{"id":41445,"date":"2013-06-13T08:07:23","date_gmt":"2013-06-13T07:07:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/8-most-un-christian-things-the-christian-right-has-done-recently\/41445\/"},"modified":"2013-06-13T08:07:23","modified_gmt":"2013-06-13T07:07:23","slug":"8-most-un-christian-things-the-christian-right-has-done-recently","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/8-most-un-christian-things-the-christian-right-has-done-recently\/","title":{"rendered":"8 Most Un-Christian Things the Christian Right Has Done Recently"},"content":{"rendered":"

June 11, 2013<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>
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Christianity is a faith that professes to defend the meek and the humble, but many Christians\u2013at least of the more fundamentalist stripe\u2013tend to be more interested in propping up unjust systems and using religion as a cudgel to bully the weak.\u00a0Obviously, there are plenty of Christians who aren\u2019t massive hypocrites, but when it comes to using religion as a weapon to push hard-right ideology, deeply un-Christian behavior runs rampant. Here\u2019s a few examples of some of the more egregious recent sins of those who claim to be holier than thou. <\/p>\n

1) Attempted murder.\u00a0Tim Lambesis, the lead singer of the Christian metal band As I Lay Dying, was recently arrested in California for trying to hire a hit man<\/a>\u2013who turned out to be an undercover police officer\u2013to murder his estranged wife. Lambesis and his wife were deeply invested in evangelical Christian culture, even embracing the enthusiasm for overseas adoption<\/a>\u00a0that has spread in recent years in the community by adopting three children from Ethiopia. <\/p>\n

Lambesis’ alleged crime was the weak choice of just one man, of course, but the rush of online support he got after his arrest killed any hope that followers of Christian rock are made better people for their fandom. Lambesis fans flooded Twitter<\/a>\u00a0with such heartwarming sentiments about Lambesis\u2019 wife such as, \u201cBitch must be crazy\/annoying\u201d and \u201cHis wife was probably a cunt anyway.\u201d One even suggested, \u201cPraying never trumps taking action.\u201d <\/p>\n

2) Enthusiastic support for bullying.\u00a0The Christian right group Focus on the Family is so supportive of public school students’ “right” to gay-bash that they\u2019ve started a campaign to combat anti-bullying programs called True Tolerance. People for the American Way put together a report<\/a>\u00a0on what amounts to a Christian pro-bullying campaign. Christian right activists attack anti-bullying initiatives in schools by claiming they amount to \u201cindoctrination\u201d of students into the \u201chomosexual lifestyle,” even though the programs in question are simply telling kids not to beat up or tease other kids for perceived sexual non-conformity. Focus on the Family pretends it isn’t openly fighting for the protection of gay-bashers by denying that anti-gay bullying is a real problem, but that excuse fools no one who has ever been or even known a teenager. <\/p>\n

3) Starving the poor.\u00a0The biblical Jesus Christ went around helping the poor and the sick and famously fed people with loaves and fishes. His modern-day conservative followers prefer to snatch food from the mouths of the hungry. Tennessee Republican congressman Stephen Fincher showed what lengths conservative Christians will go<\/a>\u00a0to ignore their savior\u2019s obvious teachings regarding charity and poverty, when he deliberately quoted, out of context, a Bible verse that says, \u201cAnyone unwilling to work should not eat,\u201d to defend cuts to SNAP, the federal food assistance program. <\/p>\n

Not only was the quote out of context\u2013it’s clear that Jesus was all for feeding the poor and alleviating their suffering\u2013it was also a deeply dishonest characterization of people who use food stamps. For one thing, when you have 8% unemployment, it\u2019s just asinine to suggest the problem is that people don\u2019t want to work. But beyond that, research shows that over 90% of welfare benefits go to people<\/a>\u00a0who currently\u00a0have a job\u00a0or are elderly and disabled and can\u2019t work. In other words, even by the measure of the verse Fincher quoted, the people he would deny food to are entitled to it, having met the basic standard of being willing to work. <\/p>\n

4) Demanding the breakup of loving families for ideological reasons.\u00a0The Christian right loves to go on and on about the importance of family, but what they don\u2019t often admit is they are only talking about their\u00a0families. The Christian right is forever trying to take away the right to parent from gay people by interfering with gay adoptions<\/a>,\u00a0banning gay couples from using reproductive technologies<\/a>, and in the case of religious right talk show host Bryan Fisher, encouraging his audience to kidnap children of gay parents<\/a> and give them to straight people. <\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

June 11, 2013 \u00a0| Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. Christianity is a faith that professes to defend the meek and the humble, but many Christians\u2013at least of the more fundamentalist stripe\u2013tend to be more interested in propping up unjust systems and using religion […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-41445","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41445\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}