{"id":82,"date":"2008-08-21T14:16:19","date_gmt":"2008-08-21T14:16:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/worshippng-mamon-at-saddleback.html"},"modified":"2008-08-21T14:16:19","modified_gmt":"2008-08-21T14:16:19","slug":"worshippng-mamon-at-saddleback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/worshippng-mamon-at-saddleback.html","title":{"rendered":"McCain and the Eye of a Needle"},"content":{"rendered":"

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We have heard a lot in the past years about Evangelicals being more concerned about issues such as climate change, AIDS, and, especially, poverty.  So it was jarring that there was so little concern from Evangelicals about Senator McCain’s out of touch answer on who is rich in America<\/st1:place><\/st1:country-region>.  After generously offering that he wants everyone to be rich, McCain suggested that perhaps those who had a wealth of $5,000,000 might make the cut.  Voters are reminded of McCain’s distorted perception of wealth again today when AP reported that <\/font>John McCain has lost track of how many houses he and his wife own. <\/font><\/a><\/p>\n

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We are<\/font><\/o:p> living in a time when the disparity between those with the most money and those with the least is wider than it has been for a century.  In 2005 an average CEO was paid 821 times as much as a minimum wage earner.  <\/span>45 million Americans do not have health insurance and the nation’s poverty rate rose to 12.7 percent of the population last year. <\/span><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

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All religions have warnings about how wealth distorts values and dangerously tempts to focus our lives towards material gain at the expense of our spiritual well being.  You cannot serve both God and Mammon says the Lord (Matt 6:24).  Poverty is a values issue and it is a religious issue.  Both the Republicans and the Democrats must take it seriously if they want, as they claim, to be on God’s side.   <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  We have heard a lot in the past years about Evangelicals being more concerned about issues such as climate change, AIDS, and, especially, poverty.  So it was jarring that there was so little concern from Evangelicals about Senator McCain’s out of touch answer on who is rich in America.  After generously offering that he…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election-08","category-poverty"],"yoast_head":"\nMcCain and the Eye of a Needle - Progressive Revival<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/worshippng-mamon-at-saddleback.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"McCain and the Eye of a Needle - 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Paul B. Raushenbush is the moderator of the Progressive Revival blog and the Associate Dean of Religious Life at Princeton University. .An ordained American Baptist minister, Rev. Raushenbush speaks and preaches at colleges, churches and institutes around the country including the College of Preachers at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C., The Chautauqua Institute in upstate New York, and the New America Foundation. Rev. Raushenbush has served at Seattle First Baptist Church, the Presbyterian Chaplaincy at Columbia University and as College and Young Adult Minister at The Riverside Church in New York City. He has appeared on ABC World News Tonight and is a repeated guest on CNN. He has been quoted in The New York Times and The Washington Post and is a contributing editor for Beliefnet.com. His first book, Teen Spirit: One World, Many Faiths (HCI) was released in the Fall of 2004. He is the editor of the 100th Anniversary edition of Walter Rauschenbusch\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s book Christianity and the Social Crisis \u00e2\u20ac\u201c In the 21st Century (HarperOne). His work at Princeton includes strengthening the interfaith community on campus. He is the Co-Director of the Program on Religion, Diplomacy and International Relations at The Liechtenstein Institute on Self Determination at Princeton University. Rev. Raushenbush studied religion at Macalester College before attending Union Theological Seminary in New York City where he graduated with distinction.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/author\/praushenbush"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}