Christian Hypocrisy Make a Bloggah Wannah Hollah

I've long bitched and moaned on these...pages?...is a blog really filled with "pages? ...even if it's super-sexy like this one?...about the hypocrisy re: those that most vociferously tout themselves as Christians who are bff with Jesus and yet act in the complete opposite of what Jesus said or did, starting with demanding more money be given to the uber-wealthy instead of the impoverished, ie wealth distribution that Obama invented because he loves Hitler and burning puppies. THIS ARTICLE HERE pokes it's head into finding out (Insert Seinfeld voice!) what's the deal with America's Christian hypocrisy.

Here in the United States, those who self-identify as religious tend to be exactly the opposite of their British counterparts when it comes to politics. As the Pew Research Center recently discovered, “Most people who agree with the religious right also support the Tea Party” and its ultra-conservative economic agenda. Summing up the situation, scholar Gregory Paul wrote in the Washington Post that many religious Christians in America simply ignore the Word and “proudly proclaim that the creator of the universe favors free wheeling, deregulated union busting, minimal taxes, especially for wealthy investors, and plutocrat-boosting capitalism as the ideal earthly scheme for his human creations.”

Of course, many Americans who cite Christianity to justify their economic conservatism may not have actually read the Bible. In that sense, religion has become more of a superficial brand than a distinct catechism, and brands can be easily manipulated by self-serving partisans and demagogues. To know that is to read the Sermon on the Mount and then marvel at how anyone still justifies right-wing beliefs by invoking Jesus.

No doubt, only a few generations ago, such a conflation of religion and right-wing economics would never fly in America. Whether William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” crusade or the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s poor people’s campaign, religion and political activism used to meet squarely on the left — where they naturally should.

 As with what we've learned about supply-side economics over the last thirty years and people like the Tea Party proudly claiming the Founding Fathers as their own despite the fact that those men would be horrified to be associated with such a group, this is yet another case of the Right not just slightly getting something wrong, but doubling down on the exact opposite as policy. Fascinating.