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The Jesus Litmus Test - 7/15/2010 9:47:17 PM

Brain

Posts: 3792
Joined: 2/14/2007
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There is always something the righties will use to keep out the riff raff or outsiders.

The Jesus Litmus Test

In today’s Republican Party, racial barriers may be falling, but religious barriers are alive and well. Just ask Bobby Jindal and Nikki Haley. Peter Beinart on the GOP’s phony diversity.

Jindal was raised Hindu and converted to Catholicism; Haley is a Sikh who became evangelical. There’s no reason to doubt the sincerity of their conversions. But both also seem aware that maintaining the non-Western religious traditions of their birth would have imperiled their political careers. In 2007, when Congress overwhelmingly passed a resolution recognizing the Hindu and Sikh festival of Diwali, Jindal abstained. Before running for governor, Haley noted that her family attended a Sikh Temple as well as a Methodist Church, but today she studiously avoids any reference to being born Sikh and as the campaign has progressed, her website has been updated to stress in increasingly emphatic terms her devotion to Jesus Christ. That’s hardly surprising given that the co-chairman of one of her Republican gubernatorial rivals circulated an email claiming that Haley 'can't make up her mind about her faith.”

The GOP’s basic problem is that many Republicans equate Christianity, or at least Judeo-Christianity, with Americanism. They do not believe it’s possible to truly uphold American ideals unless you identify with the religious traditions that supposedly underlie those ideals. In a country with a growing Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Mormon and atheist population, that’s a significant source of political bigotry. Is it good that the South Carolina GOP has embraced a South Asian woman? Of course. When that woman can practice whatever religion she wants, without fear that it will wreck her political career, then Republicans will truly deserve to crow.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-07-15/the-gops-phony-religious-diversity-peter-beinart-on-nikki-haley/

L: Nikki Haley speaks to the S.C. Republican party in Columbia, S.C. on June 23, 2010. (Photo: Brett Flashnick / AP Photo) R: Bobby Jindal speaks to the media on the drilling moratorium in New Orleans on July 8, 2010. (Photo: Joe Raedle / Getty Images)