I'd like to borrow John Cole's reaction to a Michael Gerson column in consideration of this piece from the New York Times Sunday magazine titled "Can Leah Daughtry Bring Faith To The Democrats? (This despite religious believers making up some 80% of the party.)
Cole says of Gerson's take on environmentalism:
Got it? Environmental activists are to blame for not working enough with the people who oppose them, denounce them, mock them, work openly to sabotage their efforts, and have created a cottage industry creating and spreading pseudo-scientific babble.
What twisted bastard at the Washington Post reviews these op-eds and thinks they are worth printing? What kind of jackass believes the real problem regarding the environment is the environmental movement, and not James Inhofe. This is like blaming doctors for not being willing enough to work with the tobacco industry to prevent cancer.
Now, this is far from an exact parallel. Evangelicals are not the enemy of the Democratic party. And while it's idiotic beyond belief that the Democratic party's faith outreach team has three Evangelical members, a Catholic, a Jew, and a Muslim but no mainline Protestants, everything I've heard about Leah Daughtry says that she is a thoughtful and effective political operative.
But for crying out loud, can the religious concern trolls please stop kicking the party in the nuts?
The aim, realistically, has been not to win endorsements but to alter thinking, both immediately and over the long term. During the 2004 campaign, by contrast, Terry McAuliffe, was introduced to Warren, whose congregation numbers more than 20,000 and whose books have sold millions. According to “The Party Faithful,” a book by Amy Sullivan, a Time magazine editor, McAuliffe put out his hand and said, with a blank gaze: “Nice to meet you, Rick. And what do you do?”
The fact of the matter is that the Republican party has invested millions, if not billions, or dollars and decades of effort in order to separate conservative Evangelicals from the Democratic party. They have made vilification and downright demonization of Democrats their stock in trade, routinely making the case that they hate faith, people of faith, God, and God's puppy. Yet for all we hear, it's Democrats fault because Terry McAuliffe blew a single conversation four years ago.
Maybe if we work harder all those conservative Evangelicals will fall into our laps!
Richard Land, who has long been the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, the public-policy arm of the nation’s largest evangelical denomination, with 16 million members, credits the Democratic Party for reaching out respectfully to the born-again. “It’s certainly a better approach than that of the recent past,” he told me. But the idea that evangelicals, even young evangelicals, are going to subordinate their commitment to protecting life from the point of conception is, he argued, a notion born of Democratic blindness. “I don’t think the pro-choice community has ever really conceived of the anguish and moral outrage experienced by pro-life people over the issue,” he said, then referred to a poll showing that 18-to-29-year-old born-again Christians are more conservative on abortion than their elders. The young, he insisted, may be demanding “an expansion of the agenda” to include peace, poverty and the environment, but they do not want “an exchange of agendas” that would diminish the absolute priority of defending fetal life.
Or maybe they won't.
And please, pretty please with sugar on top, can we have an article on Democrats and religion that doesn't involve a retelling of Mara Vanderslice's life story? I've got nothing against her personally, but surely there is more to the story than the minor career deflation of a single 33-year-old woman.
Can it possibly be Friday again? I just managed to screw up the settings on my Outlook mailbox linked to school, so now I can't access all my old mail....grrrr......We are having some rollicking storms, so I am going to keep this short--What are you up to? Any plans for the weekend? What are you eating and drinking? See you later!
Please join our community in prayer. Just leave your prayer requests and pray for the requests of the community. I welcome all people to join in as the power of prayer/good energy is undeniable.