Les Jones

News > Democrats Leaders: Please STFU About Religion

At a religious convention, WizBang notes "Sen. John Kerry accused President Bush on Thursday of failing the Biblical test set by the Good Samaritan, saying, "He's seen people in need, but he's crossed over to the other side of the street.""

WizBang asks: of Kerry and Bush, whose income taxes indicate a higher level of charitable giving over the years, as a percentage of income? Answer: Bush, by a factor of roughly 10 to 1. Kerry didn't just cross over to the other side of the street. He hopped in Teresa's Gulfstream and flew to the other side of the Atlantic.

Al Gore recently made some assinine statements to the New Yorker regarding Bush's religious beliefs.

Gore's mouth tightened. A Southern Baptist, he, too, had declared himself born again, but he clearly had disdain for Bush's public kind of faith. "It's a particular kind of religiosity," he said. "It's the American version of the same fundamentalist impulse that we see in Saudi Arabia, in Kashmir, in religions around the world: Hindu, Jewish, Christian, Muslim. They all have certain features in common. In a world of disconcerting change, when large and complex forces threaten familiar and comfortable guideposts, the natural impulse is to grab hold of the tree trunk that seems to have the deepest roots and hold on for dear life and never question the possibility that it's not going to be the source of your salvation. And the deepest roots are in philosophical and religious traditions that go way back. You don't hear very much from them about the Sermon on the Mount, you don't hear very much about the teachings of Jesus on giving to the poor, or the beatitudes. It's the vengeance, the brimstone."

Best of the Web has an appropriate response.

Now, we don't pretend to be an expert on the various Christian denominations, but we do know that President Bush is a Methodist. (He was raised Episcopalian but switched when he married Laura.) Another prominent Methodist is New York's junior senator, Hillary Clinton, so Gore seems to be suggesting that Hillary's religion is similar to the "fundamentalist impulse that we see in Saudi Arabia," which of course produced Osama bin Laden. Shame on Gore for slandering Mrs. Clinton in this way.

It occurs to us, too, that if Gore's views about Methodism are typical of Southern Baptists, Hillary and the erstwhile veep's coreligionist Bill Clinton must have an awfully stormy marriage. Did he have sects with that woman?

Combined with Clinton's recent, misguided, Biblical finger-wagging, I think the Dems need to give up the religion thing.