America boasts two types of Christians. We have the god-fearing social conservatives that blindly vote Republican, rally to uphold the innocence of their children through censorship and fear-mongering, and believe that gay marriage is ripping our already-anemic social fabric to shreds. After the ascension of George W. Bush, the world is very familiar with this family-values-cherishing American Christian.
But less attention is paid to the Christians whose religious beliefs reinforce a more genial view of society, who believe that over-consumption in a land riddled with poverty is wrong, who truly love their fellow Man, and who do not twist the tenements of the Bible to support hatred and ignorance.
I like those Christians. I like these Christians here who are rallying against Wal-Mart and its corporate practices, calling them “evildoers” and “immoral,” and citing actual scripture to base their judgment, like Malachi 3:5, where the Lord rebukes “those who defraud laborers of their wages,” and James 5 denounces those who have “failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields.”
See, the Bible isn’t all holy-rolling doctrine and fodder for hate groups. There’s PETA-like environmentalism (Jeremiah 12:4: “How long shall the land mourn, and the herbs of every field wither, for the wickedness of them that dwell therein? the beasts are consumed, and the birds; because they said, He shall not see our last end”), anti-war slogans (Proverbs 4:14: “Seek peace, and pursue it”), and anti-racism (Jeremiah 13:23: “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?”)
Check out the Atheists for Jesus website here. No it’s not a joke. It’s for people who “find Jesus’ admonition to Love Your Neighbor to be more important than the idea that his death was a sacrifice made in order to get you into Heaven.”
