#1496: Mark Creech

Rev. Mark Creech is “Executive Director of the Christian Action League of North Carolina, Inc.” and a raging fundie. He has also been given the opportunity to write columns on politics for RenewAmerica, where he for instance argues against the separation of church and state with such mindnumbingly stupid misunderstandings and strawmen – also, fake Founding Father quotes from David Barton – that it must count as borderline “original”, even for RenewAmerica: Basically, the idea of freedom of religion pushed by the ACLU and others jeopardizes America’s other basic freedoms, the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, and freedom from the abuses of government, by trying to ban people from letting their moral convictions influence voting behavior. Yeah, you’d like to see that argument. Here it is (no, I don’t link to the original).

Creech is very concerned with liberty in general. That’s why was very much in favor of an NC provision eliminating early voting on Sundays (as a rather obvious attempt to make it harder for certain groups to vote). You see, Creech has “always opposed voting on Sunday for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that Sunday is the church’s prime time for developing the character of a nation;” indeed, Sunday voting imperils our freedom because “it is a Sunday-cultivated character that makes an electorate fit to guard and preserve its liberties.” One wonders what those other “reasons” hinted at may be.

That should give you an idea of the reasoning skills and tortured logic of Mark Creech. So, when he applies those same skills to, say, evolution you can sort of imagine the results. After Bill Nye’s 2014 debate with Ken Ham, even Pat Robertson denounced the abject stupidity of young earth creationism, calling for fellow fundies to “not make a joke of ourselves.” Well, Creech … disagreed, praised Ham’s “arguments” and accused Robertson of blasphemy. Any science not explicitly supporting a literal interpretation of the Bible is wrong, blasphemous. The fact that Creech made Pat Robertson come across as the voice of reason here speaks for itself.

But mostly Creech is concerned about politics. And the gays, of course. Recent court rulings on gay marriage, for instance, has made him smell “the smoke of Sodom” (and “heartbroken”); they “will essentially destroy the nation if not reversed,” signal “God’s impending judgment,” and bring an end to opposite-sex marriages and America itself. LGBT-affirming churches are accordingly a traitorous, Satanic “fifth column” within the denomination. Most importantly, Obama is the antichrist; yes, he really is, and he will cause God to destroy America like he destroyed the Tower of Babel (in other words, you need to stop respecting gays, or else Creech’s volatile buddy God will beat you up) and thus usher in the end times, which is supposed to be a criticism – now, we thought fundies were looking forward to the end times, but we suppose Creech can’t help hating Obama either, so … well, Creech hasn’t been much bothered by inconsistencies before. When it comes to international politics, Creech has argued that “hunger is rampant in India” because their “false religion” makes people vegetarians.

Creech has also produced this gem, an interestingly confused rewriting of the Little Red Riding Hood tale as an attack on gay activism (it really is worth checking out).

Diagnosis: And rage trumps coherence yet again. We doubt that Creech has many fans who would have been reasonable, sane and civilized contributors to society if they hadn’t encountered him, but he does, appallingly enough, have his share of fans.