Away with Words: In Pursuit of Authenticity

He's fired up

Will Samson has a powerful post about the current Republican scandals and the evangelical silence in response to them:

... Many in power within the Republican world stand accused of treasonous acts or other significant felonies. (As an aside, all of the current mention of indictments involve men) Scooter Libby, Karl Rove and Dick Cheney may have knowingly revealed the name of a secret intelligence officer. This sounds like something the bad guys would have done in an old James Bond film. But it goes on from there. Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition, Jack Abramoff, arguably the most powerful lobbyist in Washington until his indictment and the source of many funds for GOP political operations, and Tom Delay, one of the architects of the Republican takeover who was until his indictment the Majority Leader in the House, all three of these men stand accused of different acts of money laundering. This is the kind of stuff that mobsters go to jail for. Bill Frist, the Senate Majority Leader, committed the same crime that lead to the downfall of Martha Stewart. And none of these crimes even begin to consider issues like the Downing Street Memo, a memo that appears to show early intent to deceive the American people in a march to war with Iraq. In light of all this I am longing for some sense of moral outrage from the outspoken religious voices of the right. When will Chuck Colson, a man who had a lot to say about the power abuses of the political administration he worked for, speak against these crimes? When will James Dobson, a man who has much to say about the importance of moral examples for our children, say that money laundering and treason are bad? When will Pat Robertson, a man who was willing to place a death sentence on the head of a foreign leader for their political activity, say that corrupted political power is wrong wherever it appears. And when will Jerry Falwell speak from the standpoint of morality rooted in scripture and the church, and not from the perspective of what advances the Republican agenda? ... Here is what's at stake: Like it or not, these are the people to whom many turn to for an interpretation of Jesus. So, let's say that you had no idea who this Jesus was. What would you learn about Jesus by looking at the public voices of the religious right? It seems to me that the current message from them is this: Jesus gets really mad when you lie about oral sex, but he is alright with treason, money laundering and insider stock trading.

posted by Jeremy Del Rio @ 10/31/2005 03:41:00 PM