Bill Donohue purports to defend religious Americans from anti-Christian and particularly anti-Catholic prejudice, but appears to find no problem with smearing others from Jews and gays and lesbians to victims of child molestation with his own bigoted and inflammatory remarks. The head of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights also relishes another target: people of faith who disagree with his ultraconservative ideology, who he says are “no more Christian than the man in the moon.” Like other Religious Right groups and leaders, Donohue has a long history of criticizing and vilifying progressive Christians, especially progressive Catholics, even though his organization claims to defend the rights of Catholics “to participate in American public life without defamation or discrimination.”
Today, the self-proclaimed adversary of “anti-Christian hate speech” released a statement saying that God doesn’t care about mainline Protestant churches.
Donohue called a recent study showing a decline in attendance rates at mainline Protestant denominations as proof that God is only “looking out for those religions that don’t treat Scripture as if it were a post-modern text to be deconstructed by left-wing ideologues.” According to Donohue:
With the exception of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, and to some extent the American Baptist Churches, all the other churches with declining membership hold liberal views on abortion and gay rights. Moreover, the smallest decline among the Baptist churches was registered by the most conservative among them, the Southern Baptist Convention (down .42). By sharp contrast, all the religions that experienced a growth in membership are pro-life and pro-marriage (normatively understood).
In other words, those religions whose teachings on abortion and marriage approximate the views of the New York Times and NPR are in free fall. Looks like God is truly looking out for those religions that don’t treat Scripture as if it were a post-modern text to be deconstructed by left-wing ideologues.
Following Donohue’s logic, since the Roman Catholic Church grew by just 0.57% and the Mormon LDS Church attendance rate increased by 1.42%, does that mean that God is looking out for Mormons more than Catholics?
