From Ethics Daily:
For the past eight years, James Dobson's brand of Christianity has been normative in the land. Dobson has preached a Christ acceptable to the present Bush administration. When George W. Bush and company get down on their knees, they pray to the same Christ to whom Dobson turns for guidance in making moral decisions.
Not surprisingly, Dobson has never--to the best of my knowledge--criticized Bush's policies, legislation or actions as being unchristian. And why should he? For both share a brotherhood in worshiping the same Christ.
This is a Christ who has remained silent in the face of human-right violations, atrocities and institutional violence. The Christ whom Dobson and Bush believe in is a Christ that has nothing to say about water boarding; torture of prisoners in United States; care or transporting them to nations for more extensive torture; bearing false witness to start a war; Christians dying in the desert, because they happen to be undocumented immigrants; or the poor, who since 2000 has gotten poorer.
The Christ they bear witness to resembles and justifies their power, privileges, biases and status. It is a Christ that may be affirming to a certain elite in America, but one that brings literal death to those residing on the margins of Bush and Dobson's privileged spaces.
To be a Christian who follows the teaching of the Gospel is to wage war against the Christ offered to us by Dobson and Bush. For their Christ has legitimized and normalized the social, economic and physical genocide of the world's disenfranchised. To be a Christian is to wage this war against all the forces of Satan, who have traded the liberating message of the gospel for 40 pieces of silver, and all the power, recognition and privilege that silver can buy.
Those of you who have written off Christianity, and as a result God Himself, because of how it is practiced by phairasees like James Dobson need to read the rest of this essay for more about what true Christianity resembles.
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Thanks for posting this, Jim. This essay must be read by every Christian who is a Christian in fact, and not someone who has twisted the Bible to meet his or her own preconceived prejudices that extol as virtues capitalism run amok, legalism, perfectionism, exclusion, jingoism, Americanism, and militarism. These wolves in sheep's clothing have caused untold damage to countless numbers of people, and have literally misrepresented the Gospel of grace and love, and have spit in the very face of God!
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