Yeah, This is What Happens

Pete Buttigieg said in an interview released Tuesday that people should "stop seeing religion as a kind of cudgel as if God belonged to a political party."

Immediately after, he said he "can't imagine" God would be a Republican.https://t.co/xHfRgBT9hT

— Dan Merica (@merica) May 7, 2019

Adding:  well, let us be more fair than that tweet is:

Buttigieg told NBC that he talks about religion in an effort to convince people to "stop seeing religion as a kind of cudgel as if God belonged to a political party."

The mayor immediately followed up that comment by adding, "And if he did, I can't imagine it would be the one that sent the current president into the White House."

Buttigieg went on to say "what we see (in the White House) is so different than what I hear in scripture when I am in church."

"I hear about taking care of the marginalized and defending the weak and supporting the poor and visiting the prisoner and welcoming the stranger and humility and decency," he said. "These are the things that are taught in Sunday schools around this country. And so the idea that that is the property of the Republican Party, especially this Republican Party and some of the choices they have made in recent years, it just doesn't add up to me. 

CNN follows that long quote with this line:

Buttigieg has used the line -- "God does not have a political party" -- frequently during his 2020 run, but the direct suggestion that God would not be a Republican was new.

Which is, to be honest, crappy reporting.  If "God does not have a political party," how can God be a Republican?  Or a Democrat?  What, exactly, is new here?  I happen to agree that the God of Abraham as I understand God, would not send Donald Trump to the White House.  I have lots of reasons for that, but fundamental among them is the last paragraph of the quote, above.  And that God is not the property of the GOP, nor are they the defenders and best representatives of God.

I'd also say the Democrats are not the party of God, either.  God doesn't belong to a political party, and invoking God to declare your party superior to another party, is promoting a false god.  The Bible has a lot to say about idols; none of it favorable.