EMPATHY: Where have you gone?

Webelievewevote.com might be the most infuriating anti-non-white Christian group yet. To actually sit in church on Sunday and listen to their video invitation to visit their website of political endorsements and repudiations is exactly why the most segregated place across America is inside a church on a Sunday morning.

It’s Ralph Reid’s Christian Coalition all over again. Have we really forgotten Reid’s association with K-street crook Abramoff (who bribed elected officials for more Indian casinos)? Reid went on Abramoff’s Scottish golf excursions. Reid’s the only one who didn’t go to prison.

Yes, the right to life and upholding traditional marriage are important biblical positions, but the injustices of low private sector wages and no health care are even more anti-marriage and anti-childbirth. Both marriage and new births are in retreat. Pragmatism to one’s ethnicity and gender affects how one votes. Yet empathy eludes us all!

Runaway federal debt is jeopardizing our nation’s very existence. Medicare/Medicaid, defense spending and new tax cuts have our nation’s debt approaching 80 percent of our Gross Domestic Product.

And now we have our own white version of Jesse Jackson touring Northwest Republican strongholds this month by the name of Franklin Graham, who actually applauded the convicted federal land burners in eastern Oregon’s presidential pardons. Immigrant law breakers are worse?

The late Rev. Billy Graham learned a painful lesson back in ’72 by including later disgraced President Nixon in one of his crusades. The elder Graham wisely steered clear of endorsements from that time on. We should too. Or are Jesus’s own words in Matthew 23:23 suddenly false?

MIKE RENO

Newman Lake