God's Favor

TECHNORATI TAGS: God, Democrats, history, lynching, genocide, slavery

Warning: What follows below the fold is historically true, but very raw and graphic. Don't read if you think you might find it upsetting.

Kevin at Preemptive Karma tells us that the head of the Family Research Council, Tony Perkins by name, is very upset about the Democratic sweep of Congress, as it's an indication that large numbers of Americans deliberately spat in God's face.

Perkins responded by asking his "Prayer Team" to get to work:

"The next two years may bring the most profoundly anti-faith, family and freedom initiatives in the history of Congress." And Perkins wants his Prayer Team to "Pray that God will multiply His prayer army during the next two years. May He train men, women and young people to be disciplined, focused, faith-filled and equipped to challenge whatever may come." The point of this effort is clearly the 2008 Presidential elections. "Pray that God will intervene to give America a President who knows and fears Him, who will lead our nation in righteousness and call Americans to the kind of prayer and to repentance that will allow God to restore his favor to America."

Kevin has a question:

Allowing God to restore his favor to America implies that sometime in the sainted past America was under divine favor. But when?

Was America under God's favor when black slavery was officially condoned? When a white man could rape his black slaves when and where he wished? When slaves could be whipped to within an inch (and well beyond) of his life at the sole disgression of the slave owner?

Was America under God's favor during the so-called "nigger hunts" which claimed thousands of lives in the 1860s and 1870s?

Was America under God's favor in 1904 when black sharecropper Luther Holbert and his wife were chained to a tree and an audience of 600 white spectators enjoyed treats like deviled eggs, lemonade, and whiskey in a festive atmosphere while Mr. and Mrs. Holbert had first their fingers chopped off one by one, followed by their ears, followed by a severe beating that left Mr. Holbert with one eye dangling from it's factured socket, followed by "spirals...of raw, quivering flesh" being extracted from both Holberts via a corkscrew before the couple were finally burned alive?

Was America under God's favor in 1951 when black sharecropper Matt Ingram was convicted of "rape by leer" for oogling a white women 75 feet away from him?

Was America under God's favor when ethnic cleansing led to an estimated four thousand Cherokee deaths on the infamous Trail of Tears in 1838?

Was America under God's favor in 1890 when L. Frank Baum, editor of South Dakota's Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer newspaper (later to become famous as the author of "The Wizard of Oz"), advocated the extermination of all America's Indians just one week prior to the slaughter at Wounded Knee, which history books conveniently describe as possibly having been started by the very natives who were slaughtered?
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Was America under God's favor during any of the numerous other acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing from it's earliest days throught the end of the 19th century?

Was America under God's favor during the Salem Witch Trials when 20 were executed and between 175 and 200 were imprisoned (five of whom died in prison)?

Was America under God's favor when Abrahan Lincoln was murdered? When John F. Kennedy was murdered? When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor? When the Civil War shed more American blood than any other war in our history? When the KKK roamed the South and terrorized blacks?

When was America "under God's favor" and what events demostrate that favor?