Christian Civic League's, Mike Heath and other Ministers of Hate.

Enemies

By Michael S. Heath

Mar 31, 2008 - 5:16:44 AM

http://www.cclmaine.org/artman/publish/Mike_Heath_6/Enemies.shtml

A Christian group is trying to resurrect a colonial era practice called "Fast Days." The Jeremiah Project (JP) is urging Mainers to set aside April 10 as a day to refrain from some type of secular pursuit and use their free time for a spiritual purpose.

The Portland Press Herald (PPH) provides a bit of history here-
http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story_pf.php?id=178356

The PPH points out two possible reasons for the disappearance of the Fast Day. One is discrimination against Roman Catholics. The other is the increasing use of the day for entertainment. The paper also highlights the Jeremiah Project's reference to "enemies" in their reasoning for resurrecting the practice.

The JP writes, "We find ourselves in Maine out of time and completely surrounded by an enemy that is more numerous and more sophisticated than we are, and we are quickly running out of options. Will you join us in this specific effort to humble ourselves, repent of our own sin, and pray for a revival of the Church of Jesus that will heal our land?" The paper describes this as "strong language."
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America is designed to enable all citizens, religious and non-religious, to fight politically for that which they hold most dear. That has historically been viewed here in Maine as "guarding against the corruption from the godless world." We expected the institutional church to fight to keep alcohol, gambling and sexuality-related laws strong and clear.

All Mainers used to view the Christian pastor's biblical pronouncements against sin and immorality as a good thing. That has, of course, changed. Now the Christian pastors can't even close their prayers in the name of Jesus Christ in the Maine State House without feeling a tinge of guilt.
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That is why the JP's statement included the honest confession, "We find ourselves in Maine out of time and completely surrounded by an enemy that is more numerous and more sophisticated than we are."

The "we" that the JP is referring to is not simply Protestant evangelicals. The "we" is all Mainers who think that sexual morality is worth defending and upholding.
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http://www.amazon.com/Gerald-L-K-Smith-Minister/dp/0807121681

Gerald L. K. Smith: Minister of Hate

Jeansonne intersperses his book with attempts to
discover why Smith was the way he was. Jeansonne seems
to think that Smith's stern religious upbringing made
his value system so rigid that he saw any attempts at
change as an attack upon his own values. Even into old
age, when many people tend to moderate their views to
some extent, Smith was as vitriolic as ever. His
attacks on Jews escalated into the world of bizarre
fantasy, and his paranoia reached epic proportions, as
Smith saw conspiracies against him and America under
every stone.
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From Sunday to Sabbath

The Puritan Origins of Modern Seventh-day Sabbatarianism

http://www.wcg.org/lit/law/sabbath/sun-sab1.htm

Sabbatarianism is usually defined as the belief that Christians should observe a particular day of the week as the Sabbath, either the seventh day or the first day of the week. This means more than simply attending church on the weekend. On their Sabbath, Sabbatarians refrain from all customary work, except works of charity, necessity and worship, because they understand the Sabbath to be a law of God. They do so even if it means economic hardship, shunning or persecution.
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How was it that this doctrine, now nearly forgotten, once so permeated American church life and thought?1 The answer lies in the religious principles of many who founded the United States and established its religious institutions. Those founders predominantly came from the more Bible-centric elements of English Christianity, the Separatist and Puritan branches of English Protestantism.
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Endnotes

1 One should not assume that because Puritans dominated the New England governments, at least in the settled areas, that average New Englanders practiced Sabbatarianism. They probably did so only as the government forced it on them. Roger Finke and Rodney Stark have demonstrated that the traditional view of a pious New England is not true.

There never were all that many Puritans, even in New England, and non-Puritan behavior abounded. From 1761 through 1800 a third (33.7 percent) of all first births in New England occurred after less than nine months of marriage...despite harsh laws against fornication. Granted, some of these early births were simply premature and do not necessarily show that premarital intercourse had occurred, but offsetting this is the likelihood that not all women who engaged in premarital intercourse would have become pregnant. In any case, single women in New England during the colonial period were more likely to be sexually active than to belong to a church — in 1776 only about one out of five New Englanders had a religious affiliation. (Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, The Churching of America: 1776-1990 , 22)
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Liar, racist, demagogue – the voice of a generation.

http://www.davidmargolis.com/article.php?id=31&cat_cc=6&cat_fp=0

Gerald L.K. Smith: Minister of Hate

by Glen Jeansonne

Gerald L.K. Smith

This biography, reprinted ten years after its first
publication, is a useful portrait of a nasty fellow.
During his long career as a “nationalist,”
anti-Communist, anti-Jewish, pro-Christian, “America
first” agitator and propagandist, Gerald L.K. Smith
was a household name in America — and in some circles
quite an influential one.

Nasty though he was, Smith’s life also serves as a
reminder that a hate-monger can be, in private, a very
kindly, even admirable fellow. Smith was personally
courageous, extraordinarily energetic and totally
sincere, as well as paranoid, shrilly racist and a
liar — a disseminator of total fabrications that he
apparently believed with full sincerity as soon as he
invented them.
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All of Smith’s preachments were seasoned with a large
dollop of paranoia and demagoguery.
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Overviewing Gerald L.K. Smith’s life, it is a relief
to see that many ugly ideas that were respectable, or
at least widely held, have now been assigned to the
margins of American public life. But it is also
edifying to remember that the bad old days are not
really all that far in the past.
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Not "far in the past" at all and if you think Heath and his crackpot pals Fish, Reisman and Frary are not cause for concern, you might want to think again!