Pastor In Chief…
At the Iowa Caucuses, last night, Pastor Huckabee’s cheerleader, Rebecca Sweethood, lets you know what she, at least, thinks of you in this prayer for the Pastor:
We pray that you would lift Mike Huckabee up, Lord… Lord we pray that he would not be ashamed to be known as a pastor. And that is exactly what the leader of a Nation should be, Lord, one who is is a shepherd over sheep, God…
(Hear it on NPR.)
Hmmm… she thinks that a leader should just have a bunch of sheep after him.
Sheep never talk back, you know.
Sheep never bathe, either, and are quite stupid.
And timid.
And fearful.
And prone to being all those things in groups: not alone.
Yup,
I want a Pastor in Chief.
(She also lectures God, telling him exactly what a nation needs… very interesting prayer.)
In other news, I see Ford’s North and Central American plants basically shutting down for half of January (a rolling layoff, really). I think Rebecca better tell God what to do about that!
Category: Epicaricacy, politics, rightwingers
Discussion: You came too late to this party
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Jesus is a leader with a bunch of sheep following after Him. You sound like you don’t like the idea of having a pastor at all. Or are you suggesting that people should follow those characteristics you depict in their relgious lives, but bifurcate this from their political life?
I’m suggesting religious metaphors have no business at all in discussing how to relate to a political leader.
Just as an aside I’ve never liked the sheep metaphor: it’s culturally loaded from a tribal world and doesn’t speak to an urban society – who tend to think of it as “cute” and “quaint”. Back in the 1990s I asked who else finds it flattering to be compared to “smelly, stupid sheep.”
I’ve never considered that the something from the Bible might not speak to a specific society. It seems to me that if a society thinks of Jesus’ words as cute and quaint that says more about the society than about Jesus.
Maybe there is something inherently unflattering in being compared to smelly, stupid sheep, but then maybe the point of being a Christian is not to be flattered.
As for the use of religious metaphors in other contexts, do you think Jesus has such a compartmentalised view of people? Does He think of people as having a religious side and a political side? Are all of His metaphors not of this world?
Render. Caesar. God.
Yes, I think Jesus would have compartmentalised.
And yes, I think he spoke not at all to the politics of his day… and *if* he did, that is not at all applicable now: for what one says to a semi-divine foreign monarch is not applicable in a secular democracy Unless the head (or attempted head) of that democracy attempts to inject divine approval or approbation into his secular rule.
Then, yes, I think Jesus had a lot to say.
My Kingdom, This World. Different.