Saturday, October 27, 2007
Christians Turning Against the GOP
As progressives of faith have been praying and hoping for a very long time, mainstream Christians are wizening up and leaving the party of Pharisees.
In an article this morning, The Washington Post notes that a survey released this year by Pew Research Center shows that white Christians are leaving the party of Bush, Cheney, Gonzo, Rove, Rumsfeld, Giuliani and their ilk in droves since the last presidential election.
But stop the presses. Omigod! Even uber right wing evangelicals are renouncing their oath of fealty to Republicans.Among weekly-attending white Catholics, the percentage dropped from 61 percent to 38 percent; among weekly-attending white mainline Protestants, from 57 percent to 36 percent.
While exit polls showed that 82 percent of white evangelical Protestants who attend church weekly voted for President Bush in 2004, only 60 percent of the same group said they expected to vote GOP in 2008.Guess the million of lives killed in Iraq didn't sit too well with devout Christians who think "Thou Shall Not Kill" applies to those with dark skin as equally as folks with white one.
Or the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount preclude immigrant bashing and warmongering. And that social justice and the constitution are not arcane precepts that can be discarded at the whim of whoever occupies the White House.
Now here's what a 56-year-old real estate executive from Bubba George's home state of Texas(who cheerfully voted for every Republican on the presidential ballot since he was 18) has to say on the subject of "morality issues" and Christian fascists:
Today, Hopkins is bracing himself to vote for a Democrat for president for the first time in his life. He is livid with the GOP for a long list of reasons, including turning its back on immigrants, facilitating the Iraq war and catering to religious conservatives, who he says "are the same level of fanatics as in the Middle East."Uh, oh, trouble in paradise. Now the only thing Howling Latina has to add is what the hell took Christians so long to wake up from their self induced stupor???
"The religious right has as much reason [as Bush] to be guilty; they took this country too far the other way," he said.
Update: The howler's ethnocentricity is showing in this post. Propensity to vote Republican applies to Jewish temple attendees as well, even if the WaPo did not feature any in their story.
// posted by Howling Latina @ 2:51 PM 
