The Christian Right And "Messing With God"

Read Pat Murphy in the Idaho Mountain Express:

Although it has received scant national attention, two crooks running the Baptist Foundation of Arizona were convicted by a Phoenix jury in July of fleecing 11,000 gullible religious investors out of $585 million. They each face 46 years in prison.

Then there's the darling of the religious right, baby-faced Ralph Reed, the oily architect of Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition. Reed was thoroughly drubbed in the July primary for Georgia lieutenant governor.

Why didn't Reed's sham as a man of faith work with voters? Because like most gluttonous opportunists posing as godly, Reed was outed as a liar and imposter.

Even as he piously claimed special virtues, Republican Reed secretly was demanding several millions of dollars from convicted Washington Republican racketeer-lobbyist Jack Abramoff as payment for recruiting Christians to oppose Texas legislation that would've damaged an Abramoff gambling client.

Presbyterian Reed might've saved himself if he'd honored Chapter 15, Verse 6 of the Presbyterian Westminster Confession of Faith: "He that scandalizeth his brother, or the Church of Christ, ought to be willing, by a private or public confession and sorrow for his sin, to declare his repentance to those that are offended, who are thereupon to be reconciled to him, and in love to receive him."