How many scandals will it take for right-wing Christians to rediscover humility?

[Ian David]

Mark Souder, You Broke My Heart
How many scandals will it take for right-wing Christians to rediscover humility?


WASHINGTON—A fall from grace of the sort experienced recently by Indiana's Mark Souder typically brings smiles to the faces of liberals weary of moralistic religious types who preach one thing and do another.

But I took no pleasure in Souder's resignation from Congress last week after it was revealed that the conservative evangelical Republican had an affair with a part-time staff member. I always thought he was the real deal, both serious and thoughtful in his approach to religious and political questions. I disagreed with him on many things, but not on everything.

I wrote about Souder for the first time in 1998 because he and Rep. Chaka Fattah, a liberal Democrat from Philadelphia, had pushed through legislation to help students from high-poverty schools go to college. I liked their forging a left-right alliance in a good cause at a moment when the nation was torn by the battle over Bill Clinton's impeachment. Souder said at the time: "Christ is concerned about the needy and the hungry and the powerless and the hurting." Good for him, I thought.

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Enough with pretending that personal virtue is connected with political creeds. Enough with condemning your adversaries, sometimes viciously, and then insisting upon understanding after the failures of someone on your own side become known to the world. And enough with claiming that support for gay rights and gay marriage is synonymous with opposition to family values and sexual responsibility.

More (from Conservative publication The New Republic):
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/75114/mark-souder-you-broke-my-heart

Hat-tip to: http://twitter.com/peoplefor