When the University of Mississippi Medical Center canceled an Easter service because its policy is to host health-related events, only, Fox’s Anna Kooiman insisted that an Easter service is health related.
Until today, I worried that Fox News had forgotten about the War on Easter. But thank God, Fox & Friends found an excuse for the faux outrage to flow!
As cohost Kooiman explained it, the university had agreed to lease its auditorium to a church for Easter services before changing its mind, saying that the event is “not health related and thus is not compliant with our policy.”
“You would expect this kind of thing to happen at, like, UC Berkley,” Fox News Radio’s Todd Starnes griped, “but we’re talking about the University of Mississippi here, for goodness sakes.”
According to Starnes, “The church was quite frankly flustered” because it had signed a contract with the university in January and “everything was just fine until nine days ago” when the university announced it had made a mistake and said, “we’re only allowed to rent our facility to health related events.”
Starnes continued, “Now, that’s what they told me but what they told the pastor was, they insinuated that it had something to do with the fact that they were a church and they didn’t want to offend the state’s education board.”
Yes, God forbid a public university should be concerned about observing a separation between church and state!
According to Fox, the church was not upset about the policy but the late cancellation.
So Fox took holy umbrage on the church's behalf.
Kooiman gratuitously made it clear she sides with Jesus. “One other beef that I have with this medical center… is they say that it wasn’t a health-related event,” she began. “Well, last time I checked, your spirituality is part of your health. Being healthy is not just free of disease and injury, it’s being able to get good sleep, being low stress, talking to God.” I wonder if she’d feel that way if a Muslim group rented the auditorium for their services.
Starnes agreed. He said that in the film Killing Jesus, “I saw Jesus healing lots of folks.” He also noted that the Bible calls Jesus the “Great Physician” (to Christians).
“So I suspect if the church would have pressed on that issue, it would have been just fine,” Starnes concluded.
What’s next? Demanding doctors be taught Christian theology in medical school?
Matthew 9:12
Mark 2:17
Luke 4:23
Luke 5:31
Colossians 4:14 (this one, however, refers to Luke—not Jesus)
Apparently Todd is misunderstanding the verse that comes closest (Luke 4:23) wherein Jesus says “Ye will surely say unto me this proverb, Physician, heal thyself: whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in thy country.” (KJV) But, if you notice the context, Jesus is specifically using a PROVERB—that people would use the term as a metaphor. (For crying out loud, the man was a carpenter by trade. Who in their right mind would address a carpenter as a physician?)
