Christians don't hate the poor...only the Christian Right does

Like a lot of liberals, I've never been all that in love with abortion. I always felt that Bill Clinton's doctrine that abortions should be "legal, safe and rare" was a wise and reasoned goal.

I've always been, however, deeply suspicious of the Religious Right's almost maniacal obsession with abortion while favoring guns, the death penalty and the military, and along with it its corollary, foreign wars. Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, by all accounts a devout Catholic, stated, I thought quite rightly, that if one opposes abortion on moral grounds, then it's "in for a dime, in for a dollar," and one should also oppose the death penalty and illegal wars of aggression.

Today we don't hear a peep out of the Religious Right in the torture debate, so we have to assume they're not uneasy about applying torture in the so-called war on terrorism. If you're torturing foreigners off-shore, well, hell, why's that our problem?

It is simply because it's immoral. In for a dime, in for a dollar.

Now an article in the Washington Post comes out in which the major Christian conservative groups are demonstrably unopposed to cutting services to the poor. Why? Because it's not a priority. Fighting abortion and same-sex marriages and getting right-leaning judges appointed are.

In that same WaPo article this tidbit was included:

Janice Crouse, a senior fellow at the Christian group Concerned Women for America, said religious conservatives "know that the government is not really capable of love."

Another tidbit:

Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, said the government's role should be to encourage charitable giving, perhaps through tax cuts.

One more:

[Focus on the Family's James] Dobson also has praised what he calls "pro-family tax cuts."

Which ones are those, the ones in your multi-million-dollar tax bracket, Dr. Dobson?

Countering what many reasonable, truly compassionate people would rightfully label as hypocrisy is the stance taken by moderate and liberal Christian groups. One I ran into because of their anti-torture stance, Sojourners, is crying out for what might be called a more authentic Christian approach. The group is proposing "Civil Disobedience for a Moral Budget."

Here here. I'm no longer a practicing Christian, but I've got a pretty good idea from my years as a Catholic what Jesus might have done, and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have been slashing programs for the poor to pay for tax cuts for the rich. Something about a camel and the eye of a needle comes to mind.

Visit the group's site at www.sojo.net.