It’s one of the hottest trends in politics today. Prominent Democrats are suddenly quoting from the Bible – as John Kerry said recently, "I went back and reread the whole New Testament" – but what’s truly striking is the determination of liberal Christians to create an effective religious left.<\/p>\n
That’s why Tim Simpson trekked to Washington this week. A Presbyterian pastor from Tallahassee, Fla., he wants to counter the power of the religious right, which works in tandem with the Republican party, and, as he sees it, "has taken control of the language of our faith … to promote an extreme and divisive political agenda."<\/p>\n
As religious affairs director of the newly minted Christian Alliance for Progress (which was unveiled this week at the National Press Club), Simpson said in a subsequent interview, "We decided we could continue to sit around and grouse, or we could do something about it." So this fledgling grassroots organization, headed by a trio of devout Christians with seed money from private Florida donors, argues that progressive values mirror the teachings of the gospel.<\/p>\n
It’s a Democratic-friendly message – the same message that the bestselling liberal evangelist Jim Wallis has been imparting to Democrats in private – and it’s designed to close the God gap that has increasingly plagued the party at election time. It’s also a priority message for ex-Clinton White House aide John Podesta, whose think tank, Center for American Progress, has been hosting events this year for people of faith. [Source<\/a>]<\/p>\n Proving once again that they just don’t get it. Wrapping up some "values" like abortion, homosexual marriage, sex outside of marriage without consequence in religion will fool some but not all. These are the same arguments used about liberal talk radio that if only they had access to the markets and people could hear their message that they would be successful. In this case it is not the medium but the message that is the problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s one of the hottest trends in politics today. Prominent Democrats are suddenly quoting from the Bible – as John Kerry said recently, "I went back and reread the whole…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-punditry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5949\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}