Unemployed? It’s All Part Of God’s Plan For You

Another survey about religiosity in America has been released by Baylor University, a Baptist institution in Waco, Texas.  As Christian universities go, it’s always had a halfway decent reputation in some areas.  I won’t go into the details of the research, which you can see at their site.  However, Jaweed Kaleem, writing on HuffPost, took a look at what the study reveals about the relationship between fundamentalism and attitudes toward the unemployment situation:

…Americans who believe God has a plan for their lives are more likely to think the government “does too much,” more likely to oppose unemployment benefits for healthy people and more likely to believe in the “American dream” that anything is possible for those who work hard.

Interestingly, the study also revealed that those who held such beliefs made less money than strong disbelievers.  And that they tended to be less educated than disbelievers.  That last finding isn’t a surprise.

I have long wondered about how it is possible that so many fundamentalists defy the supposedly compassionate teachings of their religion.  These findings go a way toward explaining just how wrong it is to assume that they’re learning about compassion from their faith.  As far as they’re concerned, God loves them more than those unemployed slobs.  And if, by chance, they should find themselves in that sad situation, then they accept it as God’s plan for them.

Somehow the Republican Party has been able to exploit this weakness in the faith of so many under-educated fundamentalists.  Rich Republican corporate interests throw religious raw meat at these folks who, no matter how they are screwed over by Wall Street, will attribute anything that comes at them as “God’s plan.”  Of course, Dems also play footsie with the corporate interests, but they don’t generally play the religion card.  Republicans have cornered the market on that particular tactic.