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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
The day after the 2004 election, a friend of mine told me that (1) she was an evangelical Christian, and (2) the thought of Bush Junior in office for four more years made her nauseous. Clearly not all evangelical Christians are the same, but unfortunately, a big block of them have consistently equated the GOP with God.
It would be easy to sympathize with the evangelicals who voted Republican for the past six years if the GOP had strung them along with promises like, "We're going to feed the hungry, house the homeless, heal the sick, end social inequality, take care of the planet because it's the only home we've got, and even respect the rights of people we suspect to be our enemies." But that's not how the GOP won the arch-conservative Christian vote.
The GOP-evangelical agenda was about elbowing science out of public-school science classrooms, outlawing abortion while withdrawing a safety net that would let poor parents take better care of their kids, and sniffing around the bedrooms of consenting adults--all the while keeping inquisitive noses out of corporate boardrooms. And it was about a bloody, needless crusade in an oil-rich Muslim nation. Bush Junior and his cronies seduced millions of evangelicals by appealing to their worst impulses. The only question remaining is: Will conservative Christians do a little soul searching and learn something from all this, or simply call themselves victims again?
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