Christianity: Left, Right or Center?

I am troubled by the Bush administration co-opting Christianity to further their not-very-Christian agenda. I see the political cartoons showing Bush in some self-compromised stance, while in the background, there's a flag-waving, self-righteous guy, who's also waving the Bible at some Godless democrats who favor abortion or who are against the war in Iraq.

My country has, twice in a row, elected a man who speaks English worse than any of my recent immigrant 6th graders (I'm trying to be kind here...), and who struts around with a proud smirk while he eliminates our personal freedoms.

Benedict of Nursia, the founder of Western monasticism, says that pride is the basic flaw in the human system and that humility is its corrective.

--Sr. Joan Chittister, who further says: "Humility is not an American virtue."

Where are the true (read: virtuous) heros today to whom our young people can look up to?

Creating arrogant and self-centered bullies in the name of self-reliance is just as bad as creating simpering and insecure adults in the name of religion.

--Chittester

I work with (29) 11 and 12 year olds whose only view of the world outside their limited exposure to the Bay Area in which we live is the television. God help them. And us. Violence creeps into their verbal and physical communication with each other. The 'heros' they're given daily are anyone from our weight-lifting governor to the smirky guy in the White House. In between are all of the misogynist rappers.

I'm trying to teach these kids that humility can be liberating. That they don't need to project that they're something that they're not. And I realize that they're at the exact age, especially the boys, when they feel it's necessary to wear the toughest armor they can come up with. And again, where are their mentors? Certainly not in the media.

The goal of the twenty-first century is to cure all diseases, rectify all inefficiency, topple all obstacles, end all stress. We wait for nothing, put up with little, and abide less, reacting with fury at irritations. We do not tolerate process. We want power, and we want to exercise it now...in the end, raw power cannot prevail. Ambition is bondage.

--Chittister

I want the best for my students, my country and my religion. I'm not sure if Bush's plan to Christianize and democratize the world is how Jesus, the most democratic human to have lived, would go about it. Would He use the the same collection of "The 25 most infuential Evangelicals", that Time magazine just featured? I don't think so.