Here is a small piece of what David Batstone wrote in Sojourner’s latest e-mail update. He is commenting on the recent Jimmy Swaggart sermon in which Swaggart said that he would kill any man who would look at him in an amorous way. See for yourself what Swaggart said. (You will need Windows Media Player)
As much as I defend Evangelicals to most of my more liberal fellow seminarians, I am afraid that this is truly were we are headed.

“How has it become so possible today for Christian leaders to twist Jesus’ teaching about loving all of God’s children? The pattern is transparent in many sectors of the church. Too many Christians have turned Jesus into a warmaker, not a peacemaker, and justify their position by the same logic. Our enemies in the Middle East are an “abomination.
“On a more personal note, I recently received a note from a SojoMail reader full of profanity and insults. My attacker closed his note wondering how I could call myself a Christian, taking the position I do of waging peace in the Middle East at the expense of partisan support for “freedom fighters” in Iraq and uncritical support for the state of Israel. I usually do not take the time to respond to such letters (believe it or not, I get a few hate letters…:-), but this time I did write back a short note asking how he, in turn, could call himself a Christian and use such profane, violent words toward another human being. His e-mail back to me was revealing, albeit shocking: ‘I can write to you as I like, for you are not a human being. You have forfeited that right; you are nothing but pond scum.'”
“That’s the theological loophole for what passes as Christian morality these days. Simply demonstrate why the other person, or race of people, has forfeited their status as a human being, and you can do with them what you will. By the way, that is the same theological loophole used by the church in Latin America to justify the massacre of millions of native Americans during the Conquest; they were not deemed human beings. ”

Read David’s whole piece: click here