LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

The Daily Kos always has some interesting entries. This one, by a 'professed atheist', says a lot about artificial Christianity, what Christ said, and how Dominionists (mis)interpret the scriptures.

I have been a militant atheist all my life. Not militant in wanting to destroy religion, but in keeping it out of the public sphere.

But I have come to a conclusion recently that has startled me, obvious as it seems to me in retrospect -- it wasn't religious language that bothered me, it was the "values" promoted couched in religious terms.

I would cringe -- and continue to cringe -- when politicians and religous figures cite scripture to justify hatred towards gays or any other class of people. But I don't cringe when scripture is used to justify poverty relief, or conservation ("protecting God's creation"), or social security ("honor thy mother and thy fathers"), or oppose the death penalty, or oppose the war.

What we have in this country is the hijacking of religion by an ideological faction that is using their supposed moral authority on behalf of three narrow issues -- abortion, stem cell research, and gay rights. Meanwhile, the Bible tackles myriad issues, most of which align with liberal/progressive thought. So when did "life" become just abortion, and not war and the death penalty and even associated issues like post-natal care (child mortality is still an issue of life and death)?

Liberals, outside the black churches, have ceded the moral language to the Right, in large part because of people like me who flinched at every reference to God by a Democrat.

But using Christianity or Buddhism or any other religion as a moral foundation is really no less superior than the moral structure I use to guide my life (I'm a utilitarian). All that should matter is that we all arrive at the same conclusion.

In other words, it doesn't matter how we get there, as long as we all arrive at the same place. And there should be no shame for Democrats to explain the reasoning for their value structure. And if Jesus is the reason, then so be it.

The comments that follow are especially interesting. Like these:

Anyone who reads the New Testament for the first time tends to be struck by Jesus's virtual obsession with one particular sin: Religious hypocrisy.

He was hardest of all on Pharisees, who come off as virtual villains in the NT; and yet Pharisees' beliefs in such things as the afterlife were the closest to Jesus's own. Meaning: Simply saying you believe the right things doesn't do you any good.

I expect that Christ would have the same warnings in Matt. 6 for the 21st Century Pharisees.