Bay of Fundie

The Reverend D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries died last week. This is a good year for fallen fundies. As you recall, the Mother Of All Fundies (or substitute your favorite F-word), Jerry Falwell, died in May.

I didn’t write anything about DJK immediately, because his profile has been lower in the last couple of years. I’ve been concentrating on the oozing pus of the fundie world and not the infected scabs.

I was hoping that somebody would post an appropriately-cold eulogy on YouTube that I could link to (comparable to Christopher Hitchens’ brilliant savaging of Falwell’s legacy that I linked to last time). No such luck. If you type in the keywords of “James Kennedy Coral Ridge”, all you’ll get are five videos, only one of which is a eulogy. What’s funny about that is the guy doing the eulogy gets Kennedy’s name wrong! (James D. instead of D. James) Well, not all of his supporters are very bright.

I didn’t want DJK’s happy event to pass unmentioned, so I’ve been cruising the internet, looking for some interesting tidbits to grab for a quick eulogy.

A good site is Right Wing Watch, which is run by People for the American Way. They have a few of DJK’s quotes in a brief article about DJK’s demise (They also have a longer article they wrote just a week earlier.). Here are a couple that jump out at me:

As the vice-regents of God, we are to bring His truth and His will to bear on every sphere of our world and our society. We are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government… our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors — in short, over every aspect and institution of human society. (Christian Science Monitor, 3/16/2005)

Many fundies claim that they are not trying to create a theocracy. I think the above quote puts a lie to that assertion.

If homosexuals win the right to “marry,” expect further similarly argued claims challenging legal barriers to polygamy, bestiality, and child marriage. (Center for Reclaiming America for Christ, 10/2003)

That quote is part of the ongoing slippery-slope claim that I refuted in an earlier article. As I said then, when you hear this, don’t let it go unchallenged.

Kennedy’s most recent crime was a video called Darwin’s Deadly Legacy, which falsely claims that Charles Darwin caused Adolf Hitler to murder six million Jews.

Finally, I’ll leave you with a letter to the editor of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. The letter was written by Larry D. Pate of Oakland Park, FL:

The death of controversial minister the Rev. Dr. D. James Kennedy just a few months after the passing of the Rev. Jerry Falwell, signals the beginning of the end of a shameful era in American Christian fundamentalism.

Kennedy, like Falwell, was nothing less than a modern reincarnation of Elmer Gantry, peddling a snake oil of mass fear and hysteria, suppression of human rights, defiance of constitutional rights, disparagement of science, revisionist history, and Christian nationalism. If these are biblical values, the republic is more secure as the secular humanist state that both men sanctimoniously decried. While sympathizing with their families, their demise is nothing short of fortunate funerals for those of us who remain and seek to mitigate their legacies of bigotry, theological irresponsibility and spiritual violence.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 14th, 2007 at 1:52 am and is filed under Church and State, Crazy Fundies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.