12.03.2005 | "Christian" lefties

Byron Borger, in a comment below takes great issue with my (apparent) lack of knowledge of these lefty "Christian" groups. Well, what he doesn't know, because I haven't stated it, is that I spent two years with the Quakers. I attended meeting every Sunday, and worked on the peace committee of my local and yearly meetings.

This was well before our liberation of Iraq, and, at the time, the national Friends' lobbies (FCNL and the American Friends Service Committee) were not only not against Saddam but very much in favor of ending all sanctions against him. Attempts to get them to see, and proclaim, that Saddam and his thugs were the problem were to no avail.

I know far too much about this extreme wing of "Christianity." After 9/11, Friends as a group seemed totally unwilling to know that militant Islam was still the enemy of Christianity. They see only us Americans as the problem.

Note the quotation marks around Christianity. Another thing that troubled me about the Friends was that Christ as Lord was essentially absent. Christ the Teacher, yes, especially in the form of the social gospel. And, conveniently ignoring all that nasty judging and need to walk the straight and narrow path to salvation.

Now, in the scheme of things, Friends, at least in America, may be to the left, but they tend to be to the right of groups such as the Christian Peacemaker Teams.

So, I left them, to join my wife's Baptist church. And, yes, Byron, I get very "mean spirited" when a group takes the Lord's name in vain. Which these lefties do.