I watched Jesus Camp yesterday. What a frightening film that is. It’s like watching child abuse. No, I take that back. It is watching child abuse.
You should all watch it. It will open your eyes to some of the atrocities carried out by the evangelical christians in the US.
See also: http://malfunctionjunction.net/?p=327
There’s something I find slightly odd here. Jesus is always shown as someone who stood up for the weak and the poor, against the strong and the rich. So why do rich people (often right-wingers) support Jesus, while poor people (often left-wingers) do not, when Jesus was on the side of the poor?
I’m not sure that’s really true, Ian. As I understand it there are a vast mass of very skint people in America who “support Jesus”. Nor do I think that being a Christian has anything to do with your politics: it seems to me that the vast majority of people in the US identify themselves as Christian, whatever their political bent.I think that the conservative elite in America have found Christianity to be a very handy way of manipulating large swathes of the US public, which is perhaps why you see a lot of rich right-wingers pandering to the agendas of popular and influential personalities in the US religious industry.As you say, the Christian values of feeding the poor, healing the sick and keeping the peace don’t seem to feature very highly in those people’s agendas.