The state of the country and Christianity in the U.S. To where is all this leading?
From OneNewsNow.org Daily News Briefing:
Ministry says some members have quit praying for Obama

COTTSDALE, AZ – A national ministry that organizes prayer for the president says it’s hearing from members who have quit praying for President Barack Obama…
His letter says the ministry has been “hit hard because some of our members are deeply distraught with our country’s leaders.” Otto writes that members “tell us that they are discouraged, disappointed, and some have admitted they have stopped praying for the president and our nation.”
Otto says prayer is needed more than ever with issues like the healthcare vote dividing Americans, and with the nation’s leaders casting aside what he calls “biblical principles.”

I’ve said before that so much of the anger we are seeing coming out of the Town Hall meetings held by Democrats around the country however many months ago, the Tea Party protests, and the healthcare coverage controversies stem from the politicized Religious Right losing this last national election. Then, of course, the Republican operatives (really the Neo-Con’s) exploit all of this for their advantage. Winning power is the only thing that matters, regardless of what it does to the country or society overall and regardless of whether it leads us to such division that the common good is no longer possible.
The rank-and-file Religious Right voters (Values Voters, American-Evangelicals of the neo-conservative kind, etc.) have been told over and over again that God is on their side and that there is no way that God would let His country (the divinely established U.S.A.) fall into the hands of “anti-Christians.” Just pray really hard, protest, write letters, give lots of money “to our organization” (Focus on the Family, American Family Association, Institute for Religion & Democracy, etc.), and “we can keep the godless, liberal, secular humanists from destroying our country!” “God is on our side, and we will win because He deems it so.” These kinds of statements come out of the various organizations all the time.
So, after the near hysterical rhetoric used by these groups in their attempt at fear-mongering in order to motivate their people to vote during the 2008 election, they lost! For so many of the Christians, suddenly the promises from their leaders that God would not let them down if they just did these things where no more. “How could this happen – isn’t God all powerful?” “Didn’t we pray, like we were supposed to?” “How could God let Satan win?” There developed a crisis of faith, a terrible feeling of being let down, a utter feeling of being marginalized, of being lied to, of no longer feeling empowered and special because God is on their side, etc.
The politicized Religious Right and their promises made to the Fundamentalist/American-Evangelical world didn’t live up to expectations, and now the rank-and-file are disillusioned and angry. And, of course, in the disappointment and anger the manipulative forces seeking power will try to exploit all this for their own advantage – they are charlatans. Again, the feelings or beliefs that “God is on our side” and “we know we love God so much and are so devout” leads them to an inability to consider that they just might have been wrong. They could be compelled to even more extreme reactions and actions.
In many ways, this mirrors the “conservative,” or perhaps “fundamentalist” would be a better word, world of Islam (and even Judaism). The Islamist terrorists are reacting out of desperation because all that they have been taught about what should happen concerning the devout followers of Islam is not the reality in the world. Allah is all great and Allah’s followers are the ones who should always win, have power, have wealth, etc., and not the infidels, particularly in the grossly immoral West. Yet, the Muslim countries, particularly Arab & Persian countries, are not at all “winning.” The bitterness, the jealousy, the anger, the disgust, the feelings of impotency, the poverty, the corruption, all of it that people are feeling lead them to extreme actions. So, they feel that they have to take matters into their own hands and do for Allah what Allah doesn’t seem to be doing for them, which often comes down to providing for their prosperity and authority and power in the world – the utter defeat of the infidels and the ascendancy of Islam in all parts of the life around the world. The disillusionment is terrible.
I think that for a significant group of Christianists in this country, they are headed down a similar trajectory that extremist Islamists have traveled. The exploitative forces may well come to believe that they can will win if chaos reigns, that instability is to their advantage, and that they will be able to attain power or money by exploiting the hell out of people’s sense of disillusionment. I think it would not take much of a push for a more radical faction to rise up among the neo-conservative, politicized Religious Right, in the name of defending a Godly America, to become violent.