Marvin Gandall wrote:
>
> My own
> view is that the Bible can be invoked to justify either social inequality or
> social justice,
Yes. But I would put it more strongly. Almost any religious doctrine can be (and most have been) invoked to support almost any social/political position. Even in the present, the linkage of a given religious position to a given political position is not 100 to 0; always some proportion differs from the majority. And nothing in the present can simply be projected into the future.
That is why (as I wrote and Chip Berlet underlined sometime in the past year) it is so stupid to write off any sector of the populace because of their religious beliefs _now_; those identical beliefs under change conditions can AND WILL BE drawn on to support quite different political positions. Leftists MUST always double-think re present and future.
You are right of course that it was/is racial rather than religous attitudes that explained the Republican Southern Strategy. Back in 1969 the most radical campus minister here was a Baptist.
Carrol