Marginal Christianity

                    Photo: AP Photo/Tony Dejak 2016 Election March 27, 2015   182 Tweet 3.5k Share By Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig @ebruenig Photo: AP Photo/Tony Dejak O hio’s governor John Kasich certainly won't be president, nor even receive the Republican party’s nomination in 2016. But if Kasich does throw his hat into the increasingly packed Republican primary ring (as some sources suggest he intends to do), the long-term outcome for American politics could be even better than a hypothetical win. This is because, unlike his Republican competitors, Kasich takes Christian politics very seriously. Within the lore of conservative Christian politics, there is a line of questionable thinking regarding state-funded welfare that is far more recent than its proliferators make it seem. The story goes like this .

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/derek-penwell/following_jesus-_b_6146322.html Posted: 11/12/2014 5:08 pm EST Updated: 4 hours ago hadynyah via Getty Images In the aftermath of the recent elections in which candidates running on a platform that offered a perfunctory hat tip as it hurtled passed the middle class on the way to performing an unctuous curtsey before big money, I was once again struck by how the heavily metered halo of religious light around social issues distracts attention from economic positions, which from a religious standpoint, remain largely indefensible. After studying the Hebrew prophets or doing a casual reading of the Gospels, it takes exceptional intellectual and theological dexterity to come away thinking that our primary responsibility in civic life is to insulate the “job creators” from

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/26/caring-curse-working-class-austerity-solidarity-scourge Why has the basic logic of austerity been accepted by everyone? Because solidarity has come to be viewed as a scourge         David Graeber      'Working-class people care more about their friends, families and communities – they’re just ­fundamentally nicer.' Illustration by Matt Kenyon "What I can't understand is, why aren't people rioting in the streets?" I hear this, now and then, from people of wealthy and powerful backgrounds. There is a kind of incredulity. "After all," the subtext seems to read, "we scream bloody murder when anyone so much as threatens our tax shelters ; if someone were to go after my access to food or shelter , I'd sure as hell be burning banks and storming parliament. What's wrong with these people?" It's a good question. One would think a government that has i