Jan Markell, an end-times preacher and longtime friend of Michele Bachmann, defended anti-Islam statements by Lynne Torgerson, Rep. Keith Ellison’s first announced challenger for the 2012 election. In late-June, Torgerson launched her campaign at Tea Party Nation by calling Ellison a “radical Islamist” who “fails to oppose banning Islamic Sharia law in the United States.” Ellison responded by accusing her of running a campaign “based on hate, division, and fear.” In an interview on Friday, Markell defended Torgerson.

She said that Ellison’s faith has made Minnesota conservatives uncomfortable.

“And it stems from his association with Islamic groups that are questionable, including organizations like [the] Council on American-Islamic Relations,” Markell told OneNewsNow. “But Torgerson has been asking Keith Ellison to make a bold statement that the U.S. Constitution trumps Sharia Law.”

In 2006, Ellison became the first Muslim elected to the U.S. House.

“I guess I wouldn’t say I’m not particularly proud of that, but I’m certainly not going to go to war over it either,” Markell said of Ellison’s accomplishment. “But Torgerson has every right to question Keith Ellison and not be charged with intolerance.”

The media outlet Markell spoke with, OneNewsNow, is run by the American Family Association, an organization the Southern Poverty Law Center has named a hate group.

Markell raised concerns in 2008 when a talking Mattel doll appeared to be spouting pro-Islam messages in its prerecorded babbling. Mattel insisted that the babbling was simply that — sounds that a baby might make.

Markell is not a stranger to bringing her end-times message to the political world. Bachmann has been a frequent guest on her radio show, including a 2009 appearance when she and Markell joked that conservative Christians had become the new Taliban.

Bachmann appeared on Markell’s radio many times in 2004 and 2005 to speak out against gays and lesbians, a theme that Markell has frequently discussed in addition to anti-Islam commentary.

Markell insinuated — as did many other conservative Christian leaders — that a tornado hit downtown Minneapolis in August 2009 because Lutherans had voted to allow gay and lesbian clergy in the church.

Torgerson ran against Ellison in 2010, garnering 3 percent to Ellison’s 69 percent.

Image: Glen, Flickr

Friday was historic for LGBT Americans as President Obama signed into law a hate crimes bill that includes sexual orientation and gender identity. But some among Minnesota’s religious right didn’t receive the news warmly, saying the law will bring the wrath of God down on America, that Obama is an “anti-Christian radical” and that the bill was a plot by “homosexuals” to silence Christians.

Bradlee Dean of You Can Run But You Cannot Hide ministries in Annandale, a group that brings its message of Christianity and morality into public high schools, slammed the passing of the hate crimes bill on his Saturday radio show, the School of Hard Knocks Roxxs. “If you grab the bull, you are going to get the horns. I want you to listen to me carefully,” he said. “America, as this is being passed again against the majority, I guarantee you that judgments are going to increase in our country… When you begin to pass laws against what God’s words say, God promises to turn that nation into hell that forgets him and if you want to go ahead play the Lord on a national level… Folks, just sit back because it’s only beginning right now.”

Dean repeatedly called gays and lesbians criminals, a familiar theme on his show. The bill, he said, is “there to protect the homosexuals that are perpetrating crimes against the righteous, and you need to understand that Obama’s calling for the decriminalization of homosexuality and he is calling for the criminalization — without saying it — of you.”

On gay marriage, he said, “So the homosexual communities are asking the government for help legalizing that which is illegal. They are also asking for a health care plan to help cure their AIDS from that same government that said it’s okay go ahead and do it.”

He continued, “Rest assured those ignorant homosexuals out there are working overtime to silence the dissent. They want to shut you up.”

Meanwhile, Jan Markell of the Maple Grove–based Olive Tree Ministries, condemned the bill on her popular “end times” radio show on AM 980 KKMS.

“I think that Christians who dare to tell the truth — including this program — about the social, moral, spiritual and health consequences of illicit homosexual acts are accused of hate speech and intimated into silence with threats of fines or jail,” she said. “I think this: The fact that the hate bill had to be passed in such an unscrupulous and cynical manner — which means attaching it to the Defense Authorization Act — reveals the depth of President Obama’s commitment to a radical anti-Christian agenda. I think he will stop at nothing to undermine the will of the majority of Americans to pay back militant homosexual activists who raised millions of dollars for him.”

She continued, “It shows the level of contempt President Obama has for the majority of Americans who oppose the homosexualization of marriage, the military and public education… We really have our work cut out for us.”

Although it has spoken out against the bill in the past, the Minnesota Family Council has been uncharacteristically silent on the bill’s passage and did not reply to a request from the Minnesota Independent. The group’s website says the bill will impose “fines or jail time if you publicly speak out against homosexual activity — even on moral or religious grounds — and a court determines your message might arouse people to hate homosexuals.”

Nationally, religious right leaders were livid. “Public school curriculum could be built entirely on the idea of what is illegal hate in our culture,” said Craig Parshall, chief counsel for National Religious Broadcasters (NRB). “And our children could be indoctrinated [to believe that] if you criticize another religion or mention Jesus as being the only way, that’s hateful— [or] if you say that homosexuality is a sin, that’s hateful.”

Family Research Council president Tony Perkins said the bill is “part of a radical social agenda that could ultimately silence Christians and use the force of government to marginalize anyone whose faith is at odds with homosexuality.”

Of course, what the religious right doesn’t mention is that religion has been covered by federal hate crimes law since its inception in the 1960.

Photo: Collegewolf

Minneapolis pastor John Piper seems to have sprouted the idea that God sent a tornado to the Minneapolis Convention Center last Wednesday to express his displeasure that the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America was considering relaxing its teachings on LGBT issues. But his statement has blossomed among theologians and members of the religious right chiming in with their own answers to the question: Did God send the Minneapolis tornado because Lutherans were voting on gay issues?

WordAlone, a group opposed to a welcoming church for LGBT Lutherans, wrote:

A supporter of the social statement typified the storm as a mighty wind of the Holy Spirit and as a positive message. Some WordAlone Network members heard a different message, a warning of God’s anger at the ELCA in the wind. The storm near the Minneapolis Convention Center probably led local news reports Wednesday evening, not the votes of the day at the convention center.

Jan Markell of Maple Grove-based Olive Tree Ministries, an “end-times ministry” asked, “Was God in the whirlwind?”

At this year’s convention, a blatant pro-homosexual position validating “chaste” same-sex relationships was to be voted on. It was to be voted on at 2 PM on Wednesday, August 19. Then for the first time in decades, a tornado touched down in downtown Minneapolis at, you guessed it, 2 pm.

While we have no final word from God as to whether He sent the tornado, we can observe how God treated rebellious people and nations throughout the Old Testament who would not turn away from sin. If God didn’t send the whirlwind, He did allow it. A holy God never approves of sanctioning sin and lifestyles that are destructive.

Monica Stutsman, a former ELCA member from Vergas, Minn., wrote in the Fergus Falls Journal:

The article on the website dismissed the wind saying it “did only minor damage” and “injured no one.” But don’t you wonder at the timing? It happened exactly when the discussions were going on. Surely God wouldn’t show His displeasure at the Assembly by using wind. Or would He?

Julia Duin, an ELCA delegate blogging for Christianity Today, pondered:

If God was speaking in downtown Minneapolis through the twister, no one was listening. In fact, proponents of ordaining openly gay clergy could have seen the exact two-thirds total as a vindication of their point of view. And, if God had wanted to get through to the assembly, why didn’t he send the tornado a day earlier so word would have gotten through to everyone?

Is it possible that God already knew the Lutherans were going to vote, so he ripped off the cross from the nearest ELCA to show what he thought? Or does he simply not leave his calling card in such dramatic ways? If last week’s events do not constitute God’s warning — or judgment — what does?

Matt Kaufman, a blogger for Focus on the Family, says he can’t be sure that Piper was right when he said God sent the tornado — but he probably wasn’t wrong.

I wouldn’t use the word “conclusion” — not because I think Piper’s wrong about this tornado, but because I don’t know that he’s right. That said, there’s no doubt we need the turn-from-sin warning Piper lays out. So let’s put it this way: God may have chosen an unusually dramatic means to convey it this time. But He certainly conveys it all the time in His Word.

But at least one pastor disagrees with the idea that God sent the tornado. Marty Duren, a Southern Baptist pastor in Georgia, took issue with Piper’s conclusion.

I have no trouble at all ascribing responsibility for the storm to God (even insurance companies did so for decades, though some now opt to term them “natural disasters”). I’m simply demonstrating the danger and seriousness with which those who claim in some capacity to speak for God, better be sure when assigning motives to Him. These types of attributions (including the wild claims of Pat Robertson over the years) open the doors for skeptics to point out the rightful contradictions in the way that we interpret events (“If a tornado bloweth upon the Lutherans, it is God; but, if a tree falleth on our house, it is an attack of Satan”). This inconsistency is a greater tool of the Evil One than any believer would care to admit.

Despite the weather, the social statement relaxing church teaching on homosexuality passed by exactly one vote. Two days later, under a sunny sky, the ELCA approved a measure to allow gay and lesbian clergy in committed relationships to serve the church.

“It isn’t that they don’t want to use the word ‘terrorism,’ it’s who they’re using this word against,” Bachmann told Markell last Tuesday, in reference to a Homeland Security report on rightwing extremism. “And as you had stated correctly, in this report — which I have read, it’s about a nine-page report I believe, if I recall correctly — the right-wing extremists report, they include people who believe in end-time prophecies, pro-life. It is appalling the people that they named.”

She continued, “People who don’t want government to be so large, they are on the list of potential terrorists… People need to realize that, truly, our freedoms are more at risk than they have been at any other time in recent history.”

The show description sarcastically refers to Christians as “the new Taliban”:

“Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and others, weigh in about the efforts to marginalize, silence and even persecute Christians by the new administration… Christians are clearly the new Taliban. What can we do to fight back? We are deemed ‘right-wing extremists’ while ‘left-wing extremists’ glorified.”

Hat tip: Dump Bachmann

“It does seem to be saying, ‘Islam is the light.’ I don’t think too many people would argue with that, so I think they’re being a little disingenuous,” Markell told OneNewsNow. “And this is not a healthy thing to be putting out in the marketplace when we’re in a war on terror, and little children are so susceptible to the messages they hear — even from a doll — then to take them into the school and talk about them. So yeah, this is a serious thing.”

Markell is a prominent Minnesota Christian radio host having had right-wing politicians, including Rep. Michele Bachmann, as regular guests on her show.

Mattel says the doll only says the word “mama” and the rest is baby babble, but they plan to reconfigure the babble sounds to ensure there are no misunderstandings.

Update: Here’s a few YouTube videos that include the offending audio:

more insideNow RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman is adding to the Pawlenty ’08 chatter.