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Both Reverend and Pastor leverage their official religious affilliations
to enhance the legitimacy of their political positions. There are plenty
of slick hustlers out there who cynically use religion to advance their
interests, but typical Reverends and Pastors are excruciatingly sincere.
It was once fairly easy to identify Pastor by his strong southern accent,
but this distinguishing feature is no longer as reliable as it once was.
Nonetheless, there are striking differences. One of the most important
of which is that unless he is invoking God to shore up his arguments Reverend
seldom mentions religion, while Pastor blathers loudly about his faith
at every opportunity. More generally, the chief difference between the
two is that Reverend uses religion to advance his politics; Pastor uses
politics to advance his religion.
Besotted by their own pieties and laboring under astonishingly simple-minded
conceits about social, economic and geopolitical realities, Reverend and
Pastor feel an overwhelming imperative to share their revelations. Reverend
believes that his spirituality endows him with a special sensitivity to
human suffering and injustice, so he self-righteously badgers government
and plumps for progressive causes under the rubric of working for social
justice. Pastor, on the other hand, claims to have a personal relationship
with God, Who has apparently commanded him to constantly hector everyone
about moral rectitude, cultural decadence and the need for religion to
inform public policy.
Democrats embrace Reverend because he shares their affectation of possessing
a superior sense of social conscience, as well as their fetish for being
compassionately non-judgmental (except, of course, when denouncing Republicans
and the United States). Republicans cleave to Pastor because of his obsessive
attachment to a sentimental view of individual responsibility, his dogmatic
moral rigidity and his jingoistic patriotism.
In either case, Reverend and Pastor’s overwhelming sense or moral
superiority emboldens them to take absurdly absolutist positions. For
example, Reverend is so convinced of pacifism’s moral correctitude
that he would violently protest the National Guard’s use of bazookas
if waves of bloodthirsty Canadian tank battalions stormed into Minnesota
and began shelling Duluth.
On the other hand, Pastor, ever vigilant against the encroachments of
evil, routinely demands that schools ban Harry Potter books and Halloween
celebrations because they glorify the Devil and witchcraft (no, I’m
not kidding).
Reverend and Pastor are unshakeable in their beliefs and are therefore
almost impossible to defeat in battle, but they are not powerful Warriors
because they rely on faith or a vague spirituality instead of well-developed
arguments . They are, however, accomplished at wielding guilt in battle,
but many Warriors are not particularly vulnerable to this weapon. When
confronted by a skeptical and aggressive opponent both Reverend and Pastor
usually curl up into the defensive posture of; “Forgive them Father,
for they know not what they do”.
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