious freedom for persons of all faiths and
none. The U.S. Constitution and the First Amendment later extended that
freedom throughout the country.
But Assembly 2007 speakers harken to their skewed version of Jamestown's
founding to suit their needs. So conference attendees, led by sponsors and
guests, set out to rededicate the land to Christianity by planting white
crosses on Virginia Beach on April 29. The crosses were on sale at the
conference for just under $15 and included the inscription "One Nation Under
God," bracketed by the years 1607 and 2007.
The climax of the four-day gathering was on Sunday at the rededication
event, which took place on a large stage with an enormous American flag as
its backdrop. The platform was set up on the beach just off the 20th Street
section of the boardwalk.
Stepping to the microphone, Robertson received a raucous greeting from a
sprawling crowd.
"Praise God Almighty, this is a great day!" said Robertson. "We are here at
a historic moment. This is the 400th anniversary of the founding of the
United States of America. And this nation was founded by men and women who
planted a cross on this very shore of the Atlantic Ocean, and they knelt in
prayer and they said 'we declare that this nation belongs to the Lord Jesus
Christ.'
"And we are here to reclaim again," Robertson continued, "and to certify
again the covenant that was made 400 years ago by our forefathers, who came
to these shores for one purpose - to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ to
those who didn't know it. What a heritage!"
Robertson again repeated the story of Chaplain Hunt and the English
explorers, whom he dubbed "a small band of settlers." They dedicated the
land to Christ, he said, but added that unspecified forces have since sought
to wrench the land from God.
"They've tried to take it away from us, folks," said Robertson. "But we aren't
going to let them; we're not going to let them do it. This belongs to the
Lord. And we're here to declare His word."
Robertson was followed by a Native American pastor, Ernest Custalow, who
claimed that Robertson is "related by marriage to the first pastor, Robert
Hunt." (Robertson has made that claim himself, but did not mention it at the
event.)
Politicians also showed up at the event. U.S. Reps. Randy J. Forbes (R-Va..)
and Thelma D. Drake (R-Va.) addressed the Sunday gathering with prayers and
messages of support. (The events schedule listed U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback,
R-Kan., as a speaker, but he did not show.)
Forbes promoted his work in spearheading a prayer gathering in Congress, and
he urged the attendees to "commit by praying five minutes a week at least
that God would heal our land."
Drake followed Forbes with a prayer for America, in which she maintained
that the Jamestown settlers "came to create a new nation and to be able to
pray to You and to honor You."
Before the Sunday rededication, the attendees were treated to three days of
sermonizing, cajoling, praying, Christian music and opportunities to buy
religious sundries. One enormous book, retailing for about $80, was
described by Blanchard as containing hundreds of documents bolstering the
argument that America was founded for Christ.
Besides peddling the Christian nation theme, many of the conference's
speakers took the usual swipes at popular culture, bashed gays, called for
an end to reproductive rights and issued dire warnings about the nation's
future if their religious leanings were not embraced wholeheartedly by all
Americans. The theme of redemption swept through the conference as well.
One of the conference's main speakers, Bishop Harry Jackson, spoke twice of
his "near-death experience" with cancer. The second time came Saturday
evening when he called on attendees who were pastors to bring a special
offering or "seed" to the front of the church's sanctuary to help the
Gimenez family recoup some of the money expended on the four-day gathering.
After re-telling his battle with cancer, Jackson noted that he was giving a
check of $1,000 to the church.
On the conference's opening day, April 26, Jackson, senior pastor at
suburban Washington, D.C.'s Hope Christian Center, began his ...
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