election thoughts from Social Gospel Today

From one off of my frequent-read-blog list, Social Gospel Today, some election thoughts that I thought worth quoting:

"A comment on our last post suggested that a great many Americans no longer vote with their pocketbooks. How true. For many of those people, it is a different book that they think they are voting with - the Bible.

I wish that I could say that that was a good thing, or even a Christian thing to do. But as we have said on this blog numerous times, worshipping the Bible - or more accurately, how certain biased ministers and preachers claim to interpret and teach it - does not necessarily mean that you are following in Jesus' footsteps. Sometimes, it can even mean just the opposite.

What saddens me the most isn't that 'Christians' in America cannot grasp the fact that EVERYTHING is a moral issue (not just abortion and gay marriage, but war, taxes, poverty, criniminal justice, etc etc), nor that ingenius Republican strategists have convinced them that the only Christian vote is a Republican one. The part that saddens me the most is that the Democratic Party failed to get in touch with the America that DESPRETELY NEEDS THEM to stand up for their needs. "

Especially like the "EVERYTHING is a moral issue" emphasis. Yes! Yes! Yes!

And in another post:

Consider these numbers from CNN's exit polling data:

Kerry carried:


72% of minority voters.
88% of African-American voters.
63% of voters making less than $15,000 per year.
55% of voters making less than $50,000 per year.
64% of voters in a household that lost a job.
Can a Republican party that carried only the votes of the powerful really be the party of Christianity?

And one more:

...I know two things:

(1) God isn’t going anywhere: if the Democrats continue to cede the religious vote to the Republicans, and if they let their party be dominated by secular pragmatists, they will continue to face devastating defeats.

(2) Jesus’ clear mandate that we serve poor and oppressed isn’t going anywhere: if we continue to let ourselves be duped by the narrow vision of Christian values offered to us by the right, and if we ignore the Republicans’ horrific records on social programs and social justice, the Kingdom of God will continue to retreat in this country.

All around well-put sound stuff.