Wobbly bleeding-heart liberals strike again

The New Zealand Herald reports that major mainline church leaders in New Zealand are banding together against what they call the 'politics of fear.'

The New Zealand Herald yawns, and quotes to prove why it's yawning. Church leaders drawl on in the most banal and abstract of prose, putting even this rabid radical Christian to sleep:

Underpinning each person's vision for society will be a number of assumptions about what it means to be human ... that can be characterised by two broad emphases. The first tends to regard each person primarily as an autonomous individual, each with his or her own needs, aspirations and interests....

How are progressive Christians to change the world if they can't even wake up their future progressives??

When I spoke several months ago to Mother Jones founder, activist, and Harvard professor Richard Parker, he warned me against just this sort of banality.

This is what the Right expects of us, he said: loose ideas, vague generalities, good-hearted exalting of human potential.

We have so much more to offer. The war on terror shows government corruption to be rife. Guantanamo Bay proves that there are regimes that have distorted patriotism, religion, and human rights to an unrecognizable degree.

Progressives need to fight for real issues, and stand on real grounds. Progressive Christians all the more so: we stand not only on reason, truth, and human rights, but also on the text of the Gospels, the teachings of Jesus Christ, and the movement of the Holy Spirit.