Thursday, December 4, 2014

Fox News is Not Your Friend (Hat-Tip to Wretched)

Subcaption: Voddie Baucham Cut off As Soon as He Mentions the Cross

Video after the jump.

Here's the link to the original podcast that inspired the article title for this piece:
http://www.wretchedradio.com/podcast.cfm?h=62C14A71AA2030A715E5A1720DABEFD2&page=86
And now the piece de resistance. Black conservative pastor taken on conservative television station to talk about black violence and racism, and perhaps you think the producers will let him spread his conservative Christian views?

Haha. Nope.

See, Fox News is conservative, but that does not equivocate to Biblical Christianity. Sure, as Todd points out in the intro to the podcast, there might be many Christians on the side of the Republican Party, but that does not make the GOP a Christian, let alone Bible-based platform, party, or movement. It's most fair to say that it's influenced by Christians, but it disdains us in much the same way that the Democratic Party disdains the Republican Party. It's merely a matter of degree. Both groups want national influence, and they are strongly motivated to cast themselves as pro-Christian or the true representation of Christian virtue, in different ways, in order to court the support of believers.

But the parties as a whole and the nation as a whole is not Christian, and to say that Christianity influences them is becoming a more and more misleading statement.

No, Fox News exists to make money by selling commercial time based on viewership. They do whatever they can to get more views, hence the nauseating sensationalism. Yes, they bring up valid journalistic pieces that other networks don't, but then they do the same as those other networks. CNN might have spent 200 hours covering Carnival cruise disasters a few years ago, but FNC has covered Benghazi and that soldier stuck in a Mexican prison in just the same manner. "Breaking News: Nothing New To Report in the Politically Charged Issue We Keep Telling You About Because We've Staked Our Quarterly Profits On It." Ugh, just quit it.


Fox's producers thought, "hm, what a sensational political point it would make to have on a black pastor to take the "white side" of the Ferguson issue." Voddie Baucham thought, "hm, what an opportunity to use Fox's attraction to sensationalism to make an effort to frame the issue as being about the Gospel and not some manufactured race-war."

And as soon as he started making statements that disagreed with the producer's vision of how the interview should go, they buzzed the blond woman in her earpiece and told her they were going to commercial. Scarcely 6 seconds into his response to the question she'd asked him. Watch it for yourself.


Several times in the interview, he ignores her setups to spike political talking points, and instead talks about what he wants to talk about. The producers tolerate it for a time. But then, in reply to her final request for a comment on an image floating around in the media, he says,

"My message is that the Gospel gives us hope. I'm a pastor, not a politician. I'm not here to make political points. [anchor begins talking over him] My job as a pastor is to point people to the Cross, --(garbled)"

Immediately cut off.

Don't be fooled into thinking Fox News has any more tolerance for the repentance-and-faith-alone Christian message of salvation than CBS, CNN or NBC. They're all corporate institutions designed to make money off of creating spectacle. Truth is either a secondary concern, or of no major concern at all.

Fox News just desperately tried to corral one of the few prominent and solidly Biblical black pastors in America to try to score political points in a political race-narrative, and essentially succeeded. But I wasn't the only one who noticed that he was cut off when he began naming Christ, and the hope here is that black Christians, who until now have found themselves feeling conflicted by the Democrats' successful campaign in painting Republicans and Christians as representative of each other, can see in this example that there is no such relationship that exists.

Republicans are no more Christian than Democrats. If they are Christian, then they will be for Christ. And if they are not, they will be against Christ. What color lapel pin you wear on Election Day makes no difference in the spiritual calculus. ALL need to hear the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ. Perhaps no one quite as much as the Fox News audience, who are lulled into a false spiritual complacency by the satisfaction of feeling that their political views are right.

People who don't think they need Jesus are the people who are in the most danger and need Him most.

Let's hope there'll be more men like Voddie going on Fox and preaching the Gospel until they'll either let it be heard or have no more of us, so that this false marriage can be revealed for what it is.

~ Rak Chazak

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