World News Korner

Conservatives and the Bible.

Courtesy of AlterNet:

Conservatives have not read the Bible.

The Right has successfully rebranded the brown-skinned liberal Jew, who gave away free healthcare and was pro-redistributing wealth, into a white-skinned, trickledown, union-busting conservative, for the very fact that an overwhelming number of Americans are astonishingly illiterate when it comes to understanding the Bible. On hot-button social issues, from same-sex marriage to abortion, biblical passages are invoked without any real understanding of the context or true meaning. It’s surprising how little Christians know of what is still the most popular book to ever grace the American continent.

More than 95 percent of U.S. households own at least one copy of the Bible. So how much do Americans know of the book that one-third of the country believes to be literally true? Apparently, very little, according to data from the Barna Research group. Surveys show that 60 percent can’t name more than five of the Ten Commandments; 12 percent of adults think Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife; and nearly 50 percent of high school seniors think Sodom and Gomorrah were a married couple. A Gallup poll shows 50 percent of Americans can’t name the first book of the Bible, while roughly 82 percent believe “God helps those who help themselves” is a biblical verse.

So, if Americans get an F in the basic fundamentals of the Bible, what hope do they have in knowing what Jesus would say about labor unions, taxes on the rich, universal healthcare, and food stamps? It becomes easy to spread a lie when no one knows what the truth is.

The truth, whether Republicans like it or not, is not only that Jesus a meek and mild liberal Jew who spoke softly in parables and metaphors, but conservatives were the ones who had him killed. American conservatives, however, have morphed Jesus into a muscular masculine warrior, in much the same way the Nazis did, as a means of combating what they see as the modernization of society.

The problem with all of this is that the only people who can wrestle Christianity out of the hands of the conservatives are those more liberal folks who actually live their lives as they believe Jesus had intended for them to.

The problem with that is that, as far as I can tell, the more reasonable members of Christianity are kind of a pansies when it comes to confrontation or fighting for what they believe.

Hell if this were my religion that was being poisoned like this I would be standing on a pile of conservative bodies looking to assholes to add to it. But then again I have anger issues.

Actually right now the more liberal, more Christian if you will, Christians have a rather powerful ally on their side.

In fact with the Pope on their side THIS might be the best time ever for those who actually understand and embrace the teachings of Jesus to take back their religion and kick the science denying, under privileged abusing, conservatives out of THEIR religion.

Let them find their own religion. I hear Scientology is always recruiting.

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