Yahoo! News - Bush Listens to Sermon on Material Wealth
: "The Very Rev. Martin Luther Agnew preached Sunday to a packed Episcopal church just down the road from the Bush family's seaside estate. Its oceanfront parking lot was filled with luxury cars made by Jaguar, Mercedes, BMW and Volvo, testament to the wealth of the summer visitors at this southeast Maine resort.

'Gated communities,' Agnew said, 'tend to keep out God's people.' But, he said, 'Our material gifts do not have to be a wall.'

'They can very well be a door. Jesus says, `Sell your possessions and give alms,'' Agnew said. 'I'm convinced that what we keep owns us, and what we give away sets us free.'"

Indeed. This speaks to a very interesting trend in protestant theology where greed has been exised from the faith. I suspect that the Bushes did not expect to be chastized for wealth, or more accurately, to have their wealth challenged. Churches simply don't do that. Class warfare and all that. Plus it implies that God doesn't want Americans to be wealthy if they work hard enough, right? Isn't that somewhere in the Bible?

I am not completely sure where this comes from, but suspect that whatever started it, the damn burst during the Cold War when criticizing capitalism was tantamount to agreeing with the Soviets and their God-less communism. In any result, the only sins we talk about anymore are those of the sexual or personal nature. Don't do drugs, don't have an abortion, don't have sex outside of marriage, and for Pete's sake, don't be Gay! Follow those rules and you are close to being a sin-free Christian! Well, not sin-free. You might still gossip and not study the Bible enough, but you will consider yourself more moral than the "world" as you drive through it in your Suburban to your Gated Community where your 4,000 square foot house (has two air conditioners) sits next to the other non-sinning protestants.