Robin Meyers on Our “Christian” Leaders’ Immorality

These are excerpts from a speech given at the Universtiy of Oklahoma by Rev. Dr. Robin Meyers of Oklahoma City’s Mayflower Congregational Church. Be sure to read at least the last two boxes. (Numbers added.)

(Meyers has a new book out, Why The Christian Right is Wrong which I hope to review soon.)

We need to have a discussion, all over this country, about exactly what constitutes a moral value …

1. When you start a war on false pretenses, and then act as if … your critics are either unpatriotic or lacking in faith … this is not only not moral, but immoral.

2. When you live in a country that has established international rules for waging a just war, build the United Nations on your own soil to enforce them, and then arrogantly break the very rules you set down for the rest of the world, you are doing something immoral.

3. When you claim that Jesus is the Lord of your life, and yet fail to acknowledge that your policies ignore his essential teachings, or turn them on their head … you are doing something immoral.

4. When you act as if the lives of Iraqi civilians are not as important as the lives of American soldiers, and refuse to even count them, you are doing something immoral.

5. When you find a way to avoid combat in Vietnam, and then question the patriotism of someone who volunteered to fight, and came home a hero, you are doing something immoral.

6. When you ignore the fundamental teachings of the gospel, which says that the way the strong treat the weak is the ultimate ethical test, by giving tax breaks to the wealthiest among us so the strong will get stronger and the weak will get weaker, you are doing something immoral.

7. When you fail to veto a single spending bill, but ask us to pay for a war with no exit strategy and no end in sight, creating an enormous deficit that hangs like a great millstone around the necks of our children, you are doing something immoral.

8. When you cause most of the rest of the world to hate a country that was once the most loved country in the world … you have done something immoral.

9. When you claim that our God is bigger than their God, and that our killing is righteous, while theirs is evil, we have begun to resemble the enemy we claim to be fighting, and that is immoral.

10. When you talk about Jesus constantly, who was a healer of the sick, but do nothing to make sure that anyone who is sick can go to see a doctor, even if she doesn’t have a penny in her pocket, you are doing something immoral.

I’m tired of people thinking that because I’m a Christian, I must be a supporter of President Bush, or that because I favor civil rights and gay rights I must not be a person of faith.

… the only question is how many people are going to die before these makebelieve Christians are removed from power?

This country is bankrupt. The war is morally bankrupt. The claim of this administration to be Christian is bankrupt.

Arrogance is the opposite of faith.

Greed is the opposite of charity.

And believing that one has never made a mistake is the mark of a deluded man, not a man of faith.

And what is the dream of the prophets? That we should study war no more, that we should beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks. Who would Jesus bomb, indeed?

And there’s more where that came from. It’s sad that this speech was given over a year and a half ago, and it is even more true now than then.

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