Bernie Sanders Tries to Use Scripture as Basis for His Progressive Movement

Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images
Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) spoke at church service in Columbia, South Carolina, over the weekend and attempted to use scripture to push his progressive agenda.

Sanders spoke at Reid Chapel AME and sought to link his campaign and the scriptures by focusing primarily on the need for “justice.”

“When we read from the Scriptures, the calling for the moment now is for nothing less than justice,” Sanders told the congregation. “It is not justice when so few have so much, and so many have so little”:

“Justice says that black women should not die in childbirth at three times the rate as white women. Brothers and sisters, in this difficult moment, we need leadership in this country which does not lie every single day,” he continued, citing the Golden Rule.

“Maybe the most important phraseology in the Bible is, ‘Do unto others as you would like them to do unto you.’ And in a sense, that’s what justice is about, and that’s what we are trying to do in this campaign,” he added, citing “starvation wages” and alluding to Medicare for All:

If you’re working for starvation wages, you’d say, “Gee, I wish somebody would help me earn a living that I can take care of my family on.” If you can’t go to a doctor when you’re sick, you’d say, “I wish that we had a system, like many other countries, where I could go to the doctor, regardless of my income.”

The socialist senator also cited the Golden Rule as part of his Thanksgiving message last week, giving advice to supporters who were worried about facing confrontation at the dinner table for supporting his movement.

Sanders told his supporters to tell friends and family members that the values his campaign is fighting for “are really not new values.”

“I mean, they go back literally thousands of years,” he said.

“The right that we treat others the way we want to be treated – not a Bernie Sanders idea. I mean, that’s an idea that has been around every religion, major religion on Earth,” he added:

In a stroke of optimism, the presidential hopeful told the congregation that he believes Democrats will ultimately band together to “defeat the most dangerous president in the modern history of this country.”

“We need a government based on compassion and justice, not on greed and corruption, and that’s the campaign we’re running,” he said.

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