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.
I saw this last night. It was encouraging, at least, to see that Mr. Kuo does express a desire for the government to do something to help the poor. From what I’ve heard from the religious right folks in Ohio, at least the leaders don’t seem to think that’s an area that civil government should focus on.
But the gay bashing thing, for extremist religious leaders, is huge
Yet Jesus, as I recall, did not have much to say about homosexuality.
No, that’s not quite true. Jesus said *nothing* about that issue, or any of the other “culture war” issues that are near and dear to the hearts of the religious right in America.
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.
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.
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