Washington Times staff writer Cheryl Chumley published an opinion piece on Monday denouncing progressive religious leaders who have been mobilizing in opposition to Donald Trump.
Religious Right activists are quick to portray criticism of their conservative politics as an attack on their faith, and on Christianity itself, and to denounce liberals as intolerant of people of faith. But as Chumley makes clear, religious conservatives are often brutally intolerant of people of faith who don’t share their right-wing politics.
In deriding “progressivism disguised as religion,” Chumley casts a wide net that includes Pope Francis and Church World Service. In response to the progressive group Faith in Public Life organizing against the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, she writes, “Insert gagging noise here.”
She mocks the “leftist view of God” as a deity who “apparently wants open borders, gun-free societies, tax-paid giveaways to the poor and climate change laws that reel back society to near car-less-ness — or at least, to a time when only the most powerful, most elite and wealthiest could afford to drive.”
Here’s how she concludes her diatribe:
What a gold nugget for progressives — thing [sic] whole religious thing. Could prove a real profitable relationship — a win-win, as the kids say. God gets followers; progressives get political advancement.
But this god of political expediency isn’t real.
There’s a difference between a moral compass that guides the individual, and a moral compass that guides the government. Jesus, both while walking the earth and in his teachings that remain with us today, never told his disciples to demand government pay for the poor, for example. Rather, he gave them the example of reaching out with his own hands to help.
So here’s one clue in discerning the genuine nature of these so-called emerging believers of the faith.
If these “religious left” zealots are advocating for government intervention instead of pushing for sacrifice and assistance on the personal, individual basis, you know they’re false witnesses — wolves in disguise. Or rather, political beasts in disguise.
Chumley is the author of "The Devil in DC: Winning Back the Country from the Beast in Washington," published last year by WND Books.
