It’s impossible to calculate the damage done by right wing Christianity. In the circles I frequent, most of the talk concerns the obvious and subtle ways this branch of Christianity harms the public domain: our national politics, our culture, our society, even the arts. Somewhat less often, but still with some frequency, we hear the stories of individuals who are exploited, betrayed or mislead by self-professed preachers, and the megachurches they lead, who teach the narrowest, ungenerous, judgmental, misanthropic firm of Christianity ever. Well, perhaps with the exception of in Inquisition or the Crusades, but you get the point.

Lost, however, in the legitimate concern about the impact of right wing Christianity on the public and private domains is the effect it has on the view of Christianity itself. Pat Robertson, John Hagee, Benny Hinn, Jack Van Impe, Joel Osteen and Mike Huckabee, and their fellow travelers, have become the face of Christianity for the great majority of Americans. Right-to-life groups that shoot doctors, churches that protest funerals of people of whom they disapprove, public servants and public accommodation businesses which refuse to serve gay people and others in violation of the law, are seen by more and more people as what it means to live a Christian life. Like the writer of this article, many equate this truncated and distorted sort of Christianity with Christianity as a whole. No consideration is given to the possibility that there are other churches more in line with the inclusive, loving values that Jesus learned from the Rabbis and taught to his disciples.

My moderate and liberal Christian friends need to take this more seriously than they have up until now. Except in relatively small ways, they have abandoned the field of theological battle and conceded victory to the right wing. Where are the William Sloane Coffins, Daniel Berrigans and Martin Luther Kings of our day? Amazingly to many, I’m sure, there was a time not so long ago when the leaders of change, the voices of inclusion and the poets of conscience were Christians (with a disproportionate number of Jews, too). Sam Harris, Bill Maher and other prophets of the New Atheism use what they take as an hypocritical lack Christian conscience as the jumping-off point for critique of religion in general. And who is to blame for this? It’s the right wing Christians who twist or ignore the teachings of Jesus, and the moderate and liberal Christians who fail to mount a substantial and effective opposition to them. —Rabbi Kerry Baker

Read the referenced article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/keay-nigel/after-13-years-im-leaving-christianity_b_8488624.html?ir=Religion&ncid=newsltushpmg00000003