the definition of religion

I don't know what they put in the water over at Political Animal. But some of them folks sure get goofy. If they aren't careful, they'll start picking up speed heading down the same road traveled by TNR. Take Amy Sullivan, fr'instance (insert Henny Youngman joke here). She has up yet another post, where she accuses Democrats in general of being disrespectful towards religion. (She was joined by Steve Waldman, who also cited Michael Lerner to support the proposition.) Amy's heart appears to be in the right place. I don't doubt her good intentions. But the character and quality of her reasoning are seriously flawed. Digby eviscerated the premise in a post yesterday. And he was seconded by Atrios. They brand her argument "God baiting." The bottom line is this: so-called "religious" right wingers are plainly NOT RELIGIOUS!!! I mentioned previously, the alleged "Christian Right" rather obviously practices in diametric opposition to the teachings and philosophy of Christ as described in the Bible. It doesn't do all the stuff folks learned about in Sunday School, it promotes hate and intolerance and triumphalism instead. Right wing fundamentalist faux "Christians" wear their "religion" like a suit of clothes, so as to enjoy profit from the association, politically and financially. These people should more properly be identified as "Money Changer Christians." They are simply not genuine Christians; they are precisely the sort of people Christ chased away from his church. You can read about it in the Bible. To be sure, these phony "religious" political enterprises, which operate in service to their preferred flavor of despotism, have managed to fabricate the glossy veneer of what is conventionally understood to be religion. They have "churches" and "ministries" and they hype themselves as "faithfully religious." But it is all a quite staggeringly transparent charade. And people who really should know better simply turn their noses away, and refuse to smell the shit shoved up their schnozolas. Unless we are all ready to agree that the definition of religion is "a social organization for a group of people who have appointed themselves moral and cultural superiors, who operate together solely to criticize non-believers and to demand they be criminally punished for their difference," then there is simply no credible basis for the claim that "Democrats are disrespectful towards religion." Sullivan and Waldman, and others like them, may as well identically bash Democrats for being disrespectful of the Salem witch burnings and the Spanish Inquisition. You know, those morally superior "religious" practices Democrats don't work hard enough to copy.