OPINION: In America’s moral civil war, whose side is God on, anyway? | Will Bunch
Inside the white canvas tents rising like a mirage in the hazy heat of the
"As a Hispanic and as a father I feel we're under attack,"
Even with the new tent city, and with shelters for children and the county jails helping to detain their parents already overflowing, the new
The mercury in the
On
Just moments earlier, Sanders had turned to what struck many as an odd place to find a moral defense of taking children away from their parents: the Bible. "I can say that it is very biblical to enforce the law,"
Sanders made those comments after Sessions, earlier in the day, had also cited Scripture in insisting that what our government is doing at the border is very godly indeed. The attorney general went before the friendly audience he could find -- law-enforcement officers in
"Persons who violate the law of our nation are subject to prosecution ... I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13 to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes," Sessions said. "Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves ... and protect the weak and it protects the lawful."
There you have it: A political party that relies on Jesus to help get elected turning its back on the charity and goodwill of the Gospels and reinventing the Bible as spreading the good news ... of law-and-order. It's not surprising that such words would come from Sessions, who fled his small
"This is the same argument that Southern slaveholders and the advocates of a Southern way of life made,"
It's a Biblical crutch to defend a policy that is born of prejudice and crass political calculation. The prejudice comes straight from the top, from a president with little patience for the details of health care or nuclear disarmament but who obsesses over the tally of monthly border crossings, berating his Homeland Security secretary and ranting about "shithole countries." As
The irony is that this comes at a time when many men and women of faith -- as well as supporters of an ethical humanism not necessarily rooted in religion -- are wondering why the Far Right in American politics has been allowed to redefine morality as restricting women's reproductive rights or returning Christian prayer to public schools -- even as we increasingly ignore the advice of Jesus to tend to the poor, the desperate, and to people who don't look like us.
Recently in the space, I wrote about the ongoing
They saw that patriotism is far more than blind allegiance. They understood faith had to be deeply rooted in the moral principles of justice, love, mercy, care for the stranger, and concern for life, as the highest value. They knew that America, like every nation, needed prophets rather than priests for the empire if a nation is ever going to repent and mend every flaw, if the nation's successes are ultimately going to be noble and divine.
This, increasingly, is our fight today. What is morality, and whose God is it, anyway? Will we, as a civil society, put our faith in the heartless rigidity and exclusion preached by
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