I just got this by email this afternoon:
In an inspiring display of bipartisan bridge-building, talk radio personality Rush Limbaugh has accepted Jim Wallis’ invitation to deliver a keynote address at Sojourners’ Mobilization to End Poverty conference in April.
“I’ve always said the monologue of the extreme right is over, and a new dialogue has begun,” said Wallis. “Well, that dialogue is about to get a whole lot louder.”
Bipartisan bridge-building? Whatever. This was a shock to me. But then, I remembered what day it was. Wow; did I get snookered with that! Look at me, the classic April Fool.
I’ve been working on a post about the Sojourners for a while now, and I suppose this is as good an opportunity to finish it up as any. I bumped into the Sojourners a while back and subscribed to their newsletter emailing list out of curiosity. From what I’ve read in those newsletters and on their website, saying that the Sojourners politics is left of center is a gross understatement. Their mission is based on what they call ‘social justice’, and they talk a lot about ending poverty, with seemingly no qualms about employing the government to make it happen. The tone of their newsletters has been next to giddy ever since Obama won the Presidency, presumably because Sojourners sees Obama as one of their own; a leftist determined to even the score between the have’s and the have-not’s in this country through some sort of government-imposed income redistribution.
I would take issue with the Sojourners for that alone, but it doesn’t stop there; they couch their program in Christian jargon, as if Jesus’ mission for Christians was to eliminate poverty through any means possible, including confiscatory taxes on the so-called ‘wealthy’ so the wealth can be “spread around”.
And that’s what really made me wonder what was behind Rush Limbaugh speaking at their big event. Of course, it was just a gag, complete with a hacked version of Limbaugh’s CPAC “national address” from earlier this year, reworded to have Rush mouthing the words that tickle their ears.
I’ve talked about this subject before; Jesus’ primary mission while on this Earth wasn’t to feed the poor or heal the sick or make the lame whole. He was here to save all of Mankind and to bring atonement for our sins. Did he feed the poor and heal the sick and make the lame whole? Sure. But he didn’t focus on that, and neither should we. Especially if doing that involves stealing what some people have rightfully earned so that we can, as our now-President so eloquently put it, “spread the wealth around”.