The Democratic "wedge issue from heaven" :

[Liberator_Rev]

Can a Republican Governor REALLY be a "Liberal like Christ" !?!

It's out of character, a fluke, maybe even a miracle, but if we can trust the media, it appears that despite being a genuine G.O.P. politician and a Southern Baptist, Alabama's Gov. Bob Riley believes enough in the liberal heart of the Christian Bible, the Gospels of Jesus Christ, to actually defy the rest of the Republican & Southern Christian establishments and promote its liberal teaching as the just and wise public policy that his state desperately needs at this time!
For more details, see http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week648/feature.html &
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2003/07/29/national1517EDT0651.DTL &
http://www.governor.state.al.us/ &
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/washpost/20030817/ts_washpost/a4130_2003aug16

For six years now, we "Liberals like Christ" have been urging Liberal Democrats to recognize that Jesus Christ can and should be their most important ally. Even though he may have died 2000 years ago, 80% of America's voters think of themselves as his followers. We believe that one of the reasons Martin Luther King, Jr. had such a great following and accomplished with non violent means something that the Civil War had not been able to achieve is that he viewed Jesus as "the world's most famous liberal". And Jesus inspired King to apply the very same Liberal ideals that he had preached to the conditions of mid-twentieth century America. It's wonderful that another "Liberal Like Christ" is promoting those same ideals in America today. What a shame that it's a Conservative Republican, instead of a Liberal Democrat!

All is not lost, however, because both the Republican and the Southern Christian establishments (and the Christian Coalition of the two) are doing their best to make it clear that they don't care for the liberal ideas Christ, even when it's promoted by a Southern Baptist Republican leader. What an opportunity this gives the Democratic Party and Liberal Christians in America to proclaim that they do believe that Christ's teaching of justice and equality are great prescriptions for injustice and inequality wherever they exist, whether it be the rural areas of the deep south, the remote areas of the far west or the neglected hearts of America's great cities.

Does the Democratic Party know the perfect wedge issue when it sees one?
Although the "Christian Conservatives" of the Bible belt claim to be "Christians", just listen to them carefully and you will see that they much prefer the ultra-Conservatism of Paul of Tarsus to the Liberalism of Jesus Christ. They hardly ever quote Jesus, but quote Paul ad nauseam. Now is the time for Democrats to challenge Christians in America to look at the record of the past 70 years and ask themselves what Jesus would think of today's selfish conservative "Greedy Old Party" compared to the liberal and liberating Democratic Party " Our http://www.LiberalsLikeChrist.Org/Democrats shows that in the past 70 years the Democrats have practically been using the teaching of Christ and the Bible as a blueprint of the policies that they have pursued.
Democrats should be pointing out that "the Greedy Old Party" is the embodiment of the negative, arrogant, judgmental, oppressive, teaching of Paul of Tarsus, while the Democratic party is influenced much more by the generous, humble, open-minded, liberal and liberating teaching of Jesus Christ"

See the contrast between Paul's teaching on slavery, women, Jews, homosexuals and welfare recipients, in http://www.LiberalsLikeChrist.Org/PaulvsAll
And Jesus' treatment of women in http://www.LiberalsLikeChrist.Org/Feminism &

And see http://www.LiberalsLikeChrist.Org/ForSalvation for the reasons why so many "Christian Conservatives" tend to abandon Jesus' view of the duty to be compassionate and to champion the needy, in favor of Paul's teaching of salvation by faith alone.

Bob Riley sounds like a person who has read and been moved by our http://www.LiberalsLikeChrist.Org/Challenge
and perhaps even http://www.LiberalsLikeChrist.Org/GODvsGreed pages.

In any event, I hope to God that Democrats don't allow the Republican bastardizers of Christianity called "the Christian Coalition" to defeat this man, who like Nixon opening the way to China, may be the only type of person to bring these wonderfully liberal policies to a poor Southern state which, God knows, is in need of them.

If Democrats were smart, they would recognize in Bob Riley the Trojan horse of a new "Southern Strategy" that just might bring back the South into the Democratic Party, (without the hateful bigots which the Greedy Old Party can keep! )

If you agree, then please forward this message to as many Democratic leaders, representatives and fellow Democrats as you can with your recommendations that they follow up in any way that they can.

[kentuck]

1. But should we use religion as an issue ?

Hell yes! We should point out that they do not practice what they preach. In the Bible, they are called hypocrites. If they want to talk about "abominations", we can find those in the Bible also. This would very effective in the Bible belt but they need to have it pointed out to them...

[TacticalPeek]

13. amen

"you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean"

defines kkkarl rove

[RobertSeattle]

2. Interesting - thanks

Although I don't consider myself a Christian, I've come to feel that a "The Gospels" based Christianity is much better than the "Paulian" Christianity that seems to be what Right Winger's believe.

[outinforce]

3. Sorry, NO

I must have missed the memorandum which said that we, as progressives, could breach the wall of separation between church and state when it suits our purposes to do so.

ANY talk of a governor speaking about Jesus and taxes in the same sentence sends shivers down my spine.

[WoodrowFan]

6. MLK

I'll have to meantion that to Reverand King and to Ghandi..

[outinforce]

10. Don't forget Mother Teresa

She had some rather interesting things to say about abortion.

[WoodrowFan]

4. love this quote

But the Christian Coalition of Alabama, which opposes all tax increases, staked out the other side. "We applaud tax relief for the poor. You'll find most Alabamians have got a charitable heart; they want to do that," said the group's president, John Giles. "They just don't want it coming out of their pocket."

Behold, the poster child for "unclear on the concept."

BTW, to be fair, a rep from the national Christian Coalition has endorsed the Governor's idea.


BTW, I STILL like Paul, after all he spread the idea that Christ's message was for Gentiles as well as Jews.

[Cocoa]

5. McCauliffe told southern dems to go after the churches

I guess there were some disappointments in 2002 in the Carolinas, and I read about a speech he gave where McCauliffe was angry with the local dems for not being aggressive enough in the white churches, for conceding them to the GOP.

[jiacinto]

11. Well

A girl in Alabama told me that the CC has a contact person in EVERY church in the state.

[TacticalPeek]

12. Just yesterday at church

a relative of mine was discretely whispered into a women's dem meeting later this week. Kinda "French underground" stuff.

[kentuck]

7. "Bleeding heart liberal"

was referring to Christ.

[lcordero]

8. I've been advocating "no holds barred" retaliation in this class war

for a very long time. It's already too obvious that war was declared on the poor since time began. I wonder when we are going to start retaliating in kind.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

9. good idea, except...

telling people that St. Paul is an anti-Christian is going to negate any good you can do explaining that Jesus was a liberal. Tone down the anti-Paul rhetoric and this is a winning idea.

[Liberator_Rev]

14. Alabama Democratic leaders don't want to hurt Riley.

I've read that Alabama's Democratic leaders appreciate the policies that Riley is advocated but don't want to hurt his chances of implimenting them by siding with him too openly. What a wild situation!

I wonder if the outcome wont be defeat of the policies this time around, but victory for Democrats when they advocate them and get elected on them later on.