God-o-Meter recently posted video of John McCain backer Rev. Rod Parsley sermonizing against Islam as “an anti-Christ religion that intends, through violence, to conquer the world.” American Prospect reporter/Christian Right foe Sarah Posner says there’s another controversial side to Parsley, as a purveyor of the prosperity gospel:

…[a]s I delved deeper into Parsley, I found another insidious story to tell about the culture warrior who fancies his Center for Moral Clarity a successor to Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority. I found myself in the world of the Word of Faith, or prosperity gospel movement, a world in which televangelists live large in mansions they call parsonages and travel the globe in private jets, all off the donations of their credulous followers.
You’ve probably seen the prosperity gospel on television if you’ve surfed past the Trinity Broadcasting Network, where you could see Parsley, John Hagee, who also endorsed McCain, or Kenneth Copeland, who supported Mike Huckabee. Prosperity preachers tell their followers that if they “sow a seed” — in other words, donate to the televangelist — they will “reap a harvest,” or get a supernatural return on their investment. The promise of God’s blessing in return for lining the preachers’ pocket is the movement’s organizing principle, bolstered by promises that believers are “little gods” who possess “revelation knowledge” entitling them to ignore the media and academia, and the ability to positively confess things — that is, just say, “in the name of Jesus, that Cadillac is mine!”

God-o-Meter still thinks McCain’s ties to Parsley are too tenuous for detractors to make much hay out of. Ironically, McCain’s calling the reverend–who he does not seem to know very well–a “moral compass” and “spiritual guide” is one more testament to the senator’s clumsiness and unease with the Christian Right, which feeds his over eagerness to embrace willing but poorly-vetted Christian Right endorsers.

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