Via Dănuţ Mănăstireanu I learned of a blog post by Richard Rohr entitled “Christian Conservatives seldom Conserve the Real Tradition” which seems to me to deserve to be widely circulated, read, and discussed. Rohr writes:

Why do I mistrust so much Christian “conservativism”?

1) It usually wants to “conserve” a very recent version of history or Christianity (theirs!)

2) It is almost always tied to money and power, which seems very unlike Jesus.

3) It loves the status quo too much, which is really to love one’s own comfort, security, and status.

4) It seldom loves the poor or the outsider, which Jesus consistently loved.

5) It invariably makes “pevlic issues” the test case instead of what Jesus consistently emphasized: power, arrogance, pride, superiority, delusion, and hypocrisy.

6) But most of all, because conservatives tend to be so humorless, unable to smile, and can very seldom critique or naturally laugh at their own limitations, biases, or blindnesses. (Tell me one!) It takes way too much energy to protect the

whole and total truth and there is so little joy or freedom left for the rest of life.

7) To be fair, many progressives and liberals are just as bad.