Golden Oldie: The Ultimate Contradiction-in-Terms: Right-wing Christianity

by: OpenLeft

Fri Dec 31, 2010 at 11:00

Glenn Beck and Jim Wallis got into this debate over the last few days, and because Jim actually knows something about the Bible, he easily won the debate. Beck's classic conspiracy-minded starting point- that because both Nazis and Communists have used the phrase "social justice", that any religion that uses the term must be bad too- has a similar logic to saying that if a really bad teacher said two plus two equals four, because he or she was a bad teacher it must be false. Or saying that if a politician you don't like says "God Bless America", then any politician who says that is terrible. But leaving aside Beck's incredibly stupid logic, the point he makes about "social justice" is in keeping with conservative ideology: it is all about a self-focused view of religion and politics that, like Beck's ideological hero Ayn Rand, proclaims selfishness as the ultimate virtue.

Conservative Christians manage to ignore the literally many hundreds of Biblical quotes about social justice by making Christianity a religion solely focused on one very selfish goal: whether they get into heaven or not. That's it, that is the entire goal and purpose and meaning of their faith. And because St. Paul argued that faith is more important than "works" (what you do good in the world), they think that believing a certain doctrine is the only thing that matters in terms of whether you make it into heaven or not. Since everything is about getting themselves to heaven, and the Earth will be destroyed soon in Armageddon anyway, nothing that happens here matters very much. The one thing that matters to their God is having more people worship Him, so they try to convert people, but all that other stuff Jesus and the Old Testament prophets and Moses and James and all those other folks in the Bible talked about in terms of kindness, mercy, forgiving debts, being your brother's keeper, helping the poor, and all that other liberal socialistic stuff just isn't much of a priority to them compared to: me getting to heaven, and (second most important) converting others to my God. These so-called "Christian" conservatives live in a state of paranoia that somewhere, somehow some dollar of their taxes might go to some undeserving poor person, ignoring the fact that Jesus' entire ministry was targeted to the "undeserving" poor.

Not all Christians think this way, of course. There is another kind of thinking about the Christian faith: one that actually takes what's written in the Bible (beyond the Book of Revelations) seriously. The Jewish Torah (for Christians, that's their Old Testament) and the Christian New Testament have a wide variety of ideas and voices in their pages. Written by scores of authors over a span of probably a couple thousand years, one of the things I love about the Bible is the wide range of beliefs and perspectives within it. A lot of fundamentalists are desperate to find ways to explain away the contradictions in the Bible, because they believe every word is inspired by God and it's all literally true, but in fact the authors of the Bible disagree on both the details of what actually happened and the interpretation and philosophy behind the events they write about. If you take the Bible seriously, you see the debates and differing perspectives. Some Biblical writers were more conservative in their thinking, and some were more progressive. But the most consistent and enduring theme that runs through virtually every book in the Bible is that we are expected to love and be kind to our neighbors, especially the poor, hurting, and oppressed of the earth.

From the God of Genesis punishing Cain for not being his brother's keeper to Nathan the prophet rebuking King David for taking from the poor; from the Psalms that over and over proclaim the need to help the poor, and condemn those who judges, government officials, and wealthy people who mistreat them, from the prophets like Isaiah and Amos who  deride those who engage in ritual sacrifice while refusing to help the oppressed (Isaiah I: "Cease to do evil. Learn to do good, search for justice, help the oppressed, be just to the orphan, plead for the widow.") to Jesus very first sermon proclaiming that he had come to "bring good news to the poor" and "liberty to the captives"- virtually every book of the Bible demands justice and mercy and community.

People who take the Bible seriously and respect its words, as opposed to being obsessed with whether they personally will get into heaven by following a certain kind of dogma, understand that community and compassion are in fact far more central to it than any specific metaphysical belief system. And that is what the Pat Robertsons, Glenn Becks, Sarah Palins, and the other false prophets of conservatism don't understand.

That Old Time Religion

by: Mike Lux

Wed Dec 22, 2010 at 16:30

I stopped thinking or worrying much about whether there was a God about 35 years ago, when I was in high school. Once I realized that there was no way to be sure what the answers were to whether God existed, whether there was an afterlife and what kind it might be, whether there was a soul and what that meant, and all those other metaphysical issues, I stopped worrying about it much. I figured if God was the jealous, hot-tempered, unpredictable, sometimes even genocidal God of much of the Old Testament, I was screwed anyway: I have never been very good with that kind of authority figure. And I figured if I had to guess right as to which of the many religious dogmas that claimed to be the only path to salvation, my odds really sucked and I wouldn't make the cut anyway.

However, I did come away from my upbringing with certain core beliefs still intact. The moral teachings of the Jesus of the Gospels have never left me: treating others as I would wish to be treated; loving mercy and kindness and compassion toward those weaker and more vulnerable than I; being generally non-judgmental toward others, but caring passionately about justice. And I was raised to believe that at the end of my days, I would ultimately be judged by how I treated the poorest and most desperate among us: whether I fed the hungry, whether I gave thirsty water to drink, whether I clothed the naked, whether I gave shelter to the homeless, whether I helped those in prison and welcomed the stranger. That belief has never left me, although the judgment I expect does not necessarily come from God, but from my own sense of self worth and from the people I know.

I come out of my upbringing with the sense that something binds us humans together spiritually, with the feeling that we are something more holy than just a bucket of bolts. The humanity we share feels deeper than just a common ancestor 5,000,000 or so years back. I don't know what that common connection is, whether a godly creator, a universal soul, a collective memory as Carl Jung described it, a "force that flows through all things" as George Lucas described it, or something else. So maybe I do believe in some form of God after all, although I sure don't understand what it might be. I do still like to get into all those theological arguments back home, and I think if there is a god(s), he/she/it/they must have made us so we argue constantly about the existence of one mostly for its own enjoyment. I do some theological debating via email with a very conservative, very Christian nephew, and the way I put it to him recently was this:

This arguing back and forth is always interesting and enjoyable.  But again, argument is all it can ever be, because the world of spirituality, of the soul, of God if he exists, is unknowable.  However, in a sense, I do have faith, in the way the Greek word for faith is originally meant: trust.  I trust there is a spiritual force in the world greater than myself, but I don't invest a dogma with that trust, I don't claim to understand what it all means.  I have trust in something greater than myself, but I have doubt at the same time, because I don't claim knowledge or certainty about the unseen.

In my view, the Bible from its very beginning never had a single message.  When its editors started to put together various books and oral traditions into a scripture, they happily and intentionally included different stories and different visions of God, sometimes literally side by side as in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2.  And in those early days, writers and editors are known to have edited heavily, written new things to fit the political and spiritual needs of the times, and given entire new meanings and interpretations to the stories.  These different visions and ideas and philosophies and interpretations made the Bible more holy in my view, not less.  The fact that God casually walked among us in some parts of the Bible, and could not be seen or spoken to in another; that faith was more essential to Paul but works were more essential to James; that man was created before the animals and plants in one version of Genesis, and after in another; that Jesus was in utter despair on the cross in one story but peaceful and accepting in another:  these variations and contradictions make the Bible all the more beautiful to me because they show the writers were wrestling with their beliefs about God.  There was no dogma that all must follow; there were debates and ideas about what God was and intended all in the same scripture.

And so the debate goes on.  We are meant to struggle with it.  We are meant to wrestle with it.  We become holier when we do so.  At the end of the day, I have faith that what we believe has nothing to do with our soul's fate, unless that belief leads us to evil acts.  Faith is not dogma or doctrine, it is trust in a spirit of goodness that we all have access to.  And if we love our neighbor as ourselves, if we treat others as we would wish to be treated, if we love mercy and kindness, if we treat the least of these as if they were Jesus himself, we can come to the end of our days knowing that we have lived with grace and go happily to our resting place.  

So that's my quasi-religious, somewhat-agnostic Christmas message. Let the debate go on, as long as us humans exist, but hopefully we can do it in a way where we aren't killing and condemning each other while argue. And hopefully, when we stop debating and start acting, we can embrace a community where we look out for each other in a way where the weak and the ill and the hungry and the stranger are welcomed into that community as brothers and sisters.

Have a great holiday season and a good new year.

U.S. Government Witness Testifies Gitmo Prisoner's Religiosity Makes Him Dangerous

by: Daphne Eviatar Human Rights 1st

Wed Oct 27, 2010 at 17:50

In testimony Tuesday afternoon that literally had my jaw dropping, a forensic psychiatrist called by the U.S. government testified that Omar Khadr, the Canadian who Monday pled guilty to a slew of terrorist acts including murder, is too dangerous to be released because he is sincerely religious and became even more devout at the Guantanamo Bay prison.

Sex and social justice

by: Mike Lux

Mon Sep 20, 2010 at 12:00

I found 19 verses in the gospels where Jesus mentions divorce, which he was against. At that time in Jewish culture, men were quite cavalier about divorcing their wives, leaving them deserted in abject poverty (women of the time had little in the way of economic or civil rights) frequently with little prospects for remarriage, and Jesus was appalled at that idea, and so spoke out against divorce. His focus in these passages was not about the sex part, and was focused on marriage as an institution.

I found 9 verses which specifically referenced adultery and/or fornication. Three of these verses listed one or both on a long list of sins he was mentioning on his way to another point- for example, in Matthew he is discussing the idea that what makes you a sinner is at least as much about what is in your heart than what you do. The final six verses mentioning sexual morality were in the long (29 verse) section of Matthew where he again talked about how we should not just obey the laws but hold ourselves to a higher standard of personal morality, and he used several examples including murder, violence, lying, loving others, and adultery (the famous lusting in your heart verses which Christine O'Donnell was so eloquent about). That's it in terms of Jesus' worries about sex-related sinning- 4 mentions, all of them in the context of explaining a much bigger point he was making about how what's inside matters as much as whether you obey specific laws in the Jewish scripture.

Now, let's compare those to the social justice areas of the Gospel, which I think of as where Jesus talks about showing mercy to those weaker than us, not judging others, loving/forgiving/turning the other cheek to our enemies, forgiving enemies/blessing peacemakers in general, loving/treating others as we would ourselves, and what I would call the class warrior verses (the blessed are the poor/woe to the rich sections). Here are the numbers for these kinds of verses:

• Mercy to those weaker: 24 verses

• Do not judge others: 34 verses

• Love and forgive your enemies/make peace: 53 verses

• Loving your neighbors (defined as all other people, not just those who live next door) and treating them as you would treat yourself: 19 verses

• Help the poor/the rich should sell all their possessions and  them away: 128 verses

All told, that is 258 verses about mercy, forgiving enemies, not judging others, loving all people, helping the poor and woe to the wealthy vs 9 verses which mention adultery or fornication in any way, and 19 more saying divorce isn't good. Oddly enough, Jesus didn't say a single word against homosexuality or masturbation or abortion or birth control, although if you listened to some of our conservative friends, you would think he was obsessed with those topics.
Those ratios are pretty daunting. About 14 to 1 on class war vs. sex. Almost four to 1 on just the simple idea of not judging others as compared to all the mentions of sex sins. If you combine all the things Jesus said about sex and divorce, and compare it to all the stuff he said about helping the poor and how the rich should give away everything they own, you get close to a five to 1. And if you combine all the stuff about sex and divorce vs all the stuff about social justice, it's more than to 9 to 1 in favor of us social justice lefty types.

Of course, 2,000 years after Jesus lived and preached, we can't know for sure how much he said or cared about these issues. All the evidence we have of his life and ministry are those four gospels, written probably 40-60 years after his death by fervent believers who didn't always agree with each other on the details of his life, death, and ministry. But what is obvious from the gospels is that the Jesus of the Bible preached and cared overwhelmingly about just two things: his followers' relationship with God, and their love and kindness toward others, especially the weak and the poor.

Why is this important to our modern society today? Because conservatives try so hard to twist the religion of the majority of Americans into a warped, unrecognizable version of the message its founder had for us.

At least conservatives like Ayn Rand were honest in their disdain for religious pieties about compassion and helping the weak. Those of you conservatives who are trying so hard to wrap yourselves in the Bible ought to try actually reading one someday.  

Getting real about religious bigotry

by: Mike Lux

Wed Sep 08, 2010 at 14:30

Religious politics has been in the news quite a lot lately between the blatant Muslim bigotry being practiced by Gingrich, FOX News, and their crew regarding the NYC community center site, the outrageous Koran burning being planned by the church in Florida, and the Glenn Beck pro-theocracy rally on the Mall last week. Here's a classic quote from this weekend by a tea party organizer named Geoff Ross that sums up a lot of the sentiment of the anti-Islam people out there:

I'm not anti-Islam, I'm anti-terrorist. But if you take quotes from the Bible and compare them to the Koran, the Bible might say "turn the other cheek" while the Koran would say "strike your enemies down and kill them.

I love quotes like this one, which show no knowledge at all of either the Koran or the Judeo-Christian Bible. My apologies to my religious friends of all faith traditions, but let's be honest: every religious scripture has lots of questionable quotations and ideas in it. They all have a lot of good in them, teachings about morality and generosity and mercy and kindness, beautiful ideas and poetry and stories, but they all have what theologians technically refer to as icky stuff as well. To take one of Jesus' gentlest quotes and line it up next to one of the Koran's most violent isn't what you would call, well, kosher.

Let me just remind Mr. Ross and all of the other Islam-is-so-violent bigots about the Bible I grew up reading. After I saw Mr. Ross' quote, I went to my Bible and proceeded to look it up to make sure my memory was right: I count no less than 15 different chapters of the Bible where God either orders, blesses, or Himself commits the mass slaughter of innocents, including children. On several different occasions, God says that his warriors may not spare the life of any living creature in towns being attacked. Once, when a king of Israel (Saul) disobeyed an order to "make war on [your enemies] until they are exterminated" and showed a small bit of mercy, God was angered and rejected Saul as king of Israel. In the Exodus story, as you may remember, Pharaoh was ready to cave and let the Israelites go multiple times, but God "hardened his heart" so that God could show He was powerful enough to kill off all the first-born Egyptian children, including even the children of slave girls. In the book of Numbers, God demanded the slaughter of 60,000 men, women, and children for the crime of interracial marriage. In the book of Joshua, God mandated that Joshua kill every man, woman, and child in at least 11 different towns so that they could take the land of the people who lived there. In the book of Genesis, Abraham actually tries to talk God out of slaughtering every man, woman and child in a couple of towns because there might have been some good people there, and God decides to do it anyway.

Look, I don't recite these passages because I think the Jewish or Christian religions are bad. I think these religions have a great deal of good in them, and I love and honor the Christian faith tradition I grew up in. The Old Testament prophets, Moses, Jesus, and other Biblical figures were great moral teachers. The Bible has profound passages about morality and justice, kindness and mercy, charity and equal rights for the poor and oppressed. It has stirring poetry and powerful stories about good and bad; it has beautiful discussions of philosophy and the nature of humans and God and their role in creation. But the Bible of Jews and Christians, along with the Koran, has passages of violence and injustice, stories that would make any moral person question the God portrayed in those pages. Similarly, the Koran has some violent passages in it, but it also has teachings of great morality and beauty.

I love the Judeo-Christian Bible, but part of what I love is the complexity of the stories in its pages. The debate in its pages, the conflicting ideas about the nature of God, the goodness of God, the relationship between God and humans, is worth the read. But it's not all pretty. To say the Koran promotes terrorism because of the violent passages in the Koran is as wrong as saying the Jewish and Christian faiths are all evil because the way God is sometimes portrayed in their Bible sometimes gets a little nasty. The people spreading religious bigotry in our country are doing us all a disservice, not the least of which is threatening our own national security by helping the Muslims who practice terrorism to spread their anti-American message.

Jesus once suggested that before his disciples obsess about the speck in their brother's eye that maybe they should focus on the log in their own. When it comes to religious bigotry, that seems like pretty good advice to me.

Glenn Beck's world

by: Mike Lux

Tue Aug 31, 2010 at 13:30

One interesting thing about the trip was that I heard not a single word about the Glenn Beck rally in his political heartland down south. I like to chat people up on all my trips in the convenience stores and small-town cafes, hear what's on everyone's minds. Everyone is talking about how tough the economy is, and of course I heard some random comments about government and deficits being a problem. I heard some random comments about health care with some folks leery of the new bill. But the only people the whole trip who mentioned Beck's rally were a couple of liberal family members who came in for the wedding and were being driven nuts by it. That's not to suggest Beck doesn't have his disciples here, of course he does, and I'm sure I would have found more of them if I'd stopped at those gun shops we drove by, or went to the Church of Christ my sister's family goes to in Tennessee. For most of the folks I was talking to, though, politics is a worry and an irritant, far less important in their daily lives than just trying to make it in this distressed economy. They feel like politics and politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike, have let them down and don't care very much about them. They think, with some reason, that Washington cares a lot more about the wealthy and powerful special interests than it does them.

That is not to say that the rabid right-wing leaders such as Beck aren't important. They are on a mission to define the terms of our political debate, and shape how people view our politics, culture and history- and that is big stuff. Who controls and shapes the contours of our country's debate and dialogue usually wins most of the nation's political battles. Beck is an interesting figure because in spite of his over-the-top emotional appeals and his playing to the anti-intellectual crowd, he totally gets how important it is to create a historical narrative, to have a political philosophy that transcends whatever the battle of the moment is. I have been struck by his willingness to attack historically well-regarded people like Teddy Roosevelt, and to lift up obscure and even widely discredited figures like Calvin Coolidge. Getting the history defined through his ideological prism is a major priority for him.

Added to that is his obsession with defining the Christian religion in the "right" way for his purposes. His depiction of Obama as believing in liberation theology is of course very politically convenient, as it sounds vaguely Communistic and people-of-color oriented, but it also speaks to Beck's bigger obsession: Beck understands that if all those church-going conservatives actually read the Bible and take it so seriously, or read their history and think about its lessons, it will be impossible to keep them in the conservative fold. All the folks that Beck quotes with such fervor- Paine, Jefferson, Lincoln, King, and the Jesus of the Gospels- believed in the opposite of what he is advocating, and I think he knows it. Beck's philosophy celebrates the Ayn Rand belief that selfishness is a positive good and compassion is a leech on society. He happily promotes the idea that the "lions eat the weak" and is not only comfortable with but delights in the idea that the "undeserving" poor will suffer. That is not what Paine, Jefferson, Lincoln, King, and Jesus believed, and I suspect that Beck actually knows that, and associates himself all the tighter with them to distract people from reading their actual words. Beck attacks poor immigrants, and Jesus said we should welcome the stranger. Jefferson and Lincoln believed our country should be founded on the cornerstone of equality, Beck says we need to reclaim our country from civil rights supporters. Over two hundred years ago, Paine proposed a social security system, progressive taxation, and a safety net for the poor, while Beck wants to roll back everything we have achieved on those issues. King said that our fates are "inextricably linked in a garment of destiny" and said one of our worst sins is when we fail to realize our dependence on others, while Beck rails against collectivism and community. Jesus said we would be judged on how we treated the least of these, Beck says we should let the least of these suffer because they aren't deserving.

King believed that not only the civil rights movement but the broader progressive movement as well had as its mission to "save the soul of America". Today, the soul of America is very much in a pitched battle. If Beck's philosophy prevails, a country founded in the ideals of equality and community will become a country that cheers the cruelty of the lions eating the weak. Progressives need to understand the stakes of this battle.  

Gestures, Mosques, and Peace Talks: Interview with Professor Marc Gopin

by: SumofChange

Mon Aug 23, 2010 at 17:23

Professor Marc Gopin is the Director at the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy, and Conflict Resolution (CRDC) with the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University. You can follow his work by visiting www.MarcGopin.com. He has focused a lot of his work around interfaith conflict resolution, which is why we asked to speak with him about the controversy over the proposed construction of the Cordoba Mosque in lower Manhattan. Right after we scheduled the interview, news broke that peace talks among Israel, Palestine, and the United States would resume in September. This is an issue that Professor Gopin has been deeply involved with for a very long time now, so we included that in our line of questioning.

Highlight clips with partial transcripts and the full 40-minute interview below the fold...

On Saving Us From The Immoral, Or "Ready, Fire...Aim!"

by: fake consultant

Thu Aug 19, 2010 at 18:05

A couple of days later, I had a story up that walked through the ruling, describing the tactics used by the Prop 8 proponents, which, in the opinion of the Judge who looked at the evidence, were basically to try to scare Californians into thinking that gay people, once they're able to get gay married, will somehow now be free to evangelize your kids and make them gay, too.

In the course of answering comments on the several sites where the story is up, I noticed that there were those who felt the Bible should be guiding our thinking here...that if it did, we would be better off than where we are today, with all those immoral gay people running around free to do all those immoral gay things.

This led me to an obvious question: are those who have been using the Bible as a sort of "divining rod" to figure out who is immoral and who is not...actually any good at it?

The Conservative Pope and the Secular Media

by: Inoljt

Mon Aug 16, 2010 at 20:38

Over the past few weeks, the Catholic Church has found itself mired in controversy, plagued by an ever-growing sexual abuse scandal unfolding in Europe. The pope himself has come under substantial criticism, to such an extent that a leading German magazine titled a report, "The Failed Papacy of Benedict XVI."

Yet the media's growing chorus of criticism reveals as much about itself as it does about the mishaps of Pope Benedict XVI. It reveals much about how the media thinks about itself, and about the media's worldview of what society ought to be like.

More below.

The Conservative Pope and the Secular Media

by: Inoljt

Tue Apr 20, 2010 at 15:01

Over the past few weeks, the Catholic Church has found itself mired in controversy, plagued by an ever-growing sexual abuse scandal unfolding in Europe. The pope himself has come under substantial criticism, to such an extent that a leading German magazine titled a report, "The Failed Papacy of Benedict XVI."

Yet the media's growing chorus of criticism reveals as much about itself as it does about the mishaps of Pope Benedict XVI. It reveals much about how the media thinks about itself, and about the media's worldview of what society ought to be like.

Historically, the Catholic Church and the Western media have always had moments of tension. The two are almost naturally at odds; their philosophical foundations constitute polar opposites. The church is fundamentally a conservative institution, hierarchy-bound and traditional. It embodies a force - religion - which often works in a conservative direction.

The modern Western media could not be more different from this.

More below.

The Ultimate Contradiction-in-Terms: Right-wing Christianity

by: Mike Lux

Mon Mar 15, 2010 at 13:30

Glenn Beck and Jim Wallis got into this debate over the last few days, and because Jim actually knows something about the Bible, he easily won the debate. Beck's classic conspiracy-minded starting point- that because both Nazis and Communists have used the phrase "social justice", that any religion that uses the term must be bad too- has a similar logic to saying that if a really bad teacher said two plus two equals four, because he or she was a bad teacher it must be false. Or saying that if a politician you don't like says "God Bless America", then any politician who says that is terrible. But leaving aside Beck's incredibly stupid logic, the point he makes about "social justice" is in keeping with conservative ideology: it is all about a self-focused view of religion and politics that, like Beck's ideological hero Ayn Rand, proclaims selfishness as the ultimate virtue.

Conservative Christians manage to ignore the literally many hundreds of Biblical quotes about social justice by making Christianity a religion solely focused on one very selfish goal: whether they get into heaven or not. That's it, that is the entire goal and purpose and meaning of their faith. And because St. Paul argued that faith is more important than "works" (what you do good in the world), they think that believing a certain doctrine is the only thing that matters in terms of whether you make it into heaven or not. Since everything is about getting themselves to heaven, and the Earth will be destroyed soon in Armageddon anyway, nothing that happens here matters very much. The one thing that matters to their God is having more people worship Him, so they try to convert people, but all that other stuff Jesus and the Old Testament prophets and Moses and James and all those other folks in the Bible talked about in terms of kindness, mercy, forgiving debts, being your brother's keeper, helping the poor, and all that other liberal socialistic stuff just isn't much of a priority to them compared to: me getting to heaven, and (second most important) converting others to my God. These so-called "Christian" conservatives live in a state of paranoia that somewhere, somehow some dollar of their taxes might go to some undeserving poor person, ignoring the fact that Jesus' entire ministry was targeted to the "undeserving" poor.

Not all Christians think this way, of course. There is another kind of thinking about the Christian faith: one that actually takes what's written in the Bible (beyond the Book of Revelations) seriously. The Jewish Torah (for Christians, that's their Old Testament) and the Christian New Testament have a wide variety of ideas and voices in their pages. Written by scores of authors over a span of probably a couple thousand years, one of the things I love about the Bible is the wide range of beliefs and perspectives within it. A lot of fundamentalists are desperate to find ways to explain away the contradictions in the Bible, because they believe every word is inspired by God and it's all literally true, but in fact the authors of the Bible disagree on both the details of what actually happened and the interpretation and philosophy behind the events they write about. If you take the Bible seriously, you see the debates and differing perspectives. Some Biblical writers were more conservative in their thinking, and some were more progressive. But the most consistent and enduring theme that runs through virtually every book in the Bible is that we are expected to love and be kind to our neighbors, especially the poor, hurting, and oppressed of the earth.

From the God of Genesis punishing Cain for not being his brother's keeper to Nathan the prophet rebuking King David for taking from the poor; from the Psalms that over and over proclaim the need to help the poor, and condemn those who judges, government officials, and wealthy people who mistreat them, from the prophets like Isaiah and Amos who  deride those who engage in ritual sacrifice while refusing to help the oppressed (Isaiah I: "Cease to do evil. Learn to do good, search for justice, help the oppressed, be just to the orphan, plead for the widow.") to Jesus very first sermon proclaiming that he had come to "bring good news to the poor" and "liberty to the captives"- virtually every book of the Bible demands justice and mercy and community.

People who take the Bible seriously and respect its words, as opposed to being obsessed with whether they personally will get into heaven by following a certain kind of dogma, understand that community and compassion are in fact far more central to it than any specific metaphysical belief system. And that is what the Pat Robertsons, Glenn Becks, Sarah Palins, and the other false prophets of conservatism don't understand.

Being interfaithful in Colorado

by: Mike Lux

Fri Jan 08, 2010 at 18:31

Taxes: An Investment in the Common Good

A Public Forum Presented by
The Interfaith Alliance of Colorado

Sunday, January 24, 2010
2:00 - 5:00 PM

Cameron United Methodist Church
1600 S. Pearl St.
Denver, CO 80210

The forum will address Colorado's budget crisis and consider potential solutions to build a more sustainable, financially-healthy state that meets the needs of all Coloradans.

Panelists  will  include:

Don Childears
President, Colorado Bankers Association

Moderator:  Carol Hedges
Senior Policy Analyst,
Colorado Fiscal Policy Institute

Michael Lux
Author, The Progressive Revolution

Rep. Ellen Roberts (R)
House District 59, Durango

Rev. Dr. David Trickett
President, Iliff School of Theology

Sue Windels
Board Member, Great Education Colorado

The forum is free and open to the public. Light refreshments and conversation will follow a question period.

Why Republicans Should Be Really, Really Scared

by: dreaminonempty

Fri Nov 13, 2009 at 08:00

Click to enlarge.

2008 Electorate: Appalachia - Surprisingly Democratic

by: dreaminonempty

Thu Nov 12, 2009 at 08:00

Here's the example from yesterday:  

Click to enlarge.

If all of Central Appalachia behaved like the rest of the region, we'd expect to see all the points scattered near the line in the graph above.  Instead, the points representing counties in parts of Appalachia go soaring off above 50%.

And Southern Appalachia does its own strange thing too.  More below.

The Bishop vs. The Grassroots

by: Adam Bink

Thu Oct 22, 2009 at 10:15

Since I've arrived in Maine, I've spent a good deal of time exploring people of faith, their reaction to same-sex marriage, and involvement in the No on 1 campaign. I wrote previously about Bishop Gene Robinson and his framing of religion and same-sex marriage here, and about supportive religious communities here.

Today I want to talk about the Bishop of the Catholic Diocese here, his involvement in the issue- which has become something of a flashpoint here in Maine- and the backlash and response to it in the grassroots.

Full story on the flip.