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blue bits. red rocks.
Thursday 13 December 2007

If Christianity as it’s practiced in America—the religion of John Brown, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, John Updike, James Earl Carter, and my grandmother—is going to survive as something other than a fully owned subsidiary of and recruiting tool of the Republican party, then it’s going to need people who will stand up and reaffirm that compassion and forgiveness are Christian virtues, and then actually challenge those who have profited from encouraging people to believe that they are somehow demonstrating their devotion to their faith through material greed, selfishness, harsh judgement of the unfortunate, libelous attacks on those they disagree with, and congratulating themselves on their enthusiasm for meting out punishment of all kinds. Mike Huckabee is to be appreciated and applauded for the extent to which he offers an alternative to the small-mindedness of George Bush’s puny vision; it is regrettable that he himself is a compromised figure, with his own self-righteously callous side. That doesn’t make his better qualities count for nothing, but the fact that someone so flawed can seem so enlightened in comparison to Bush is a sad comment on Bush himself. Phil Nugent

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