Search Results for: fuiten

So, well… I guess my friends in the local media are just going to give Pastor Joe Fuiten a free ride on this one, huh?

“Even Jewish merchants ought’a be gathered around their cash registers singing ‘what a friend we have in Jesus.'”

The statement, broadcast Sunday on Up Front with Robert Mak, is even worse in context, coming in the wake of Sea-Tac Airport’s Christmas tree fiasco and the torrent of anti-semitic comments it generated on KING-5 TV’s own blog. So it strikes me as more than a little bit insensitive for a prominent public figure to go on the air and say that the Rabbi deserved the condemnation he was getting, that nobody travels for Hannukah anyway, and that Jews are basically a bunch of greedy merchants who should be satisfied enough to just celebrate their profits.

I don’t get it. Seattle has a reputation for political correctness ad absurdum, and yet this clearly insensitive if not downright anti-semitic comment from a major public figure doesn’t even generate a yawn.

Joe Fuiten is the pastor of our region’s largest mega-church, Bothell’s Cedar Park Church. He is also an influential player in Republican Party politics, a close advisor to Mike McGavick during his failed senate campaign, and a publicity hound who actively seeks to interject himself into controversial political and social issues. Fuiten gets air time exactly because he is perceived to be credible.

So I guess in this town, it must be credible to perpetuate anti-Jewish sentiment in pursuit of one’s political agenda. Huh. Who knew?

Pastor Ted Haggard confesses:

Pastor Ted Haggard came out of his house Friday morning and admitted to 9NEWS that he bought meth from a gay escort in Denver. Haggard says he bought the meth from a gay escort, 49-year-old Michael Jones, after contacting him for a massage.

A “massage.” Um, yeah… massaging his penis.

Until yesterday’s scandal broke, Haggard was the pastor of a 14,000 member Colorado Springs mega-church, and the president of the 30-million strong National Association of Evangelicals. He is also a close advisor to President Bush and the primary backer of Colorado’s anti-gay marriage amendment.

What with so many of our most prominent gay-bashers turning out to be closeted homosexuals, it’s almost getting to the point where straight men will start strutting their support for gay rights, as a sign of their own machismo. Fearful of being perceived as gay by bashing gays, men will start picking up women with slick lines like: “Hey babe, I support marriage equality for same-sex couples, how about you?”

(Actually, considering how my gay friends in college always had the most beautiful women hanging on them, I’ve often wondered if the most effective pick-up technique might be to actually pretend to be gay myself.)

Perhaps the most shocking part of these allegations is how unschocked most Americans seem to be about the news. A right-wing, gay-bashing evangelical preacher/politician outed as a meth-snorting closeted homosexual? Tell me something I don’t know. Jim West, Mark Foley, Ted Haggard, the mule-fucking Rev. Neal Horsley… right-wing hypocrisy is now so commonplace it barely warrants a headline.

Still, you can’t help but believe that there will be political fallout from Haggard’s high-profile fall from grace as the Republican’s usually reliable evangelical base struggles to energize itself on behalf of a party that simply doesn’t practice what it preaches. I guess we’ll find out Tuesday.

Momentum is slowly building behind a story I first broke back in August about mega-church preacher (and close McGavick advisor) Pastor Joe Fuiten, and his cynical efforts to steal the homes out from under a community of retired ministers, missionaries and church workers at the Cedar Springs Bible Camp. The plucky Lake Stevens Journal has continued to cover the controversy despite thinly veiled legal threats from the Fuiten camp, and last month KIRO-TV’s Deborah Horne aired a nice segment on the residents’ predicament.

But recently I had begun to despair that the residents would get the justice they deserve.

The Bible Camp sits on 150 acres of prime property near Lake Stevens, and Fuiten recently took control of its board by assuming $150,000 of debt, promising to run the camp without major changes. This was an absolute steal for Fuiten, who recently hocked just a small parcel of the property to back a $1.12 million loan. But avarice knows no bounds, and Fuiten has methodically set out to evict the Camp’s small residential community from homes they built on plots they have leased from the camp for the past forty years. Unable to move these permanent structures, and with Fuiten being the only possible buyer, their houses are now worthless.

So while media interest in the story has slowly built (I know of at least two journalists at major newspapers who are pursuing coverage,) I had begun to worry that Fuiten would successfully run out the clock. As pastor of the largest mega-church in the state, and perhaps the most powerful clergyman in WA Republican Party politics, Fuiten has deep pockets and aggressive attorneys. Fuiten’s strategy was to drag the dispute out as long as possible, bleeding the residents dry — a strategy that preyed on the residents own faith, for they entered negotiations expecting to be treated in a Christian manner by a pastor from their own denomination, the Assembly of God.

Fuiten’s strategy was also aided by the passivity of the residents’ own attorney, who has allowed the proceedings to drag on for months while billing them tens of thousands of dollars, and strongly urging them from going public with their complaints.

Well… no longer.

I was relieved to get a call from resident James West yesterday telling me that attorney Knoll Lowney had agreed to take on their case. In Lowney, Fuiten and his attorneys have drawn a fierce opponent who is more than willing to play the kind of legal hardball Fuiten has been flinging at the residents for months. Lowney also has well-earned reputation for effectively engaging the media in defense of his clients… which is really what Fuiten and his people have feared all along. They don’t mind stealing houses from a community of retired ministers, missionaries and church workers. They just don’t want anybody to know about it.

If you want to know more, tune into “The David Goldstein Show” this Sunday night at 8PM on Newsradio 710-KIRO. I’ll have Bible Camp resident James West on to talk about the dispute and take your questions.

Tonight, KIRO-TV reported on the unfortunate predicament of community of retired ministers, missionaries and lay people who Pastor Joe Fuiten is seeking to evict from the Cedar Springs Bible Camp. This is a story I first broke a couple weeks ago, but have reluctantly sat on since… not because I don’t want to stick it to Pastor Fuiten, but because the residents asked me to hold my fire so that they would have the opportunity to work out a mutually acceptable lease. I even had the residents scheduled to come on KIRO radio with me, but cancelled their appearance after Fuiten’s attorney requested a truce.

Twice the residents extended the deadline, and twice Pastor Fuiten refused to negotiate in good faith. And so today the media truce was canceled, leaving me free to post.

Indeed, rather than negotiating a fair lease, Pastor Fuiten spent much of the past few weeks intimidating and disparaging the residents, threatening a local community newspaper with a libel suit, and personally telling one retired minister that his neighbors were conspiring with “Christian-hating Jews and homosexuals.” (I suppose he was referring to me.)

Of course, Pastor Fuiten has a documented history of duplicity and hate speech. As I’ve previously written, Pastor Fuiten was not only one of the most vocal backers of Referendum 65’s failed effort to repeal our state’s gay civil right’s legislation, he knowingly lied about R-65 to his parishioners. So it comes as no surprise that Pastor Fuiten and his spokespeople would lie about the lease dispute at Cedar Springs.

On KIRO-TV, Fuiten representative Ben Waggoner tried to deflect attention from the Pastor’s role in the controversy, claiming that he was “just one board member” out of many. But that’s not how Pastor Fuiten described his takeover of the camp in a sermon delivered at his local mega-church, the Cedar Park Assembly of God:

One of these days I hope to get in some fields on our north property and to develop the ballfields we already have into first-rate, all-weather surfaced fields. That will take a pile of money, but I personally think it is money well spent.

We are going to get a chance to do some of this work up in the Lake Stevens area. We were looking for land up there, and had found some which we pictured for you in the bulletin, when we were approached by Cedar Springs Camp about hooking up with them on their 153 acre campground just a mile down the road from where we wanted to buy. We have come to an agreement with them. Our board will become the official board of the camp. With that change, we will continue to strengthen the camping program while at the same time accommodating the development of day camps, youth sports, a school, our existing church and more.

And one of the ways he’s going to accommodate all that development is apparently by kicking retirees out of their houses.

I’ll have much more on this story as court documents are filed and become public record… unless of course, Pastor Fuiten changes his mind and chooses to do the right thing. I also intend to delve deeply into Pastor Fuiten’s close relationship with Mike McGavick, on whose exploratory committee he served, and for whom he continues to be a close advisor.

Sound like a threat? Damn right. And don’t think I don’t have the goods to carry it out.

Why is Pastor Joe Fuiten scrubbing the pages of his megachurch website?

I know. He knows. And unless he does the right thing — and soon — you’ll know too.

UPDATE:
For example:

We now know that the old secular idea that religion is not relevant to the public square wasn’t true. We now have to evaluate religion by its fruit. What kind of results does that religion produce? If one of the fruits of Islam is the rubble of the World Trade Center then we need to get some answers about this religion.

Americans need to hold Islam accountable for what it actually produces in the world. Americans need to hold me accountable for what results my religion produces in the world. Just as we have the right to hold Islam accountable for its results, so I expect to be held accountable for Cedar Park’s results in our community.

Oh. The link to the sermon doesn’t work? Well, amen for Google’s cache.

UPDATE, UPDATE:
Brian from Cedar Park just sent me the following email:

Hey, Goldy. Just thought I’d let you know that we just posted a completely new website (check it out

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I’ve only read the New Testament cover to cover once (and I have to admit it was more an exercise in opposition research than it was a journey of spiritual discovery) so correct me if I’m wrong, but I seem to remember Christ teaching things like charity, loving thy neighbor, feeding and clothing the poor… you know, social justice stuff like that.

Thus it came as bit of a surprise to learn that Pastor Joe Fuiten — who routinely jostles with Reverend Ken Hutcherson for the role of Washington state’s loudest defender of Christian values — is in the process of turning retired ministers and missionaries out of their homes and onto the streets. I dunno… doesn’t sound very Christian to me.

I’m referring to the longtime residents of the Cedar Springs Bible Camp near Lake Stevens, who over the past thirty years, and with the Camp’s active encouragement and support, have built conventional homes on leased lots in the Camp’s five-acre residential area, and who have volunteered many hours of their time to Camp improvement projects.

The Camp leased lots only to “qualified tenants” with the stated purpose of providing low-cost, year-round residency to both active and retired Assemblies of God ministers, missionaries and lay people. Monthly leases remained low, sporadically rising by no more than 15 dollars a month from $10.50 per month in 1966 to $150.00 per month in 2004. Leases had historically been renewed annually at the option of the tenant.

That is until Pastor Fuiten’s mega-church, the Cedar Park Assembly of God, purchased the Bible Camp in 2005.

In September of 2005, Fuiten’s church offered residents a new lease that would increase rents by 83% over three years, a particular burden on the Camp’s retired seniors living on low, fixed incomes. But the most devastating alteration of the lease terms under Fuiten’s management was the elimination of the option to renew… destroying the resident’s resale value, and forcing them to abandon their houses and improvements in the event the leases are not renewed.

Under the terms of the new lease, there is only one potential buyer for the residents’ homes — Pastor Fuiten’s mega-church — which would be unjustly enriched should it choose to terminate the leases, or the tenants be unable to afford the new terms.

The residents have filed suit in Snohomish County Superior Court, and while I have no idea how the judge will rule, I’m pretty damn sure that if it were up to Christ, he’d feel a tad uncomfortable evicting a bunch of retired ministers and stealing their homes.

So now that the residents’ plight has been publicized, the question remains: what will Pastor Joe Fuiten do?

Brad Shannon has an article focusing on Denny Heck, the former legislator and founder of TVW. Heck is giving serious consideration to running for the seat to be vacated by Rep. Brian Baird, D- Wash. (WA-03), at the end of the term.

“I am doing a bunch to get myself ready so I can hit the ground running. Having said that, I have not pulled the trigger,’’ Heck said Wednesday. “This is a big, big, big decision and it bears serious deliberation. I’ve set a hard deadline of this weekend, and I will stick by that deadline” for deciding.

As Shannon notes, Heck has “fronted” $100,000 of his own money for a potential run.

The district certainly has the potential to be one of the top targets in the country, so large sums of money flowing into the district are a certainty. A candidate who can fund some of the expense himself is going to get attention. As to how much the race will cost, numbers like $3-$5 million per general election candidate seem likely. It’s great news for the companies that own Portland tee-vee and radio stations.

The announced big names on the Democratic side are state Rep. Deb Wallace, D-Vancouver (18th LD,) and state Sen. Craig Pridemore, D-Vancouver (49th LD.) Some other folks have made a little noise, including state Sen. Brian Hatfield, D-Raymond (19th LD,) and former state Sen. Mark Doumit, a Democrat from Cathlamet who now works for the Washington Forest Protection Association. While it pains me to say it, having once lived in Longview, the latter two would face an uphill climb in the district trying to get attention in Clark County with Pridemore and Wallace both from Clark. Olympia activist Cheryl Crist, who received just shy of 13% in the 2008 top-two primary, has also declared she is in the race for 2010.

If Heck gets in, there would be at least four Democrats running, three of them with a decent chance of moving through to the general. Heck justifiably seems to have a lot of people who admire him, and has more recently spent time in the private sector. Personally I think he’d also have an uphill climb against two sitting Legislators who currently reside in Clark County, but I’m biased. (As I’ve stated from the outset, I am supporting Pridemore.) Then again, money talks, as they say.

On the Republican side, so far you have state Rep. Jaime Herrera, R-Ridgefield (18th LD,) former Bush administration official and current private sector financial adviser David Castillo of the Olympia area, Washougal city council member Jon Russell and yelling Marine guy David Hedrick. While Herrera, a former staffer for U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash. (WA-05,) was parachuted in to take the 18th LD state House seat vacated after the Richard Curtis sex scandal, she’s only in her first full term and is pretty young by political standards at 31.

Castillo seems to bring a serious campaign style, and good communication skills, and I wouldn’t discount him.

Russell failed to get the endorsement of evangelical leader Joe Fuiten, who went with Castillo, even though Russell is a Faith and Freedom guy. Hedrick is, well, Hedrick.

So, at this point, if the Democratic field turns out to be:

Wallace
Pridemore
Heck
Crist

And the Republicans wind up being:

Castillo
Herrera
Russell
Hedrick

I think I would like our chances a lot.

Those who have criticized my relentless attacks on Susan Hutchison as a Bible-thumpin’, evolution-denyin’, partisan right-wing Republican, have generally missed the point.

I do not argue that any of her beliefs or affiliations, however extreme, should disqualify Hutchison from holding public office. “No religious test shall ever be required…” and all that. That’s a good thing.

I just insist that Hutchison be honest about it, and barring that, that the press hold her accountable.

Take for example the video above, in which I compare and contrast Hutchison’s effort to minimize her contribution to Mike Huckabee, with her obvious infatuation with the most prominently Evangelical of the 2008 presidential candidates. When asked about her $500 contribution to Huckabee during a KCTS debate, Hutchison could’ve just said that she supported his candidacy, and explained the reasons why. But she didn’t.

Instead, she attempted to explain it away:

Well, when I was a journalist, as you know, we don’t contribute to political campaigns. And so when I ended my career, I started to respond to all of those messages that we got in the mail, or phone calls.

And one of them was from a friend of mine who said, “Let’s go hear Mike Huckabee speak… he’s a popular governor from Arkansas,” and at that point nobody had really heard much about him. And she said “He’s got innovative ideas.” And this friend of mine has done a lot of politicking, and so I said, “Okay, I’ll go with you to that lunch,” and I wrote the check. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the lunch, and so, that is the extent of my check writing for Mike Huckabee.

To anybody who watched the KCTS debate, the impression she gave was clear. 1) Journalists “don’t contribute to political campaigns,” so Hutchison was new to the world of partisan politics. 2) Like most everyone else, she hadn’t heard much about Huckabee at the time. And 3) she wrote the check merely at the request of a friend who spoke highly of Huckabee, and invited her to hear him speak. When Hutchison says “that is the extent of my checking writing for Mike Huckabee,” she clearly intends to leave the impression that this was the extent of her involvement with Huckabee as well.

But all three of these impressions simply aren’t true.

First of all, KIRO-TV ended Hutchison’s “journalism” career way back in 2002, while the Huckabee luncheon wasn’t until November 15, 2007. That’s a full five years of responding to all those messages and phone calls, so she couldn’t possibly have been the partisan political novice she makes herself out to be at the time.

In fact, according to PDC and FEC reports, Hutchison started giving to political campaigns as early as September of 2003, with a $500 contribution toward the reelection of President George W. Bush; by 2005, she had become a regular contributor to Republican candidates and causes. Indeed, by the time Hutchison wrote her $500 check to Huckabee, she had already written 23 checks totaling $12,500, to 16 different campaigns and committees… Republican all.

So the image of Hutchison as a naive check-writing newbie? That’s misimpression number one, especially considering her entire career since leaving KIRO had been writing checks on behalf of billionaire Charles Simonyi.

As for the impression Hutchison leaves that she didn’t know much about Huckabee at the time, well the video clips above speak for themselves, but here’s the timeline. The Huckabee luncheon was on Nov. 15, 2007, and her check is recorded on Nov. 19. Yet on Sept. 27, 2007, nearly two months earlier, Hutchison can be seen lauding Huckabee before a packed house at the conservative Washington Policy Center’s annual dinner, an event she’s been emceeing for years:

“As you know, if you’ve been here before, our speakers inform, inspire and predict the future. Anyone who was here last year is not surprised that Mike Huckabee is performing well in the presidential race for the Republican primary.”

Hutchison is talking about the 2006 annual dinner, at which Mike Huckabee was the featured speaker, and she, as usual, was the master of ceremonies. So… even though she implies that she didn’t know much about Huckabee in November of 2007 at the time she wrote him a $500.00 check, she had in fact personally met the man, and had been “informed and inspired” by him, a full year earlier, in 2006… a speech she fondly recalled in September of 2007 at the following year’s dinner.

That’s just plain deceptive.

And finally, that politically involved friend Hutchison refers to… the one who invited her to hear Huckabee speak, and who allegedly gushed about his “innovative ideas”…? That was almost surely Sarah Rindlaub, “one of Hutchison’s closest political allies,” a Washington Policy Center board member.

And the lunch itself? An Evangelicals for Huckabee endorsement event, sponsored by Joe Fuiten and twenty other conservative pastors.

Again, Hutchison has the right to associate with and contribute to anybody she wants, but the public has just as much a right to know about it. And therein lies my biggest complaint with the way Hutchison has run her campaign, and the way the press has covered it.

Knowing the facts, anybody watching Hutchison’s efforts to minimize her support for Huckabee simply wouldn’t find her credible. Yet most voters don’t know the facts, and for that I hold our local media complicit.

UPDATE:
TVW is playing its games again, filing takedown notices with YouTube for what clearly amounts to fair use. So I’ve reposted via Vimeo.  So there.

UPDATE, UPDATE:
TVW has apparently had my video pulled from Vimeo, so I’ve replaced the embed with one from LiveLeak. I’m willing to play this game as long as they are.

I hate to say it, but I agree with Bruce Ramsey and Rev. Joe Fuiten. Sorta.

In May, the Rev. Joe Fuiten of Cedar Park Church, Bothell, appealed to his fellow conservative Christians not to challenge the state’s new domestic-partnership law for same-sex couples.

Yes, they could collect signatures and put the law on the ballot and hope to overturn it. That is the right of referendum. But the polls, he said, “show us behind.” Fuiten warned: “If we make a referendum effort and fail, the other side will conclude the public is with them.”

Yes, they will — and the fight will be over.

Absolutely.

The bird-in-the-hand side of me would have preferred R-71 hadn’t qualified for the ballot (and in fact, I’m not entirely convinced it legitimately did), but I nonetheless believe that it stands a strong chance of passing. And if it does, it will rightly be perceived as a referendum on full-blown same-sex marriage itself.

How could it not? The anti-gay-rights forces will use the slippery slope argument as they always do, when they’re not outright misrepresenting the measure as doing more than it really does. And by branding the bill as the “Everything But Marriage Act,” the pro-gay-right side has virtually assured that the measure will be conflated with same-sex marriage in the minds of many voters… “don’t think of an elephant,” and all that.

So while R-71 really doesn’t give same-sex couples the same rights the rest of us enjoy, its passage at the polls would likely give legislators the backbone they need to move faster toward that final step. And as a connoisseur of irony, that’s an outcome I sure would enjoy.

It may be Christmas Eve, but it sure as hell won’t be a silent night on “The David Goldstein Show” from 7PM to 10PM tonight on Newsradio 710-KIRO. I don’t have any scheduled guests at the moment, but I’ve got a number of topics I’m just itching to discuss, including:

• Is it time for a state income tax? Republicans complain that Gov. Gregoire’s new budget will result in budget deficits several years out, but our sales tax heavy tax system would produce long term deficits even if we freeze the size of state government. At what point do we face reality and either reform our tax structure (the most regressive in the nation) or just simply accept our destiny as the Alabama of the West?

• Is this a Christian nation, or just a nation of Christians? And either way, why do so many politically prominent Christians feel so comfortable getting so damn pissy about it? Locally, mega-church preacher and Republican activist Pastor Joe Fuiten describes Jews as a bunch of money-grubbing merchants who should thank Jesus for their yuletide profits… and barely anybody bats an eye. Nationally, Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA) warns that if we don’t reform immigration “there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office.” Heaven forfend.

• Who’s afraid of the big bad Rossi? For two years now we’ve been hearing from the WA GOP about how they’re going to get revenge for the 2004 gubernatorial election, which they claim was stolen, but which actually turned out to be an excruciatingly close tie that broke just barely for Gregoire, in turn breaking the hearts of Republicans who came oh-so-close. First it was Ron Sims who was supposed to pay the piper, and I-912 was supposed to be a shot across the bow. Then Mike McGavick was supposed to benefit from a statewide backlash. (Yeah. How’d that work out for you?) And now a new poll shows Gregoire besting Rossi 51 percent to 40 percent. Ouch. So, is Dino Rossi a one hit wonder, or the next governor of Washington?

• An inhabited island off the coast of India has disappeared beneath rising sea levels. Oops.

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

PROGRAMMING NOTE:
I’ll be filling in for Dave Ross and Ron Reagan all week, from 9AM to 1PM.

Tune in to a special Saturday night edition of “The David Goldstein Show” from 7PM to 10PM tonight on Newsradio 710-KIRO, as I fill-in for Frank Shiers. Subject to change, here are the topics for tonight’s show:

7PM: What have we learned (if anything) from last week’s power outage? Both the Governor and the Seattle City Council have asked for reports from the powers that be, evaluating our emergency response and suggesting what we might do better. Here’s one idea: mandate backup generators at filling stations. Here’s another: do a damn better job maintaining the existing infrastructure. You’ve got a better idea? Give me a call.

8PM: Is it time to legalize pot? At over a billion dollars a year, marijuana is now Washington state’s number two cash crop, just behind, well, you know… apples. At what point do we finally admit that our silly little War on Drugs is going even worse than our war in Iraq? Wouldn’t it make more sense to just legalize pot, regulate it… and tax the hell out of it?

9PM: Is this a Christian nation, or just a nation of Christians? And either way, why do so many politically prominent Christians feel so comfortable getting so damn pissy about it? Locally, mega-church preacher and Republican activist Pastor Joe Fuiten describes Jews as a bunch of money-grubbing merchants who should thank Jesus for their yuletide profits… and barely anybody bats an eye. Nationally, Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA) warns that if we don’t reform immigration “there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office.” Heaven forfend.

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

PROGRAMMING NOTE:
I’ll be on at my usual 7PM to 10PM time tomorrow night, and then filling in for Dave Ross and Ron Reagan all week, from 9AM to 1PM.

I’m not a very religious man, but as a blogger there are times when stories seem to fall from the sky like manna from heaven, threatening to shake my lack of faith to its very foundation. For example, here I was mired in the post-election doldrums when suddenly, as if by Divine intervention, the Seattle Port Commission inexplicably throws itself into the FOX-manufactured “War on Christmas“, providing my readers a welcome diversion from an oppressively informative string of posts on education, transportation and other boring, policy-wonk stuff like that.

Not only did Christmastreegate generate fodder for both my blog and my radio show, it also earned me a spot on KING-5 TV’s Up Front With Robert Mak. I was without power when the show aired Sunday, so I only just got a chance to view it streaming online, and I thought my performance was steady if unremarkable. But the most entertaining part of the show was by far the interview with Pastor Joe Fuiten, who basically proved by example all my insinuations of anti-semitism.

When asked if the Christian faith is under attack, Fuiten said yes. When asked who is responsible for the War on Christmas, Fuiten implied that Rabbi Bogomilsky deserved the “universal condemnation” he was getting. The Christmas tree is not a religious symbol, the pastor insisted, but when asked how removing a supposedly secular object could possibly be considered an attack on Christianity he argued that this dispute was part of a “pattern” — a fifty-plus-year effort (ie, conspiracy) to “eradicate” Christian activity and symbols from public life. Fuiten accepted that this is a “very diverse country” and praised American Protestantism for being so “accommodating to minorities,” but when asked if he would object to having a menorah displayed at the airport, he refused to embrace multiculturalism.

Apparently, Fuiten believes that only Christmas should be recognized in our public places because this is a “Christian nation” that celebrates Christmas “big time:”

“The reason the airports are packed is because of Christmas — they’re not traveling for Hannukah for sure. […] Even Jewish merchants ought’a be gathered around their cash registers singing ‘what a friend we have in Jesus.'”

Uh-huh. Not only does he diminish American Jewry while perpetuating anti-semitic stereotypes, he does so entirely unaware that anybody might take offense. Yeah… nobody travels for Hannukah, and besides, all us Jews should just shut our yaps and count our money. This is exactly what I mean when I say that “War on Christmas” rhetoric can’t help but spur anti-semitic sentiment… especially when the pastor of the region’s largest and most politically influential mega-church is so clearly and cluelessly anti-semitic. But of course, what do you expect from a man who responded to my posts on the Cedar Springs Bible Camp by attacking the residents for conspiring with “Christian-hating Jews and homosexuals.”

All Rabbi Bogomilsky asked for was single menorah, a symbolic recognition that our nation is home to more than one faith, and celebrates more than one holiday this time of year. And for this, Uncle Tomsteins like right-wing toady, Rabbi Daniel Lapin have the gall to demand that Rabbi Bogomilsky publicly apologize. But what happens when Lapin’s buddy Fuiten overtly insults in the Jewish people? I intend to find out.

If the blogosphere has a God, then surely Pastor Joe is one of the Creator’s minor miracles. It would be a sin for me to let this story go.

Just read Robert Jamieson’s column in today’s Seattle P-I: “Critics go after the wrong pastor.”

Hmm. I wasn’t aware that us critics were limited to going after only one pastor at a time.

It’s an embarrassment of riches out there with the likes of Mark Driscoll, Ken Hutcherson, Joe Fuiten, Ted Haggard, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Fred Phelps, and the inimitably mule-fucking Rev. Neil Horsley routinely making headlines. So many pastors, so little time.

A story I first broke back in August continues to gain momentum, with the Everett Herald devoting a large chunk of their front page yesterday to the plight of the residents of the Cedar Springs Bible Camp. The residents — mostly retired ministers, missionaries and church workers — built permanent homes on land leased from the Bible Camp, but now face eviction at the hands of Pastor Joe Fuiten, who recently took control of the board.

The politically connected Pastor Fuiten has become an influential player in the Washington State Republican Party, using his Cedar Park mega-church as a platform for promoting right-wing causes and candidates. He is a close advisor to US Senate candidate Mike McGavick, serving as an original member of his exploratory committee, and giving the invocation at his campaign kickoff. Fuiten is also a fierce opponent of gay civil rights, and promises another effort to repeal the state’s anti-discrimination laws.

Fuiten, who normally craves the media spotlight, seems a tad annoyed at the unwelcome and negative press coverage he’s been getting.

“That’s part of what fries me about these yahoos out there when they accuse us of not being interested in the poor,” Fuiten said. “We bless them with an inexpensive place to stay and they call us all kinds of names in the media.”

For the record, here’s one of those “yahoos” Fuiten is fried at:

Pastor Fuiten called this 80-year-old retired minister a “yahoo.” Hmm. That’s not very Christian of him.

Well, at least he didn’t call her a “Christian-hating Jew and homosexual.” (I believe that particular epithet was aimed at me.)

The lease dispute centers on Fuiten’s refusal to include an automatic renewal, a provision the residents have enjoyed for the past 40 years, and without which their homes become worthless. If Fuiten truly is interested in the poor he would find some way to accommodate elderly retirees like Rev. Cohrs-Thackwell, who has devoted her entire life to serving the same Assemblies of God denomination that Pastor Fuiten claims to represent.

And he better come to an accommodation quick, because this story is not going away. The residents now have competent legal representation, and are prepared for a battle of attrition. And the further the local media delve into this dispute, the further they will delve into Pastor Fuiten’s tangled web of financial and real estate dealings.

So to all my friends in the press who haven’t yet looked into this slowly unfolding scandal, I encourage you to take a gander. There’s plenty of story here to go around.

Just follow the money.

The Seahawks won, my beloved Eagles lost, so what better way to both celebrate and mourn then to tune in to “The David Goldstein Show” tonight on Newsradio 710-KIRO, 7PM to 10PM.

7PM: Are we in the midst of a netroots revolution? I’ll be joined by netroots pioneer Jerome Armstrong, founder of MyDD, and co-author with Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas of “Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grasroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics,” which has just been released in paperback. Armstrong and I will talk about the rise of the Netroots, how they’re transforming the media and the Democratic Party, and what type of impact these strategies are having on the 2006 midterm election. Armstrong is also a top advisor to former VA Gov. Mark Warner, and we’ll be chatting about Warner’s surprising announcement this week that he will not run for president in 2008.

8PM: Who would Jesus evict? For over 40 years a small community of ministers, missionaries and church workers — mostly now retired — have built homes on small residential lots leased from the Cedar Springs Bible Camp. But after a recent takeover of the Camp’s board of directors, local mega-church preacher and McGavick advisor Pastor Joe Fuiten has sought to terminate these leases, and evict the residents. Camp resident Jim West joins me to talk about the resident’s predicament, and how Fuiten and his attorneys have sought to bleed them dry.

9PM: Are you ready to vote? The absentee ballots drop this week, and 80 percent of WA voters will cast their ballots before election day. Tune in for an election round-up, and let me hear about the races and issues that are most important to you.

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

UPDATE:
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