The Watch
is annoyed by a typically stupid Bush speech:
Ah yes, the church. The solution to all the ills of the world. Which is why in all the years that
churches have been ministering to the poor, there has been no net decrease in the numbers of the poor
and hopeless. Whereas when you take poor people from countries that churches have been ministering to,
and put them into secular democratic societies, they do so much better.I would like to submit that MLK’s vision of a world without injustice and inequality came from a deep
personal conviction that he’d seen just about enough of it. I’m sure that his faith was a great source
of strength for him, and it rings through beautifully in his words. But I can also see that our current
president, while ostensibly very faithful, is gleefully presiding over a widening gulf between the rich
and the poor. That he’s trying everything in his power to make it bigger.
And from an
earlier post she talks about a speech by Martin Luther King:
When reading something like this, it’s yet another reason to be furious that the public face of ‘religious’
people today are those like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and George W. Bush. People who’ve taken the
concept of generosity and turned it into a small, mean thing that only applies to people who are like
you. Who’ve taken the concept of love and said that it only applies to people in our country, and
sometimes to countries that agree with us.They purport to be the conscience of our society. Yet they can’t bring themselves to feel the smallest
pang of empathy for poor, single mothers, minimum wage earners, Iraqi children, Palestinians, or Africans
who are sick in their millions. They can’t seem to care about people whose choices in life have been
reduced to wondering what new lows they can sink to in the struggle to stay alive for one more day. They
seem to say that if you accept their Christian nationalism and come up with a way to strike it rich, you
will then be worthy of their care.