The Religious Right's Values

James Dobson claims that liberals have no values. A quote in which he attacks liberals (the segment about a 'fallen leader' in the middle is in regards to the Haggard affair):

Those again on the liberal end of the spectrum are those who have no value system, or at least they say there is no moral and immoral. There's no right or wrong. . . . But when a religious leader, or especially an evangelical, falls, guess who is the most judgmental of him and calling him a hypocrite? . . . Those that said there is no right and wrong in the first place. The truth of the matter is there is right and wrong. And we all within our midst have failures, and they do occur."

Well, the people on the Right, whom Dobson represents, do indeed have values, but, according to another leader who would have been one of their own, the Right's values are not Jesus' values. Another quote [emphasis added]:

The Central Florida pastor recently tapped to lead the Christian Coalition of America resigned his position in a dispute about conservative philosophy -- more than a month before he was to fully assume his post, he said Wednesday.

The Rev. Joel Hunter, of Longwood's Northland, A Church Distributed, said he quit as president-elect of the group founded by evangelist Pat Robertson because he realized he would be unable to broaden the organization's agenda beyond opposing abortion and gay marriage.

He hoped to include issues such as easing poverty and saving the environment."These are issues that Jesus would want us to care about," Hunter said.

As Christians, we need to be open to the broad set of values that Jesus appealed to, not a narrow set that is advantageous to get out the vote and keep our party in power. Jesus spoke more often, and more clearly, about the disadvantaged, for example, than any other social issue, and yet the Religious Right would ignore it entirely- and support a part which seems to act regularly to increase rather than decrease the disadvantage.

The Left often makes the same mistake. But to say that the Left has no values? Judge not, Mr. Dobson, judge not.

GP