Ted Haggard's Scary Voodoo

Evangelical Reverend Ted Haggard said on CNN today that Jews, Muslims and Christians don’t, in fact, worship the same God. According to Haggard, “different spiritual entities” exist and are worshipped by the three religions.

Different spiritual entities?

What new kind of gobbledygook is that?

Does he mean there are several Gods vying for control of the universe? Does he mean that ‘ghosts’ exist out there in the ether, masquerading as Gods, and the Jews and Muslims have been fooled into mistaking them for the real God?

Or does he mean that each religion has a different conception of God that is antithetical to the others? (And that his, of course, is the correct conception?) If so, he demonstrates the sadly arrogant, divisive, tyrannical and dangerous bigotry of fundamentalism.

To admit that all religions are an imperfect attempt at approximating the true nature of reality would rob Haggard of his power--the power to be self-righteous, to be exclusive and to tell people how to live their lives with absolute authority. Thus, fundamentalism reveals itself as an extreme, fantasy-based tool to control people by stoking their fears.

Lunatics like Haggard are certainly frightening people, but not because what they believe bears any resemblance to the truth. They are scary because they are so sure and self-righteous that one has to wonder how far they will go to uphold and enforce their superstitions. We already know how far some Muslims will go.

As recent history has made clear, Christian fundamentalists want to live in a nation where their beliefs are codified into law because their interpretation of the Bible is more important to them than the principles our country was founded upon. Indeed, as the comments of Haggard and others imply, fundamentalism goes against democracy, pluralism and liberty.

It doesn’t get much scarier than that.