Cross posted from Huffingtonpost.com
The Republican Right has taken a break from their busy schedule of cutting services to poor people to tackle another hard hitting issue: The Democratic Platform didn't originally mention God once. Listen, I know we are working on building-up an economy and restoring a social safety net but this is important stuff. Thank God for the Republican Party! If they weren't spending their time combing through party platforms, I don't know how'd get by!
Republicans believe that life is a numbers game. We are only as religious as the amount of times we can fit God into a sentence. The bigger the American flag outside your house, the more American you are! You really want to support the troops? How about a nice yellow magnetic ribbon (Made in China) to throw on the back of your SUV? It's clear that the Republican Party focuses on quantity, not quality.
Let's dust off our Bibles and remember that as Jesus spoke to the multitudes at the Sermon on the Mount he reminded us, "Not everyone who calls out to me, 'Lord! Lord!' will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Only those who actually do the will of my Father in heaven will enter." That's right: Jesus didn't want us to simply write about the faith -- he wanted us to live the faith.
Republicans have been calling a lot of "Lord! Lord!" but it appears they really haven't given Christianity a shot. They've crafted a political rhetoric to take their political agenda and force-feed it to Faithful America. They do an awful lot of talking about values, God (the American one), faith, religion, big cars, guns, rugged individualism, bootstraps, righteous wars, freedom and touching stories about Sunday morning mass with their family. They'll tell you that Jesus died for America -- and ONLY America. They talk a good game, but it doesn't line up with the overarching teachings of any major religion.
The Grand Ole' Party is causing these distractions in hopes that America won't notice how different their values really are. The key to a Romney-Ryan Victory is America never finding out what they really stand for. Faithful America shows a great concern for feeding the poor, helping the unemployed, providing healthcare coverage and respecting immigrants -- all of which goes against the Romney-Ryan plan.
Republicans only listen to the faithful when it suits them politically. They'll continue to ignore the urgings of religious leaders to protect the "least of these," all while courting the faithful voter. They'll keep staging these choreographed political productions to paint the Democratic Party as anti-faith. Moral of the story: they're using religion as a political tool, and that's the real War on Religion.
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John McCarthy is Chairman of the College Democrats at The Catholic University of America and Chairman of the Keansburg Democratic Party
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