Episcopal Activists: All in it for "Moral Mondays"

This summer has seen a new protest movement in our neighboring state of North Carolina. The movement, which is largely made up of secular Democrats, calls itself "Moral Mondays" and  holds demonstrations outside the state Capitol each week. I guess it was only a matter of time before the thought of getting oneself arrested for protesting the attempts of a conservative legislature to deal with a projected $288,000,000 budget shortfall for FY2013 became too much of a temptation for the Episcopal gadflies who are now boasting about their political activism, and how this is all so very moral.

What could be more moral than to try to protest your state into bankruptcy?

The Episcopal News Service is of course all agog over this. Even the Presiding bishop is singing the praises of her brave clergy people as they march off to the pokey. Here is a taste of the ENS viewpoint.

“There was a legislative agenda that was being enacted in the General Assembly that was disproportionately impacting the poor, the elderly, the vulnerable, and potentially disenfranchising even some voters,” (Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina Bishop Michael) Curry said. “So what could have been seen as simply politics as usual became much more a matter of public morality.”

As I said, the protesters are overwhelmingly Democrat, so Bishop Curry is wrong. This is simply politics.

From Civitas Review Online

“It was going to harm them by taking public money away from the public schools and redirecting some of that money to vouchers … It was going to harm them by ending the Racial Justice Act, which allowed decisions that could lead to capital punishment for people to be revisited for racial bias. … They’ve now done this by disenfranchising many voters by one of the most stringent voter ID laws in the country.”

Liberals really do hate the idea of school vouchers. I guess Bishop Curry feels that it is a moral imperative to send children to failing schools rather than to give parents the option of seeking something better. And I guess the Bishop feels it is morally right to hold a potentially fraudulent election in the absence of some form of voter ID.

"They’re also refusing to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act and have cut unemployment insurance", he said.

If the state of North Carolina is having problems balancing its budget now, how does he expect them to pay for Medicaid expansion when the bill comes due two years from now? I guess the morality of robbing Peter to pay Paul does not come into the equation for Bishop Curry.

And, Fischbeck (Rev. Lisa Fischbeck, vicar of the Episcopal Church of the Advocate in Chapel Hill)  said, they’ve “drastically reduced the number of teacher’s aides in public classrooms” while increasing the number of students per teacher.

All the more reason to support education vouchers.

“This is cruel. This is inhumane,” (Bishop) Curry said. “This is not a liberal thing or even a conservative thing. This is a human thing. The state of North Carolina is harming and hurting its citizens by law, and that’s wrong, and the church cannot sit idly by, and people of good will and decency cannot sit by and be silent. And that is the root of Moral Monday.”

Those cruel and inhumane Republicans... You know you have lost the argument when you resort to dehumanizing and name-calling.

"During a recent rally, at least 80 percent of the crowd cheered when asked to identify themselves if they were not in any faith group but were participating because it was the right thing to do", she (Fischbeck) said.

Okay, what do the secular use as their basis to judge what is "the right thing to do"? If you answered, "Their individual judgement which is usually shaped by the surrounding culture," then you answered correctly. Taking a quick look around and it would appear that secular morality is not exactly taking us in a good direction.

“One could argue that this is an evangelical moment,” she The Revd. Fischbeck said.

This is what the Episcopal church calls an evangelical moment: Dog collars in the paddy wagon moving to Central Lockup. What could be more immoral than to try to draw unsuspecting pagans into a confused, muddled up, and sometimes heretical church? I thought evangelism was something like what Dale Matson blogged about last week.

While she didn't show up to get cuffs slapped on her, the Presiding Bishop did try to get on the evangelistic bandwagon, and we all know what a great evangelist she has turned out to be in pruning the fruitless tree of who knows how many souls (250,000?) and then bragging about it.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori noted the movement’s efforts during a sermon at St. James Episcopal Church in Roanoke, Virginia, on July 21.
“...the legislature is passing bill after bill trying to turn back the clock on the fruit of several decades of justice-making that had helped to create a more enlightened society – education for as many as possible, just working conditions, care for those who can’t care for themselves. At the moment the folks in the statehouse are undoing piece after piece of that just community. The fruit is being squashed and thrown in the rubbish bin, in a fit of pique."

In a separate report on the Moral Mondays movement we read,

"They are taking us back 150 years," Kojo Nantambu, president of the Charlotte chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, told the crowd

If that were true, then there might be a morally just cause, but I don't buy it.

These protesters are trying to claim the moral high ground when what they are really trying to do is to force their own personal political agenda down the majority's throats.

What's so moral about that?