Again, the Religious Left misses the point, and will get a complete pass.

I really don’t like the religious left, for the same reason I don’t like the Left generally.  Missing the obvious, twisting history and religion, dishonest (or honest but stupid) criticism are their hallmarks.  But at least I have a faith in common with them . . . which makes their alliance with secular lefties all the more disappointing.

The latest comes from Chris LaTondresse, the founder of the “Recovering Evangelical” website.  Now, I’m sure LaTondresse is a nice guy, and a true Christian believer, and very sincere in what he says.  I don’t think he’s being dishonest, just intellectually lazy.  His points don’t stand up to even mild scrutiny.  Which is as rigorous as he needs to be, really, because, as he wends his way through talk show appearances in a media hungry for lefty evangelicals, his ideas won’t have to face even mild scrutiny.

Here’s the video, with my comments following.

OK, first let’s take his point that there are 2000 references in the Bible to God’s concern for the poor and less than two dozen on homosexuality and even fewer that address abortion. First, no government can be a Christian, only individuals can. I’m not saying we all have to be Mother Teresa because the government should do nothing. But I have little patience for a two Range Rover family bitching and moaning that nobody is helping those poor starving people, while millions of Christians and others actually do things on a personal level — donating time, money, or both — to help people.  And LaTondresse should realize this, as he points out that young Christians have forged personal relationships with some of the poorest on the planet and he is the child of two evangelical missionaries.

Second, LaTondresse does not seem to understand why Evangelicals stress homosexuality and abortion in the political arena. This is not what he calls “the political agenda of the far right” because, out of all the values driven by their faith, these are the most important ones. It is that these issues have been heavily pushed by the left, and the righty evangelicals are pushing back. As I have written before, when the left starts pushing for other evils, they will see pushback from the righty evangelicals.  But until then, the work against the other evils will largely be done on a personal level, while the right’s political forces array themselves against their lefty counterparts.

To be fair, some of the worthy items on his agenda are more appropriately addressed by government: genocide and human trafficking, especially.  But again, you don’t see a big political movement in the United States in support of human trafficking or genocide, so Christian political leaders — high-profile ones, at least — will tend to devote their resources to the issues on which they have to push back.

As for the 30,000 kids dying around the world every day, the lefties are against doing anything about, and often even celebrate, the major cause of those deaths.  The unclean drinking water, hunger, and preventable diseases he notes kill those children are all too often the result of tyrants who bring on or maintain these conditions through mismanagement and corruption or even actively cultivate them as a means of controlling the populace.  I’m not saying we should do nothing to help these people until we can change their governments (and again, million of Christians and others are doing just that).  I’m saying that for a group fond of blaming the West for the “root causes” of Islamism and other forms of thuggery, lefties seem strangely uninterested in even recognizing, let alone doing anything about, the root causes of a daily juvenile death toll of 30,000.  (About LaTondresse’s personal views on this, of course, I know nothing — I am speaking now of the people he seems ready to ally himself with.)

He keeps mischaracterizing, by the way, the right’s agenda as “simply gay marriages and abortion.”  Has no one told him that George W. Bush has done more for fighting AIDS in Africa than any other president?  My word, even The Guardian can admit it.

La Tondresse keeps referring to “his” generation of evangelicals, calling them the most “interconnected” generation in history, but he seems to have bought the lefty stereotype of right wing evangelicals hook, line and sinker.  With all of the alternative media and “interconnectedness” at his disposal, he should know better.

And for crying out loud, did he have to mention fighting global climate change as a faith-based value?  I agree it is faith based, but he’s talking about faith in God, and I’m talking about faith in the greatest hoax in history.

Finally, let’s not forget that the media won’t be at all upset with these evangelicals pushing their values on others . . .as long as they’re lefties.

H/T: HotAir.

UPDATE: Here’s a nugget from The Guardian article I linked above, regarding the impetus for W’s AIDS initiative in Africa (emphasis mine):

Bush was also lobbied by American Christian evangelicals with strong and expanding ties to Africa, and conservative Republican senators usually instinctively hostile to foreign aid.

Funny, I didn’t see the lefties complaining about this program as government money being spent on religious priorities.