Pastor Dennis Terry and Santorum

Pastor Dennis Terry of the Greenwell Springs Baptist Church has blessed Santorum this past week. Religious figures blessing and endorsing political figures is a relatively normal occurrence. They are very interesting when they happen though as they can be a window into the candidates 'private' religious beliefs as they, after all, are accepting their blessing/endorsement. Thus Pastor Terry should be of major concern for all Americans, as he embodies and reflects certain fundamentalist religious viewpoints that Santorum agrees with.

About the LGBTQ community, Terry said, "As long as sexual perversion is being normalized, somebody needs to stand up and say, 'God have mercy on us! God, forgive us!'" This should come as no surprise. The LGBTQ community are second class citizens, they are not normal and any effort to 'normalize' them is a threat to him, his community, his religion and his ideal vision of this country. This is typical us versus them, in-group/out-group, bullshit. He of course is speaking for all Christianity and all Christians, as his limited view of religion of course is the one and only correct version. Arrogant and hateful. If you are not with him, you are against him.

He also said, "I don't care what the liberals say, I don't care what the naysayers say, this nation was founded as a Christian nation." This isn't an uncommon statement, many people share it. However, the history is just false. There is exhaustive historical evidence to suggest just the opposite. I won't go into this here, but i will build up to writing a future blog post about it.

"There's only one God, and his name is Jesus," he says. "I'm tired of people telling me that i can't say those words. I'm tired of people telling us as Christians that we can't voice our beliefs or we can no longer pray in public. Listen to me. If you don't love America, if you don't like the way we do things, i have one thing to say - get out!" The crowd burst into applause. He continued. "We don't worship Buddha! I said we don't worship Buddha, we don't worship Muhammed, we don't worship Allah, we worship God, we worship God's son Jesus Christ." He received a standing ovation, which included Mr. Rick Santorum.

Terry can say whatever he likes. One of the actual cornerstones of this country is free speech. He can say whatever he likes, even if it's hateful. As long as it is private! And of course, not involved in the political discourse! If you don't love America, he says, then get out! If you don't do thing the way we do things, then get out. From this vantage point, there is one way that we do things, or one way that we should do things. Pluralism is itself the enemy, which Terry and Santorum call "liberal".

Terry and Santorum embody a very dangerous ideological worldview. An intolerant and arrogant worldview. The fact that he has gotten so much support from the religious right will hopefully show to the rest of us that the time of tolerating the intolerant will come to an end.