America’s - and the GOP's - Christian Hypocrisy

A piece in Salon looks at an issue that this blog looks at frequently: the hypocrisy of this country's conservative Christians and their puppets in the GOP.  As the sub-headline of the piece notes "The Bible preaches tolerance and liberal economics. So why do its proponents embrace right-wing politics?"  The positive news is that more and more of the so-called millennials are apparently waking up to this reality an walking away from institutional religion all together according to a new report by the Public Religion Research Institute and Georgetown’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs.  The denomination suffering the biggest losses?  The Roman Catholic Church - even among Hispanics.  The U. S. Bishops and the porcine Timothy Dolan may like to claim that all is well in Catholicism, but the numbers of millennials fleeing the Church tells a very different story.  As for the cause of the exodus, I would argue that much is the handiwork of far right Christians and the professional Christian set who are slowly but steadily killing the Christian brand.  Here are highlights from Salon:

As the Pew Research Center recently discovered, “Most people who agree with the religious right also support the Tea Party” and its ultra-conservative economic agenda. Summing up the situation, scholar Gregory Paul wrote in the Washington Post that many religious Christians in America simply ignore the Word and “proudly proclaim that the creator of the universe favors free wheeling, deregulated union busting, minimal taxes, especially for wealthy investors, and plutocrat-boosting capitalism as the ideal earthly scheme for his human creations.”

The good news is that this may be starting to change. In recent years, for instance, Pew has found that younger evangelicals are less devoutly committed to the Republican Party and its Tea Party-inspired agenda than older evangelicals. 

The better news, of course, is that the far right is not only losing allegiance to its hate and hypocrisy filled agenda with millennials, but it's losing more and more of this generation completely.  In terms of LGBT issues and immigration, here are some findings from the report of the Public Religion Research Institute and Georgetown’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs:

• Nearly 6-in-10 college age millenials favor allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry legally. 
• 8-in-10 college millenials attending a private college or university support same sex marriage.
• Almost two-thirds of millennials say that "anti-gay" describes present day Christianity.
• 6-in-10 say that present day Christianity is judgmental.
• 58% agree that "hypocritical" describes present day Christianity.
• Milleninials across all major religious groups favor the DREAM ACT.

Obviously not good news for the GOP long term.