Londons Falling

What Would Jesus Do?

Rating: 5/5
Comments:
Great Book in my humble opinion...
To all nay Sayers and Bush or neo-con apologists and their blind sheep followers; whenever you confronted a moral dilemma, let it be torturing captives at Gitmo, stealing from corporate shareholders, lying to the voters and general public of the country or screwing over the middle class - just ask yourself this: What would Jesus do, according to the scriptures and doctrines of true Christianity? Is selling your soul for power and wealth worth the horrible Karma you'll incur for following these neo-con gangsters? I would say no....but you should be the judge of that...

The Hijacking of Jesus

Rating: 4/5
Comments:
This is a quick read of important issues in today's America. There are valuable facts and insights in today's religious climate. The author bounces around a bit, but comes back to sound an alarm for thinking people of faith.

Every American should read this book!

Rating: 5/5
Comments:
Dan Wakefield has written an important and eye-opening book about the Religious Right in
America. Liberal and proud of it, Wakefield has been concerned with social justice since the
fifties when, as a young reporter for The Nation, he published his ground-breaking study of
Spanish Harlem, Island in the City. Some time in the eighties this hard-drinking non-believer
experienced a spiritual awakening and returned to the Christian faith of his Indiana boyhood, a
journey he recounts in Returning.

But unlike some who turn their lives around when they accept Jesus Christ as their personal
savior, Wakefield did not abandon his commitment to the liberal causes of his non-believing
years. On the contrary, his faith is rooted in the ethical teachings of the Jesus who preached
peace, tolerance, and compassion for the poor: the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount.

As an articulate political liberal who is also a devout Christian, Wakefield is uniquely qualified
to comment on the co-opting of the Christian faith by the eerily well-organized juggernaut that is
the Religious Right, whose leaders preach war, intolerance, and hate and who believe that the
Sermon on the Mount is "no longer relevant for our times." Their political agenda is nothing less
than the replacement of what's left of our democracy by a theocracy, and their "wedge" issues are
anti-abortion and anti-gays, which are far more important to them than peace, social justice, or
the environment, for the simple reason that those two hate issues are the ones that get votes, that
get an increasingly impoverished and uninformed electorate to vote against their own self-
interest.

This is an angry book, but beneath the anger is the pain of a man who loves his country deeply and watches in horror as he sees it torn apart and in danger of losing the very values on which it was founded. He traces the gradual Republican takeover of our government -and the exponential growth of the religious right that supported it-to the election of 1964, when Barry Goldwater suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of Lyndon Johnson with his New Deal-like War on Poverty and Great Society. That's when the forces of reaction began to get organized.

The great mistake of the left, as Democrats are only beginning to realize, has been their blindness
to the importance of religion and spirituality in American life. The brilliant political satirist Bill
Maher has a blind spot when it comes to religion, and in this he is typical of the American left.
Well, Bill Maher should read this book, because Dan Wakefield is just as mad as he is at the
hawkish, sexist, gay-bashing evangelicals who don't give a damn about global warming because
Armageddon is right around the corner and we're all going to die anyway-but Wakefield is a
man of faith who hasn't lost his mind. Every Democrat should read this book. Every American
should read this book!