The Arc of Nathan Tabor

 

Nathan Tabor is currently in jail in Brunswick County, with a list of charges I'll get around to summarizing below. Way back in 2004, Tabor ran as a young Christian conservative against Virginia Foxx in the Republican congressional primary, the year that Foxx took the 5th District seat she still holds. Tabor came in fifth out of six. He had been endorsed by the NC Right to Life and by the Rev. Jerry Falwell (no, really), who actually called Tabor "a young Jesse Helms." The photo here is from that period in Tabor's life.

He did his best to live up to Falwell's compliment. He was particularly unbending on the issue of abortion. He constantly modeled outrage over what women might do with their bodies, coming out of a general contempt for "women's rights." He ran as though Virginia Foxx was faaaar to the left, at the vanguard of bossy liberal women who were going to destroy Christian principles. He had attended Pat Robertson's Regent University and followed the Gospel of "let your women keep silence." He published The Conservative Voice, was kind enough to put me on his email list, so I regularly expressed my own outrage at his preachments. I wrote a lot about Tabor after 2004.

Tabor went on to chair the Forsyth County Republican Party, ran unsuccessfully for town alderman in Kernersville, and attempted to file in 2012 for the 6th District congressional primary but got to the Board of Elections after the deadline.

Currently, his estranged wife says he's addicted to drugs and always on the verge of financial disaster. Which perhaps explains how his current incarceration got started. He was arrested earlier in October by the Ocean Isle Beach police department, along with the Brunswick County Sheriff's office, for stealing catalytic converters from a church, a Habitat for Humanity Restore, and from two different people (some of the goods allegedly stolen at Sunset Beach). (Michael Hewlett, Winston-Salem Journal, has the most complete story on Tabor's multiple troubles.)

One wonders what Tabor was doing at the beach. His home is in Kernersville. Could it have anything to do with this: There was a warrant out for Tabor's arrest in Kernersville on August 21, 2021, on a complaint of cyberstalking filed by his pastor at the Kerwin Baptist Church. (The entanglements get increasingly baroque.) Luckily, the third week in August is the perfect time to go to the beach! But the details of his arrest suggest he was also close to destitute. And then there's what his wife wrote when she filed for complete custody of their 16-year-old daughter: “Defendant has become addicted to drugs, spending thousands and thousands of dollars on drugs.”

Nathan Tabor, four days ago

Added to the charges of outright theft: allegations that he made threats against his mother-in-law and other family members in Catawba County in an attempt to get more than $200,000 and that he harassed his pastor in Forsyth County, accusing the pastor of embezzling money from the church. He made sexually-explicit comments to both the pastor and his wife. The pastor filed for a restraining order against Tabor in August.

Mrs. Tabor herself filed for a restraining order against her husband after they separated last June, alleging that he had sent a constant stream of harassing text messages, emails, and social media postings. “Defendant is mentally and emotionally abusive to the minor child, including sending email implying the minor child will burn in hell, and ‘I curse that and pray every time you see or touch something you enjoy that you immediately get sick.’ ”

This is not to say that all Christian conservatives are hypocrites and potentially "mental." This is to say that sometimes claiming to be a Christian conservative can cover big cracks in character.

All I Want for Christmas ... Is Freedom from Smugness

Greensboro Presbyterian minister Mark Sandlin writes compellingly on the so-called "war on Christmas":

...the baby we remember this time of year was not part of the dominant culture the way the religion he started now is. The religious stories that were told in those days were told under the shadow of the dominant culture. They were stories of oppression and hardships, stories of overcoming unthinkable odds, stories of hope for a people living in times and cultural positions that, quite frankly felt hopeless. 

But today, our stories are told from places and positions of power. Today, Christianity is the dominant culture. So, instead of story of a olive skinned middle-eastern, unwed, pregnant mother, who was seen as little more than property, giving birth to what the world would surely see as an illegitimate child who was wrapped in what rags they could find and placed in a smelly, flea-infested feeding trough in the midst of a dark musky smelling animal stall, we end up with a clean, white-skinned European woman giving birth to a glowing baby wrapped in impossibly white swaddling clothes and laid to rest in a manger that looks more like a crib than a trough in the midst of a barn that is more kept and clean than many of our houses. 

So, "War on Christmas?" Sure, sign me up. I'm pretty sure I'd prefer the elimination of what our modern "celebration" has become to the increasingly white-washed version we hear every year.

Got Our First Pope-Machine Mailer!

The Pope Boyz have somehow decided that Yours Truly is a good candidate for marching on the Right Side into "Battleground North Carolina." The Pope Civitas Institute has invited Little Ole Me to a two-day boot camp at the Crabtree Marriott in Raleigh to learn how to strip the paint off the hide of any liberal. But let the mailer speak for itself:

"The liberals will do whatever it takes to win in 2012, but North Carolina conservative can stop them.

"North Carolina will be a battleground state like never before -- you owe it to yourself and your state to be organized and ready to win.

"Battleground North Carolina is designed to energize, train, and equip citizens in our state to defeat liberal policies and liberal 'community organizers.' "

Yeah, when you're organizing, there's nothing more demon-izable than community organizers!

Participating in the training will be pooh-bahs from Americans for the Prosperous, The Heritage Foundation, and the many tentacles of Art Pope's empire. A good hyperbolic immersion will be had by all.

Would-Be Book-Burner Threatened with Fine for Polluting the Air

Update on Rev. Marc Grizzard of Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Bethel, N.C., and his announced plans to burn a whole bunch of Bibles that aren't King James versions and other literature similarly inspired by the devil, including tomes written by Christian mullahs like James Dobson, and so-called Christian music by the likes of Amy Grant et al.

Previously.

Today's development.

Fahrenheit 3:16

The Canton, N.C., Amazing Grace Baptist Church will hold a good old-fashioned book burning on Halloween night. Every version of the Bible which is not the 1611 King James Version is scheduled for the flames. (How did that old pederast King James I of England get so privileged?) You have to check out Pastor Marc Grizzard's own high-octane website to believe all this, which is NOT, evidently, a hoax.

And just to keep the flames licking, the church is planning on adding in all the country music and Southern gospel they can find, among other musical genres, and pretty much the entire gamut of "Christian" books written by fake, Satan-worshipping frauds, like Rick Warren, Billy Graham, Mother Teresa, James Dobson, Chuck Colson, and the Pope:

...We will also be burning Satan's music such as country , rap , rock , pop, heavy metal, western, soft and easy, southern gospel , contempory [sic] Christian , jazz, soul, oldies but goldies, etc.

We will also be burning Satan's popular books written by heretics like Westcott & Hort , Bruce Metzger, Billy Graham , Rick Warren , Bill Hybels , John McArthur, James Dobson, Charles Swindoll , John Piper, Chuck Colson, Tony Evans, Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swagart, Mark Driskol, Franklin Graham , Bill Bright, Tim Lahaye, Paula White, T.D. Jakes, Benny Hinn , Joyce Myers, Brian McLaren, Robert Schuller, Mother Teresa , The Pope , Rob Bell, Erwin McManus, Donald Miller, Shane Claiborne, Brennan Manning, William Young, etc.

The Big Question for this huge congregation of 14 would be ... how many of these documents will that group be able to amass from their vast libraries or from the bookshelves of their alarmed neighbors? Or should this be more properly regarded as a Wish List?

Nothing sez "Prince o' Peace" like a book burning!

(Incidentally, the Pastor's website is a veritable smorgasbord of Christian dee-lites, though the hyperbolic, screaming colors may induce corneal searing.)

The Christian Persecution Rag

The Christian Right likes nothing better than feelings of persecution. Being reviled is like the Union label. Anything that proves Christians are a struggling, Godly minority always in imminent danger of being rounded up out of their million-dollar mega-churches and fed to the lions of secularism ... that absolutely turns 'em on.

So Michael Spencer's "The Coming Evangelical Collapse" in today's Christian Science Monitor will tickle that itch of the Christian Right for technicolor apocalyptic futures and the longed-for coming of the Antichrist. Yeah, verily.

Spencer sees a rolling blood-dyed tide of anti-Christianity ahead, churches deserted and empty, pastors of former thousands begging on street corners, animal sacrifice practiced in the Supreme Court, burnings at the stake ... yadda, yadda, yadda.

Spencer sees all the hyped up fictional persecution as the price to be paid for the Christian Right's decision three decades ago to sell themselves to the political goals of the Republican Party: "Evangelicals will increasingly be seen as a threat to cultural progress. Public leaders will consider us bad for America, bad for education, bad for children, and bad for society."

If you're prone to this sort of delicious fantasy persecution-envy, you can go wallow as you please.

Young Evangelicals and the Wandering Eye

Lengthy, in-depth profile in today's WashPost of "a growing group of young born-again Christians" who are questioning the received faith that no evangelical can be a Democrat, much less vote for a Democrat.

Questioning the iron-clad assumptions (prejudices?) of their fathers' generation seems epidemic among today's young believers, particularly considering where the old faith in George W. Bush has landed the nation.

One of the young Christians interviewed for the article said, "...if Republicans can develop an aggressive platform on issues like poverty and the environment, they can reverse the erosion of their evangelical base."

Big IF, that. It's just not a part of Republican DNA to actually follow Christ, to sup with beggars and prostitutes (unless someone else is paying). So much easier to play the pharisee and point the finger at bad people's sins and thank God loudly that they are not as other men are.

One of the Least of These My Brother

The Matthew 25 Network -- "a community of Christians -- Catholic, Protestant, Pentecostal, and Evangelical -- inspired by the Gospel mandate to put our faith into action to care for our neighbor, especially the most vulnerable" -- has filed papers as a Federal Political Action Committee (PAC) "that works to elect and promote candidates who share our values through grassroots mobilization, raising our voices in the media, and paid advertising."

Matthew 25 Network has endorsed Barack Obama and is raising money for advertising on Christian radio.

They'll dealing with the lies about Obama, particularly popular among some congregations, by launching their own truth squad website ... putawayfalsehood.com.

Well, they're obviously going to hell on jet skis.