The poor: Not a high priority for the religious right

This writer has repeatedly excoriated "Christians" who spend their time demonizing gay people while ignoring the concerns of poor Americans. It has always been a mystery to me how these folks on the religious right could be such activists around so many causes (evolution, gay rights, nominating judges, tax cuts) yet completely disregard Christ's teachings with regard to the poor. Well, in a Washington Post story this week, many of these fixtures of the religious right explained why they do virtually nothing about the issue of poverty in America- it's just not a high priority.

Money quote:

"It's not a question of the poor not being important or that meeting their needs is not important," said Paul Hetrick, a spokesman for Focus on the Family, Dobson's influential, Colorado-based Christian organization. "But whether or not a baby is killed in the seventh or eighth month of pregnancy, that is less important than help for the poor? We would respectfully disagree with that."

Jim Wallis, editor of the liberal Christian journal Sojourners and an organizer of today's protest, was not buying it. Such conservative religious leaders "have agreed to support cutting food stamps for poor people if Republicans support them on judicial nominees," he said. "They are trading the lives of poor people for their agenda. They're being, and this is the worst insult, unbiblical."

Thank you, Jim Wallis, for calling attention to this staggering hypocrisy.