Posted on 08/10/2009 11:41:28 AM PDT by mdittmar
* Liberal religious groups launch health reform campaign
* Obama joins nationwide call-in with religious leaders
By Ed Stoddard
DALLAS, Aug 10 (Reuters) - Liberal religious groups announced on Monday they are teaming up with President Barack Obama in a national campaign to counter the surprisingly vehement conservative opposition to his plan for overhaul of the U.S. healthcare industry this year.
Organized by liberal-leaning evangelicals, some mainline Protestant clergy, and some Catholic groups, it will include Obama participating in a call-in program with religious leaders streamed on the Internet on Aug. 19, prayer meetings and nationwide television ads.
"As a pastor I believe access to healthcare is a profoundly moral issue," Rev. Stevie Wakes of Olivet Institutional Baptist in Kansas City, said in a news teleconference announcing the "40 days for Health Reform" campaign.
Protestors have confronted members of Congress across the country in town hall meetings held to take the public pulse on the various healthcare overhaul plans being written in Congress.
What lawmakers found was anger fueled in part by Christian and conservative radio that healthcare would lead to taxpayer funded abortion and even euthanasia for the old, have incited much of the loudest and most dramatic reaction.
Conservative Catholics often side with Republican-leaning evangelicals in opposition to abortion rights but the biblical call to help the sick and the poor is also an important part of the faith. Obama's healthcare agenda includes extending health insurance to the roughly 46 million uninsured Americans.
Some of the opposition is being fueled by leaders of the "religious right," the conservative Christian movement that remains a key base for the opposition Republican Party.
Religion often plays a huge role in politics in America, where church attendance is high. Obama tapped into this sentiment during his White House race, often talking openly about his own Christian faith.
This counterpunch by what has been called the religious left will also feature events with members of Congress in states such as Colorado and Florida. Conservative Democratic members of Congress in several states are regarded as key by both sides to the success or failure of health reform.
Analysts say it remains to be seen if it will pay off with some political dividends at this crucial juncture for the healthcare plan. Lawmakers have said they are working to pass the legislation this year to avoid embroiling healthcare reform in next year's congressional election politics.
"I think that the Democrats were surprised by the strength of the religious right and the insurance companies and those opposed to healthcare reform when they got their grass roots efforts going," said Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
"So it took awhile for the Religious Left to get their national campaign going and we'll see whether or not it has the same emotion and intensity," he said.
The groups behind the effort include Faith in Public Life, Faithful America and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good.
“...surprisingly vehement conservative opposition...”
####
Only “surprising” because, except for the Reagan years, the diseased Left has had it far too easy, since their sick and destructive coming-out party in the late 1960’s.
FAR too easy.
Piously socialist? Devout marxists? Communist true believers? Bitter clingers to Mao’s Red bible?
What is the “religious left”? Jeremiah Wrigt Christianity?
That's a good thing to believe Pastor Wakes and I just know that from now on you will be taking all the income of your church and apply it to members of your congregation to cover their health care needs. If there's any left over you'll go outside your congregation and spend it on other poor folks health care needs.
Admirable!
Of which 20 million are not Americans at all, but ILLEGAL F'N ALIENS !!!
“As a pastor I believe access to healthcare is a profoundly moral issue,” Rev. Stevie Wakes”
These anti-christians and Marxist trash make me sick.
Giving of one’s wealth to help the poor is to be done freely, in secret and not forced by a bunch of thugs in a robe proclaiming it’s God’s will.
Where is the seperation of church and state protesters?
“The Religious Left”? Sounds like people who don’t really know Jesus to me.
Black Liberation Theology....among other beliefs/demands, they want Abortion on Demand. Don't want to kill anyone in Iraq or Afghanistan or on Death Row, but don't mind killing the nearly born.
I’ve received tweets in #tcot on Jesus being a “universal healthcare provider”.
As a Christian, I believe armed robbery is a profoundly immoral behavior, even if it done to pay for somebody's health care.
When I was a kid my home town had four hospitals, one Baptist, one Methodist, one Catholic, and a Charity Hospital run by the county. All were non-profit. That is the way it was all over the country until Medicare was passed in 1965. Then for-profit hospitals and nursing homes sprang up and costs sky rocketed. They have continued to go up ever since.
astro turf.
There is absolutely
NO VIRTUE - NONE
in using coercion to make others pay for what YOU deem a “moral requirement”. There is also NO VIRTUE when a man is forced to comply with your moral view. CHOICE is essential to moral virtue.
All commie agitators who nobody pays any attention too other than to roll ones eyes or tsk tsk tsk...
The “homosexuals for Jesus” groups are out demonstrating something again?
There is no such thing as “liberal Christians”.
There are too many essential Christian fundamentals that must be denied in order to BE a liberal.
ping
< /s >
It is one thing to help your neighbor, or even a total stranger, fallen into a ditch, when it is of your volition, and another altogether to be forced to surrender your resources under the threat of force to provide this assist through a third party. Robin Hood run amok.
No! No! No!!!
He doesn't believe in the version of the Parable of the Good Samaritan in which the Samaritan use his OWN money to have the inn keeper take care of the injured man.
Rather, he believes in the version in which the Samaritan takes his sword and “taxes” other travelers as they come by, threatens the inn keeper to make him take only 40% of the normal fee, and then keeps the rest so he can sleep in the best places and eat the best food on the remainder of his journey.
Although, I don't think that is what Jesus had in mind when he told his disciples to sell their cloaks to buy a sword.
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