GOP’s abuse of the faithful

David Kuo, a former top official in the Bush Administration’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, has written a book called Tempting Faith that is extremely critical of the GOP and their manipulation of Christian voters. He was on 60 Minutes last night, and C&L has video and transcript.

Part of the problem, he says, was indifference from “the base,” the religious right. He took 60 Minutes to a convention of evangelical groups ? his old stomping ground – and walked around the display booths, looking for any reference to the poor.

“You?ve got homosexuality in your kid?s school, and you?ve got human cloning, and partial birth abortion and divorce and stem cell,” Kuo remarked. “Not a mention of the poor.”

“This message that has been sent out to Christians for a long time now: that Jesus came primarily for a political agenda, and recently primarily a right-wing political agenda – as if this culture war is a war for God. And it?s not a war for God, it?s a war for politics. And that?s a huge difference,” says Kuo.

When you mix God and politics, you taint both. Every time religion has been tied to the state in human history, the religion was changed, debased, by that association.