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Janet Mefferd: When Progressives Quote Scripture ‘It Turns Into Something Monstrous’

American Family Association(link is external) radio host Janet Mefferd(link is external) was among the Religious Right pundits(link is external) who were agitated this week(link is external) by a Reuters report on increased political organizing by religious progressives in the Trump era. On her Tuesday “Janet Mefferd Live” show(link is external), Mefferd was quick to challenge the faith of progressive Christians included in the article. “These people are progressives,” she said. “They’re progressives! And for many of them progressivism is their religion. It’s not Christianity.”

“The problem is when they start quoting scripture, it turns into something monstrous, and really, really, out-of-control not biblical,” Mefferd said, warning that progressive politics are “popping up” even in evangelical circles and among millennial evangelical Christians.

Mefferd read from Jeff Jacoby’s March 23 guest column(link is external) in the Boston Globe, entitled, “Deliver us from Scripture-citers,” in which Jacoby says biblical exhortations to feed the hungry and clothe the naked are “personal, not political.” Mefferd said of a recent letter from religious progressives that cited those verses, “They’re constantly taking the Bible and twisting it.  They twist it. They take it out of context.”

Mefferd also cited Kelly Monroe Kullberg(link is external), who has a record of rallying conservative Christians in opposition to progressive religious voices; a few years ago she organized(link is external) Evangelicals for Biblical Immigration, which was meant to counter the Evangelical Immigration Table, and Christians for a Sustainable Economy, which criticized progressive Christians who argued against cuts to federal programs that serve the poor. Kullberg spearheaded (link is external) a group of more than 600 conservative Christians who last year called on progressive Christians to “repent” for “work that often advanced a destructive liberal political agenda.”