Once again, prominent religious gasbags like James Dobson and Bryan Fischer (among others) are using a horrific mass murder, in this case the Newtown school shooting, to bash and marginalize non-theists. Former evangelist Frank Schaeffer called them out on it in a scathing piece that appeared in Alternet and Salon.

All that was needed to make the national tragedy of the killing of 20 children and 6 adults into an anti-God kick in Jesus’ teeth fest was for the usual suspects who hate Jesus to step up to defame His Name again. Of course I’m talking about the “Christian” leaders who can be counted on to drag the name of Christ through the mud at every profitable fundraising importunity. Christian leaders say that the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut was the result of our national falling away from fundamentalist Protestant gullibility.

The idiots — religious village idiots that is — are at it again. I thought Dobson was dead but I guess not. He’s just retired. He’s still alive enough to act like the zombie-for-Jesus’-younger-dumber-brother he is.(I went on his show 3 times back in the day when I too was part of the religious idiots club.) Bryan Fischer, the American Family Association hate host talk-show host, and Franklin-sell-my-soul-to-the-Mormons-because -I-hate-Obama-so-much-Graham (of course), the president and CEO of the tax-exempt Billy Graham Evangelistic Association was not to be outdone.

Village idiots they may be but they enjoy a certain amount of power and influence and they are desperately trying to hold onto it. These right wing theocrats see the writing on the wall: Religion is on the wane in America. Which is not to say organized religion is on the way out anytime soon but the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans is growing. Churches are steadily losing their cultural hegemony and the more authoritarian among their leaders are really panicking about it. At this point they’re not only arguing that religion is essential to the development of morality, but they’re also claiming that God is allowing innocent Americans to be murdered because of what other Americans choose to believe or not to believe. Here’s American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer (from the first link):

The question is going to come up, where was God? I though God cared about the little children. God protects the little children. Where was God when all this went down. Here’s the bottom line, God is not going to go where he is not wanted.

Now we have spent since 1962 — we’re 50 years into this now–we have spent 50 years telling God to get lost, telling God we do not want you in our schools, we don’t want to pray to you in our schools, we do not want to pray to your before football games, we don’t want to pray to you at graduations, we don’t want anybody talking about you in a graduation speech…

In 1962 we kicked prayer out of the schools. In 1963 we kicked God’s word out of ours schools. In 1980 we kicked the Ten Commandments out of our schools. We’ve kicked God out of our public school system. And I think God would say to us, ‘Hey, I’ll be glad to protect your children, but you’ve got to invite me back into your world first. I’m not going to go where I’m not wanted. I am a gentlemen.”

I should think most people’s conception of a gentleman would include, as a bare minimum, not standing by as children are slaughtered when he could easily stop that from happening. So these guys aren’t exactly the best emissaries of religion to the un-churched. But what these clerics are doing, in their last-ditch effort to remain relevant, is instigating religious zealots in violence toward atheists.