The So-Called-"Religious"-Right

I'm not sure if you read the commentary in the Sunday Statesman by former Lt. Gov. and state Senator Bill Ratliff, Before a vote, lawmakers should ask, 'What would Jesus do?'. Then today OffTheKuff linked to this article from the WaPo, A Religious Protest Largely From the Left. Both of them point to the fact that the so-called-"religious"-right (SCRR) thinks that all they have to focus on is abortion and tax cuts and can totally discount the least of their brothers. First from Bill Ratliff:

As opposed to the suggestion that we have too much religious influence on public policy, we actually have too little. Up to now, the application of religious principles in political debate has been mainly applied to abortion rights, same-sex marriage, intelligent design versus evolution and similar social issues.

But all too often, those Christians who take strong stands on such issues based on moral or biblical teachings do not then apply such teachings to other issues.

For instance, when considering how many poor children in Texas will be removed from the Children's Health Insurance Program in order to hold down costs to the state, they choose not to consider Christ's admonishment to "suffer the little children to come unto me."

Now from the WaPo:

"It's not a question of the poor not being important or that meeting their needs is not important," said Paul Hetrick, a spokesman for Focus on the Family, Dobson's influential, Colorado-based Christian organization. "But whether or not a baby is killed in the seventh or eighth month of pregnancy, that is less important than help for the poor? We would respectfully disagree with that."

That's an amazing quote. Here's the other side of the story:

Jim Wallis, editor of the liberal Christian journal Sojourners and an organizer of today's protest, was not buying it. Such conservative religious leaders "have agreed to support cutting food stamps for poor people if Republicans support them on judicial nominees," he said. "They are trading the lives of poor people for their agenda. They're being, and this is the worst insult, unbiblical."

This next qoute from the WaPo article shines a light on how the conservatives and the SCRR have come togehter around their mutual hate of government:

Dobson also has praised what he calls "pro-family tax cuts." And Janice Crouse, a senior fellow at the Christian group Concerned Women for America, said religious conservatives "know that the government is not really capable of love."

"You look to the government for justice, and you look to the church and individuals for mercy. I think Hurricane Katrina is a good example of that. FEMA just failed, and the church and the Salvation Army and corporations stepped in and met the need," she said.

FEMA failed Ms. Crouse because President Bush turned into a crony-led shell of what it was under Clinton. And they don't want the government to be responsible for helping people anymore. They don't believe the government ever did anything worthwhile. You know Socail Security, Medicare, Inspecting meat packing plants, the 40-hour work week, etc..

And this analysis from TAPPED:

The truth is that the leaders of this movement -- with Ralph Reed as the prime example -- have fallen in love with their role as political power brokers and have lost all sense of critical distance from the Republican Party and their own role in sustaining it in office.

If you want to read more on this go to The Stakeholder.