From
RawStory.com (my highlights):
Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly defended the Republican Party’s
spending cuts for SNAP by effectively declaring Jesus would not support
food stamps for the poor because most them are drug addicts. If his
insensitive remark is inconsistent with Scripture, which it is, then the
question becomes why do talking heads on the right get away with
proclaiming what Jesus would or wouldn’t support?
The answer is simple: Conservatives have not read the Bible.
The Right has successfully rebranded the brown-skinned
liberal Jew, who gave away free healthcare and was pro-redistributing
wealth, into a white-skinned, trickledown, union-busting conservative,
for the very fact that an overwhelming number of Americans are
astonishingly illiterate when it comes to understanding the Bible. On
hot-button social issues, from same-sex marriage to abortion, biblical
passages are invoked without any real understanding of the context or
true meaning. It’s surprising how little Christians know of what is
still the most popular book to ever grace the American continent.
More than 95 percent of U.S. households own at least one
copy of the Bible. So how much do Americans know of the book that
one-third of the country believes to be literally true? Apparently, very
little, according to data from the Barna Research group. Surveys show
that 60 percent can’t name more than five of the Ten Commandments; 12
percent of adults think Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife; and nearly 50
percent of high school seniors think Sodom and Gomorrah were a married
couple. A Gallup poll shows 50 percent of Americans can’t name the first
book of the Bible, while roughly 82 percent believe “God helps those
who help themselves” is a biblical verse.
So, if Americans get an F in the basic fundamentals of the
Bible, what hope do they have in knowing what Jesus would say about
labor unions, taxes on the rich, universal healthcare, and food stamps?
It becomes easy to spread a lie when no one knows what the truth is.
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