This is really great news!

Jesus taught daily, during his brief time here on this blessed earth, that true believers were to form political pressure groups that would force the government to “give unto others” that which the government seizes through coercion from the productive part of society. There’s nothing that God loves more than a cheerful giver ... and people having their hard earned dollars coerced from their pockets under the threat of heavy fines, imprisonment and confiscation of all wealth are some of the most cheerful givers on the planet.

Halleluiah! Praise the Lord!

Does anyone know if there is a set percentage that is skimmed off the top to go directly into coffers of the sainted leadership, or if it’s an arbitrary amount depending on how much each blessed leader feels he can get away with?

These Christian leaders ought to be very careful about what they say.  Promoting any sort of preferential treatment for the poor got many, many priests and other religious people killed by US-backed death squads in El Salvador and elsewhere.  Ask the 3 US nuns who were murdered in 1980. Ask Archbishop Oscar Romero, murdered in 1989.  Ask the 6 Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter who were murdered by the US-backed and trained thugs in 1989, their murderers all trained in the notorious School of the Americas.  But one need not be a member of the clergy to have received such special attention.  There are hundreds of thousands who have been tortured and have often paid with their lives for speaking up for the poor, and the responsible parties can be found in the upper echelons of the US government, past and present.

“With unfailing consistency, U.S. intervention has been on the side of the rich and powerful of various nations at the expense of the poor and needy. Rather than strengthening democracies, U.S. leaders have overthrown numerous democratically elected governments or other populist regimes in dozens of countries ... whenever these nations give evidence of putting the interests of their people ahead of the interests of multinational corporate interests.”

“[The ruling elites] know who their enemies are, and their enemies are the people, the people at home and the people abroad. Their enemies are anybody who wants more social justice, anybody who wants to use the surplus value of society for social needs rather than for individual class greed, that’s their enemy.”
(Michael Parenti)

“When you give food to the poor, they call you a saint.
When you ask why the poor have no food, they call you a communist.”
(Archbishop Helder Camara, Brazilian liberation theologist)

“There is ...a huge tacit conspiracy between the U.S. government, its agencies and its multinational corporations, on the one hand, and local business and military cliques in the Third World, on the other, to assume complete control of these countries and “develop” them on a joint venture basis. The military leaders of the Third World were carefully nurtured by the U.S. security establishment to serve as the “enforcers” of this joint venture partnership, and they have been duly supplied with machine guns and the latest data on methods of interrogation of subversives.”
(Edward S. Herman)

My claim has no support historically?  My friend, it would take far too long for me
to include even a third of the atrocities done by your fairy tale belief system. 
Instead of wasting your time to prove me wrong with your gigantic list, please
provide me with one violent event in our fine country’s history that does not have
Christianity at the root of its evil.  Please just one.

Exhibit one in my defense: Slavery in America.

Your turn.

thethirdman:

It would take far too long to prove just how wrong you are.  Suffice it to say that your ingrained antipathy toward religion/Christianity is clouding your judgment, and that your claim has no support historically.

Peace.

Got to agree with TDoff.
Maani, as far as I am concerned, everything bad that has happened or is
happening in this country can be traced right back down to its Christian roots. 
Genocide, greed, racism, capitalism, imperialism, Reagan, compassionate
conservatism (that one still makes me laugh) all due in large part to your silly
religion and the belief that you have found the answer.
Bunch of snake oil salesmen.
TDoff is absolutely right, if your Rev. Wallis is a good man, it is despite his
Christian label.

I would hope that these Christians connect the dots and come out foursquare against the 2, possibly 3 illegal wars that are sucking our country dry.

And a little throwing out of the money changers on Wall St. would be Christ-like, too.

As much as I admire people who help the “least” of us, I do not want governmental programs supplanted by religious do-gooders.

Feed them, yes, but educate the flocks also.

Maani, if I offended your christian sensibilities, too bad. Each of us is the product/victim of our individual life experiences. Mine have taught me that christianity, as it is actually practiced and applied in our society, is much more often than not a hypocritical scam followed for the benefit of a few, to the detriment of a many. I readily concede there are exceptions, and if you find Rev. Wallis to be a good and kindly, generous and giving man, I accept your judgement and apologize for unknowingly (‘unwittingly’, if you choose) disparaging him. I might venture to guess that he would be of sterling character even if he were not a christian.
So far as I know, none of the Popes have hacked their mistresses/nuns/wives to death with an ax after Easter services for years and years, perhaps centuries, which is a mark in their favor. But I certainly would not engage one to babysit one of my daughters…or sons, for that matter.
My stomach is to weak at my advanced age to spend time investigating the (a)morality of christian shepherds or sheep. I do thank you for saving me the years of distress it might have taken me to discover the beneficence of Rev. Willis, I shall attempt to retain that in my memory, and not repeat my error.
Peace backatcha.

TDoff:

Your knee-jerk anti-Christian attitude is nmot surprising, but is actually dead-wrong.

Rev. Wallis is about as far from a “Crazy-Christian-Evangelical-Fundamentalist-Born-Again-Boob” - or a televangelist, holy-roller or snake-biter (though he is, admittedly, a preacher…LOL) - as it is possible to be as a Christian.  He is a moderate, and has been “fighting” the “Religious Right” for years.  And his organization, Sojourners (of which I have been a member for over eight years) is made up of similarly-minded, moderate Christians.

He has been more active, and done more work, toward the goal of ending poverty, homelessness, hunger, etc. in this country than any other Christian leader, and does not have a “scam”-y bone in his body.  (In addition to his easily researched history in this regard, I have met and spoken with him a number of times, and would never have joined Sojourners if I thought there was anything questionable about them.)

It would do you good to step back from your knee-jerk anti-Christian responses to things and actaully learn about the people and programs being discussed.

Peace.

I wondered how long it would take for the CrazyChristian EvangelicalFundamentalist BornAgainBoobs to notice how fat the cats were getting on Wall Street and in the MIC in the midst of our ‘Austerity Boom’. So now the ‘least of us’, the televangelists, preachers, holy-rollers and snake-biters, are trying to jump into the honey pot.

It will be fascinating to see the scams they come up with to slice-off their hunks of the loot from the ‘Deficit-Reduction’ programs the Koch suckers and their cohorts are hustling.