Tempting Faith shows Bush exploitation of Christians

I’m not usually one to post videos on blogs, but this two part series on the Keith Olbermann show covers the new book by David Kuo, a longtime conservative Christian political operative and deputy director of White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction appears to be just what its title claims: a thorough expose of the way the Bush administration has strung along Christian leaders over the last 6 years. The general themes of broken promises to conservatives won’t come as a surprise, but the specifics coming from an insider are still very disturbing. One minor, but telling quote from the book:

[Christian leaders] were given passes to be in the crowd greeting the president or tickets for a speech he was giving. Little trinkets like cufflinks or pens or pads of paper. Christian leaders could give them to their congregations or donors or friends to show just how influential they were. Making politically active Christian personally happy meant having to worry far less about the political Christian agenda.

But you can watch it all in gory glory for yourself in Part 1:

and Part 2:

Let’s see how long it takes the Rove machine to come up with a way to discredit Kuo. Or perhaps they’ll line up the Christian leaders to make statements of support. According to this post on The Carpetbagger Report Focus on the Family has already sent a damage control email to their supporters playing the victim card:

Big media will no doubt play this story to the hilt in the next several weeks, because it allows them to take aim at two of their favorite targets: President Bush and socially conservative Christians. Sadly, Kuo’s characterization of his former colleagues, bosses and mission – mischaracterizations, really – will be fed to the public as truth.

For once, I agree with Dr. Dobson. Christians are a target. But of whom?

P.S. It will be interesting to watch the reaction in the conservative blogosphere. Follow the explosion of blog posts on this via Technorati.

Comments (6)

  1. Pingback: Weblog

  2. jdaniel

    As the automatically generated comment above suggests, the folks at Christianity Is More have a link to this post and a comment regarding YAR. I must say I was a bit confused by the reference to the New Monasticism. Can anyone clear that up for me?

  3. Brian Hamilton

    JDaniel: the New Monasticism is a (inter?)national movement, among and beyond evangelicals, trying to reclaim the monastic vision of a Christian life together. The Simple Way (Philly, PA) and the Rutba House (Durham, NC) have been at the forefront of the movement. Nate is (generously) identifying the re-awakening of the Anabaptist communal impulse among young adults as part of this overall movement. He’s referring in particular, I’m assuming, to things like Bike Movement and a group of folks re-connecting with Fellowship of Hope in Elkhart, who themselves spent close to two decades under a common rule. Does that get at your confusion?

  4. jdaniel

    Yes; Thanks Brian. I had forgotten about The Simple Way. ~Dan

  5. ST

    very interesting

  6. Pingback: Fire at the Simple Way » Young Anabaptist Radicals

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