{"id":22759,"date":"2013-05-17T02:11:29","date_gmt":"2013-05-17T05:11:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=22759"},"modified":"2016-11-26T01:29:45","modified_gmt":"2016-11-26T04:29:45","slug":"religious-freedom-critic-weinstein-admits-targeting-christians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2013\/05\/17\/religious-freedom-critic-weinstein-admits-targeting-christians\/","title":{"rendered":"Religious Freedom Critic Weinstein Admits Targeting Christians"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a shockingly blunt piece, Michael Weinstein seems to have inadvertently undermined his own defense against those who claim he&#8217;s &#8220;anti-Christian&#8221; by essentially <em>admitting <\/em>that he&#8217;s opposed to a vast swath of American Christianity.\u00a0 Said Weinstein [emphasis added]:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Do you know that in this country in 1970, we only had ten mega-Evangelical churches, meaning those with 2,000 or more members? But after 9\/11, <strong>a new mega-Evangelical church has opened up <\/strong>in our country every 48 hours.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nThat is their right. That\u2019s fine. But when <strong>they engage the machinery of the state <\/strong>and the people in the government, that\u2019s when we have a terrible, hideous problem.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nAnd <strong>this is coming right down from the DoD<\/strong>, up and down the chain of command&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Weinstein seems to clearly convey Christians from these ubiquitous &#8220;mega-Evangelical churches&#8221; (as opposed to Evangelical megachurches?) are the ones &#8220;engaging <!--more-->the machinery of the state&#8221; and trying to take over the world for Jesus.<\/p>\n<p>Remember, this is the same guy who for weeks has been saying &#8220;I&#8217;m not anti-Christian, because I have Christian clients! I&#8217;m being repressed!&#8221;\u00a0 But if he&#8217;s not <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/09\/20\/bat-signal-busted-weinstein-declares-war-back-on\/\">waging a &#8220;war&#8221;<\/a> against what he has plainly called an &#8220;evangelical coup in America,&#8221; why bother even <em>mentioning <\/em>mainstream Christian churches?\u00a0 Why emphasize the growing, mainstream Christian movement in America?<\/p>\n<p>At the end of his piece Weinstein <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2007\/05\/01\/pre-millennial-reconstructionist-dominionist-evangelical-christians\/\">returns to his roots (2007)<\/a>, adding 6 adjectives to &#8220;Christian&#8221; in an effort to claim he only wants to restrict the religious liberties of that wrong <em>kind <\/em>of Christian:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I&#8217;m now fighting a small subset of Evangelical Christians who have strategically embedded themselves into the U.S. Military who go by the long technical name &#8212; <strong>premillenial, dispensational, reconstructionist, dominionist, evangelical, fundamentalist Christians<\/strong>. Basically, they believe that it\u2019s their inalienable right to push this weaponized gospel of Jesus Christ. Either you\u2019re with us, or if you\u2019re not with us, <strong>we or our version of Jesus will eradicate you<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The first problem is even some of Weinstein&#8217;s staunchest supporters admit using all of those adjectives together is at times contradictory and always ridiculous; probably only one or two people in the world could accurately be described that way.\u00a0 Despite Weinstein&#8217;s claim, <em>no one <\/em>&#8220;goes by&#8221; that &#8220;long technical name&#8221; &#8212; he assigns it to them.<\/p>\n<p>The second problem is that Weinstein is omitting a very important fact: In Weinstein&#8217;s world, <em>he&#8217;s <\/em>the one who gets to say who&#8217;s a PDRDEF Christian, and who&#8217;s not.\u00a0 Just as MRFF staff member Rick Baker can watch a short video and <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2013\/05\/06\/admiral-a-storm-is-coming-for-religious-liberty-in-us-military\/#comment-136308\">declare a person&#8217;s theology<\/a>, so too Weinstein creates villainous religious labels &#8212; and then <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/03\/05\/weinstein-defines-religions-assigns-followers\/\">assigns those labels to people he opposes<\/a>, whether they hold those theological beliefs or not.\u00a0 He&#8217;s banking on people opposing the <em>label <\/em>&#8212; much like they oppose bigotry, homophobia, sexism, etc. &#8212; and missing the fact the label isn&#8217;t <em>true<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>After all, when was the last time you heard of a military member\u00a0claiming or demonstrating a &#8220;right&#8221; to a &#8220;weaponized gospel,&#8221; or that they were going to &#8220;eradicate&#8221; those who didn&#8217;t share their faith?\u00a0 If it is such a serious danger &#8212; Weinstein calls it a &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/08\/army-disavows-presentation-supporting-weinstein-ideology\/\">national security threat<\/a>&#8221; &#8212; why are examples non-existent?\u00a0 As has been noted once already, even the <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2013\/05\/03\/us-military-clarifies-religious-policy-disavows-weinstein-agenda\/\">windmills Weinstein is tilting at<\/a> aren&#8217;t real.<\/p>\n<p>To the point, though, Weinstein has successfully put his foot in his mouth, again.\u00a0 Weinstein&#8217;s not anti-<em>all<\/em>-of-Christianity, just the Christianity Mikey doesn&#8217;t <em>like <\/em>&#8212; which seems to be <em>almost <\/em>all of it.<\/p>\n<p>Does Mikey like <em>your <\/em>Christianity?\u00a0 Well, if you publicly oppose him, you may suddenly find out you&#8217;re a PDRDEF Christian, <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/18\/michael-weinsteins-mrff-is-at-war-with-quakers\/\">even if you&#8217;re a Quaker<\/a>.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-like\" data-share=\"true\" data-show-faces=\"true\" data-size=\"small\" data-action=\"like\" data-layout=\"standard\"><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\"><strong>ADVERTISEMENT<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script><!-- blogpost --><ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" style=\"display: block;\" data-ad-format=\"auto\" data-ad-slot=\"2728423835\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-6450825356098669\"><\/ins><script>\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/script><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a shockingly blunt piece, Michael Weinstein seems to have inadvertently undermined his own defense against those who claim he&#8217;s &#8220;anti-Christian&#8221; by essentially admitting that he&#8217;s opposed to a vast swath of American Christianity.\u00a0 Said Weinstein [emphasis added]: Do you know that in this country in 1970, we only had ten mega-Evangelical churches, meaning those with 2,000 or more members? [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,4012,2528,910,909,85,2,5218,7,4011,950,4013,10,171,420],"class_list":["post-22759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-christian","tag-dispensational","tag-dominionism","tag-evangelical","tag-fundamentalist","tag-mikey-weinstein","tag-military","tag-military-religious-freedom-foundation","tag-mrff","tag-premillenial","tag-quaker","tag-reconstructionist","tag-religion","tag-religious-freedom","tag-rick-baker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22759\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}