The Political Left Gets Religion
And, Frankly, It Provides a Little Comedy to Watch the ‘Bridge-Builders’ Burn Them
By Matt Friedeman
July 28, 2005
(AgapePress) – The Party of the Left Wing, known best for its tax-increasing, huge-spending, pro-abortion sentiments, looked at the polls in the last election and noticed something big-time. First, seriously religious people vote. Two — they didn’t vote for the Left Wing.
“Fixable!” they thought. And then they schemed. Let’s start praying at meetings, mentioning people of faith in our speeches, and allowing Democrats to be pro-life if they really want (insults of the last three decades now to be overlooked).
And a website. Oh, yes, a website is always needed. So, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has hoisted his religious sentiments onto the worldwide web in hopes that the faithful will come along and join God-appreciating Democrats in vote-harvesting prayer down at the altar.
Check it out. It’s called “A Word to the Faithful.” There you will see a hand-holding prayer circle, Reid standing by lots of clergy collars, liberal after liberal behind pulpits and that great man of faith — John F. Kennedy — looking over Reid’s shoulder.
Thank you, Mr. Reid. On this site he shows what we already know: it is really business as usual with the Dems, they just want websurfers to know that pro-abortion, left-leaning politicians can be religious when they want to be, too.
The “bridge-building” aspect might take a little longer.
Mark Tooley of the Institute of Religion and Democracy reports on IRD’s website concerning the religious rhetoric of the Left. Urging a new “politics of meaning,” liberal Jewish activist and Bill and Hillary Clinton family friend Michael Lerner talks in a way that might not sway the religious right to his side anytime soon.
“In Europe they [the Right] turned against the Jews,” Lerner declared to a Conference on Spiritual Activism. “In the U.S. they demeaned African Americans and Native Americans. Increasingly that role [targets of the Right] is played today by gays and lesbians, feminists, liberals, and secular humanists.” The Right exploits spiritual crisis, he said, by “demeaning others.”
My. And did we mention this speech was given in … Berkeley?
Jim Wallis, religious counselor to the Democrats who attended the same conference, announced that “They [the conservatives] made religion into a political wedge to divide us and destroy us.” Wallis alleged, “Religion is meant to be … a bridge to bring us back.” So in his efforts to build bridges, he noted that the political right is so comfortable with the language of religion … “They act like … maybe they even own God.”
Bishop John Shelby Spong was also at the conference. Said the free-wheeling Episcopalian: “I don’t want to denigrate any human being …. I rise up to say ‘no’ to popular religion in America today,” and called American religiosity “tribal” and the “blessing of private prejudices.”
Citing the obvious fact that growing churches in America are theologically orthodox, he deftly acknowledged that he didn’t want to “denigrate any human being” by lambasting “post-menopausal” Catholic bishops who call God “Father” and tell women “what they can do with their bodies.”
“Conservative Roman Catholicism and evangelical fundamentalists are growing,” Spong worried. “Hysterical people are seeking security.”
The Bible, Spong wanted the conference to know, has been a “major force in dark chapters of American history.” He blamed it for supporting slavery, oppressing women, and justifying war with the ominous current reality being its use to “make abortion illegal” and to “oppose end-of-life decisions” and even being used to justify the “preservation of living cadavers,” a reference to the once severely disabled Terri Schiavo.
“What kind of Bible do they read in the Bible Belt?” Spong asked. “Did they not practice slavery? Did they not allow lynchings?”
And the hilarity of it all? The Democrats still don’t get it. They don’t want to demean, they don’t want to denigrate. They want to build bridges. Then they demean, denigrate, burn bridges, and all the while mark the progress because they posed with some clergy for the camera.
God is not a Republican. Not even close. But neither will he be mocked by the Left in their cynical attempt to deride people of faith while pretending to take Him seriously.