How did Jesus become pro-war, pro-American and pro-rich?

That's what novelist, journalist and screenwriter Dan Wakefield wanted to know when he began his newest book, "The Hijacking of Jesus."

"The Jesus of the Gospels ministered to the poor and to the outcasts, had no property or possessions, and famously told a wealthy young man that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven," the popular writer told members of the Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace July 7 at Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles.

Curious about this drastic shift, Wakefield began researching the troubling query and was surprised at how far back the religious right's roots went.

The search led him to Senator Barry Goldwater's defeat for the presidency in 1964. Realizing they needed a wider base, he said Republican strategists saw that fundamentalists and evangelicals were a "virgin timber" voting block.

And soon a partnership was forged. "The religious right started with the Republican right," Wakefield reported, adding that along with this partnership, religious conservatives also forged a media empire, which today adds up to some 1,600 TV stations. Just one, "Focus on the Family," has 200 million watchers in 99 countries.

"One of the marks of the religious right I find is a kind of real nastiness," the former staff writer at The Nation said. "Pat Robertson asked, 'Why do I have to be nice to Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Methodists? They are the Antichrist.' So tolerance has become a bad word on the religious right."

An official from the Christian Coalition told him that they were only intolerant of sinners, said Wakefield. But the author observed that it seemed a "very odd creed" for the group to call itself Christian, when it was Jesus who told a crowd that he who was without sin should cast the first stone.

He also talked about the divisiveness of the movement, whose faithful often attempt --- and succeed --- at driving deeper religious and political wedges between themselves and mainline Protestant congregations.

And he pointed out that religious right rhetoric is often filled with statements about war. It was no accident, he said, that born-again President George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq and his administration's entire Middle East policy "smells of Christian Jihad."

"That pro-war message hardly seems to fit with Jesus' teaching to love your enemy, bless them that curse you and be good to them who hate you, and pray for them who persecute you," he observed.

Democrats not immune
Democrats had their own problems, with many of the secular left experiencing what Wakefield called "religio phobia." One young man he talked to in Boston told him that it was easier for him to come out as gay in Massachusetts than as religious in the Democratic Party.

"So whether the secular left or the Democrats like it or not, 90 percent of the country is religious," he reported. "And now that religion has entered the political dialogue --- and sometimes become the focus of political dialogue --- they had better deal with it in more than phrases and lip service."

But Wakefield said that he was encouraged by a couple of recent developments.

A number of progressive evangelicals like Jim Wallis of Sojourners had left the conservative National Association of Evangelicals, which was founded by the Reverends Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.

In addition, some national newspapers had noticed a shift in the religious-political direction of certain congregations. He mentioned a May 23 front-page headline in the "Washington Post" claiming, "The Religious Left Is Back."

Wakefield cautioned, however, that the upcoming mid-term elections will determine "how much back it is."

"Perhaps an even wider majority could be formed among not only those who believe in Jesus," he said, "but also those who don't, but who believe in the causes he preached for the poor and the outcasts of society."