Where Left Is Right / The Old Site

It's probably not really that long, just seems so to someone who's been reading way too many blogs. It's longish, let's say.

Anyhow, there's a nice longer-than-average-blog-posting piece by Jennifer Barnett Reed in today's Arkansas Times (which I found via The Smirking Chimp, which remains indispensable as ever).

I want my faith back.

I didn’t come by it easily. I’m a card-carrying liberal, skeptical by nature, with an almost knee-jerk eye-roll reaction to anyone who’s completely comfortable discussing their religious convictions in mixed company. I spent pretty much the entire decade of my 20s in an uncomfortable agnosticism because I just couldn’t make up my damn mind.

So now that I have — now that words like “sinful” spring to mind when I hear about the $40 million budget for George W. Bush’s inaugural soirees, instead of just “disgusting” — I’m starting to take the right wing’s
hijacking of my religion very, very personally.
. . .
Why are all the fights over posting religious language in government buildings — and, most recently, having it embroidered down the front of your judge’s robes — about the Ten Commandments? How come no one’s ever gone to court over posting the Beatitudes? If the U.S. should be a “Christian” nation as reflected in our government’s official actions, why don’t we start with legislating “Love your neighbor as yourself”?

And this: With all the millions of children in our country who don’t have enough food, clothing, or love, how can right-wing Christians possibly still cling to the delusion that God thinks gay people are the biggest threat to Christian values? Times Jesus mentions the poor in the gospels: I lost count halfway through Matthew. Times he mentions homosexuality: Zero.
. . .
There’s an inherent conflict in trying to wed progressive religious values to the political system, ... especially when conservatives have already defined the terms of debate. Politics is about getting and keeping power, and that’s anathema to the progressive view of what Christianity is about.

I have no idea what a fundamentalist (of any faith, as long as he/she voted for W in '04) would make of Ms. Reed's column -- actually, I wouldn't mind hearing from one who's even read it. But that last bit does seem to be a problem, doesn't it? -- that politics and progressive faith don't mix well.

What's to be done about this? When we say, "Render unto Caesar/Render unto God," where's the dividing line? And assuming we can even identify the dividing line, how can it be effectively walked without falling too far in one direction or the other?