Biggest Disappointment of 2006: the Church

Christians: shame on you. Do you obey Caesar or God? What evils have you sought to bring to an end? Gay marraige? Come on - you must be kidding. War? Bush hasn't had so many willing fighters. AIDS? That's a start at least. Poverty? ha ha ha. As Frank Rich notes in Sunday's NYT, it seems that religious leaders have been slow to catch on to the fact that “politicians use Christian voters for their money and for their votes” and give them little in return except a reputation for bigotry and heartless opposition to the lifesaving potential of stem-cell research."

What Martin Luther King wrote in his 1963 "Letter from Birmingham City Jail" is as appropriate now as it was then:

The contemporary church is often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch-supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are. But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.