By Reverend M. Vincent Turner
December 29th, 2007

As a graduate theologian and ordained minister, I have this increasingly gnawing question: What in God's name (literally) has happened to the Christian community and Christianity?

The larger Christian leadership should be expressing outrage, decrying the current day heresy and blasphemy that is taking place across our great land, the United States of America. Anger should be at seismic proportion. Yet, there is silence; dead silence. Apathy. Lethargy.

Mike Huckabee, my "Mr. Huckster-bee", is huckstering a style of Christianity that smells more like snake oil. Fifteen years ago Huckabee suggested quarantining AIDS patients. This man is Christian? He would colonize AIDS patients like the lepers of old? Wow! What Jesus does this man indeed claim to follow?

Jesus walked among the lepers, in most respects their only hope and true experience of compas-sion. Some years ago a priest friend said during a sermon after visiting numerous AIDS patients, "If you truly want to see the Suffering Jesus, visit someone with AIDS!" Mike Huckabee is among a growing population of false Christians who use Jesus for their own endgame, their self-ish and self-centered agenda while altogether ignoring and scorning suffering.

Mike Huckabee seeks to sell his "feel good" Christianity as a snake oil salesman wants to sell snake oil. Jesus warns, "Beware the false prophets!"

Yet, Romney is the more dangerous because not only does he fail to talk about his own Mormon-ism legitimately, he rewrites his own history every so many days. He "saw" his father march with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.? But, then he didn't. He has been "a lifelong hunter". Aha! No record of ever having a hunting license! He wept when blacks were admitted into the Mor-mon Church. Was he weeping out of joy, or from dismay and disappointment?

Ah, but wait! While we are on the topic of weeping! How about Joel Osteen, the "feel good all over God salesman" of the century and his "tears of joy" on a recent 60 Minutes? Oh charlatan of charlatans! Jesus warns, "Beware those who come, wolves dressed in sheep's cloth!"

Osteen is the Tony Robbins of Christendom. Along with his celebrity and fame has come great fortune. Hmm. How much of that fortune is Mr. Osteen sharing (giving away to) with the less fortunate, the ones least likely to show up at his stadium-packed God sell-a-thons?

Christianity is in moral crisis. Crisis, I say! And nary a church or denomination is out raising hell (literally and metaphorically!) about the increasing contamination and corruption of Chris-tian teaching: the Teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Have we (they) forgotten all about Him? Well, I believe they have. They are dismantling Jesus and destroying His teachings!

Which Christian denomination raised its voice about Huckabee's AIDS position? Forget that it was fifteen years ago. It goes to the character of the man. It goes to explain why Huckabee should not be an ordained minister! No church has raised a sound. Total silence.

While Huckabee plays the new Judas and Joel Osteen is making fortunes telling people that God is Mr. Feel Good. Be all that you can be! Really? Where does charity and humility fit into the Osteen gospel? Ahh. Is it in his fancy cars and the lavish dwelling his "Feel Good god" has given to him? Where is the "Love thy neighbor" in this Osteen formula? I see "Love thyself" more than "Love thy neighbor" in the Osteen gospel.

These examples of tyranny against Christ's church and community barely cover the surface of growing corruption against Christ. Churches today focus far too much on who might be gay and far too little time and energy on the major issues facing American society and Christian culture and the wider Christian community. Jesus warns us against the heretics, the false prophets and the self-righteous who make judgments against all others but never themselves. Christianity is in crisis. The silence over this growing corruption and cancer is dangerously deafening and woe-fully telling. Jesus denied is Jesus defiled. Christianity is at its abyss.