When "The Good News" Really is Good News

Like a recovering drunk who loiters outside the bar listening wistfully to the clink of glasses and the sounds of hilarity -- and who realizes that up close and personal the scene is not so jolly -- I remain fascinated by the Fundamentalism in which I was raised.

I despise its excesses when others only cringe. And I cheer it with an enthusiasm all out of proportion at those moments when those who promote the idea of What Would Jesus Do? behave as if they have some passing knowledge of Jesus as he (and the lower case is not a lapse in manual dexterity) is presented for the most part/on average/all things considered in the four Gospels.

So I link to a blog called God's Politics. And today it directed me to a survey done by a group called Faith in Public Life that argues that in the midterm elections so-called "kitchen table" values - concern about the Iraq war, poverty, torture and minimum wage are their leading examples -- actually did move some "Evangelicals" away from loyalty to the Republicans and the Republican agenda of gay hating and sex hating. (I think that's what explains too much of the opposition to abortion: Suffer, whore).

If so, this survey is heartening. I may not think that Jesus is God, but I certainly was always under the impression that he was a hell of a guy.