Jamelle Bouie has an excellent commentary on the Atlantic article wherein Michael Wear claims the Democratic party has a "religion" problem because it doesn't reach out to white evangelical Christians. Mr. Bouie makes short work of this argument; I would make shorter work of it.Mr. Wear needs to read Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail." It's easy to forget it's an open letter to white Christian leaders, without reading it. But everything you need to know about the Democrats' "religion problem" is discussed, dissected, and dealt with there. Mr. Bouie has, implicitly, the relevant connections between King and Wear and the Democratic Party, but Dr. King explicitly preaches the word of the Lord.
And Mr. Wear and his ilk need to hear it. Hell, we all do.
Michael Wear is a callow boob, just another of Barack Obama's all too often bad appointments.
ReplyDeleteHow does he propose Democrats reach out to "white evangelical Christians"? Certainly not by doing unto others as we would have them do unto us, not by, as Paul was instructed, remembering the poor, not by following the frequent and explicit biblical commands to treat the foreigner among us as we treat ourselves....
Wear means restricting or limiting abortion and discriminating against LGBT people, that's the sum total of his program of outreach to "white evangelical Christians". Of course, Jesus was entirely silent on both issues in the Gospels, what evangelicals are supposed to spread. Arguably abortion is never condemned in the Bible and merely somewhat less strongly it's arguable that faithful, loving, committed, harm-avoiding lesbian and gay relationships based in equality are, as well, not covered by the handful of times suggestions of same-sex sex are mentioned in the Bible.
The fact is that there is a significant number of self-defined "white evangelical Christians" who vote, consistently with Democrats, the same polls always cited by the Michael Wears shows that percentage is large and enlarging that percentage probably won't involve betraying women. I suspect Wear is a young man on the make and he knows he can get his name in the media by saying that kind of stuff. The media sucks that up just as it does anything that would increase injustice and damage the chances of Democrats winning elections and making change into law.