George W. Bush:
What Kind of Christian Is He?

New Editorial—
Justice Sunday?
An Open Letter to James Dobson

A “Gospel” of Hate: Christians, Moral Values, and Gays

Abortion: The Great Republican Smoke Screen

Open Letter to American Evangelicals

Karl Rove: Bush May Talk to God, but He Listens to Rove

Mission Statement & Doctrine

 

About Believers Against Bush

Who are we? If our name doesn’t tell you, let us put it this way:

Believers:

We believe in the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth

• Who summed up the “law and the prophets” in the commandment to love God, and love our neighbor.
• Who did not condemn the woman taken in adultery, who kept company with the societal outcasts of His day—prostitutes and tax-gatherers.
• Who lived his life and died His death for the benefit of others—for the whole world, as a matter of fact.
• Whose obedience to God lead—not to political power and personal gain—but to suffering, humiliation, and death.

We believe in the grace of God

• Every human being, regardless of gender, color, religion, political persuasion or sexual orientation is created in the image of God, and Jesus’ death and life was on behalf of every human being.
• Jesus “came into the world to save sinners; among whom I am foremost of all.” (I Timothy 1:15) These words of the Apostle Paul—which seem to represent a confession of faith that all believers should take to heart— reflect our common humanity, and especially our inability to claim any sort of moral superiority over anyone.
• God extends grace to us, we believe we must extend compassion to every human being. Jesus told the parable about the servant who owed his master 10,000 talents (Matt. 18:23-25). The servant could not pay his master, and begged his master for mercy. The master forgave the servant his debt, but the servant “found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded... Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’”
• The grace of God brings godly transformation to our live, for those of us who follow Jesus, we become transformed to His image (Rom. 8:29, Col. 1:27)

Against:

We believe in the prophetic call of the Scriptures, in which Jesus and the prophets spoke out against some of the following:

• The Jewish prophets spoke out against an unjust society that favored the rich, devoured the poor, and showed little or no compassion to the widows and orphans.
• In the Scriptures, Jesus spoke out against self-righteousness and religious hypocrisy (Scribes and Pharisees) and against those who profited from the business of religion (money changers in the Temple).

Bush:

We believe that the Bush administration neither holds the teachings of Jesus in high regard, nor takes seriously the message of the Bible as whole. We feel that the Republican party and the Religious Right have—in effect—hijacked Jesus by focusing on a few pet issues and ignoring the totality of Biblical teaching.

Further Reading

The Great Republican Smokescreen: how conservatives have used allegedly Christian issues to get your vote, and once in power tokenized those issues and instead enacted ungodly policies.

Democracy in the Balance by Bill Moyers. From the article:

OVER THE PAST few years, as the poor got poorer, the health care crisis worsened, wealth and media became more and more concentrated, and our political system was bought out from under us, prophetic Christianity lost its voice. The Religious Right drowned everyone else out.

And they hijacked Jesus. The very Jesus who stood in Nazareth and proclaimed, "The Lord has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor." The very Jesus who told 5,000 hungry people that all of you will be fed, not just some of you. The very Jesus who challenged the religious orthodoxy of the day by feeding the hungry on the Sabbath, who offered kindness to the prostitute and hospitality to the outcast, who raised the status of women and treated even the tax collector like a child of God. The very Jesus who drove the money changers from the temple. This Jesus has been hijacked and turned into a guardian of privilege instead of a champion of the dispossessed. Hijacked, he was made over into a militarist, hedonist, and lobbyist, sent prowling the halls of Congress in Guccis, seeking tax breaks and loopholes for the powerful, costly new weapon systems that don't work, and punitive public policies.

—Bill Moyers, Sojourners Magazine, August 2004

 

The Bible and Economic Justice. (coming soon) Unfettered—we dare say unregulated—free market capitalism is not Biblical at all. In fact, Mosaic law recognizes the tendency of wealth to be concentrated in the hands of a few, and contains provisions to care for the poor, and to redistribute wealth. The Religious Right, as well as those who would try to make “God’s law” into the law of the land, has conveniently forgotten these Biblical provisions:

• Interest is forbidden on non-commercial loans
• Non-commercial loans are completely forgiven during the Sabbatical year
• In the Jubilee year (50th year) all land sold is returned to the ancestral owner