Conservatism and Christianity

I've been threatening to do this for some time, and now looks like that time.

I've felt for some time that American conservatism, as it's currently practiced, and Christianity, as it's portrayed in the New Testament and practiced by millions of people in this country, and around the world, are not synonymous as they are sometimes popularly portrayed. In other words, conservatism isn't Christian. Oh, there have been recent alliances of the Religious Right and the political Right, but that was more for convenience and the acquisition of power, not because members of these two groups were necessarily in agreement on basic principles.

So here's the plan. Over the next few days, I'm going to attempt to describe each of these movements as objectively as I can, and try to sharply focus on where they align, and where they differ. In the process, I hope to show that there's a large gap between core values of each, and that popular perceptions are wrong in thinking that they both believe the same things.

Obviously, there's going to be a lot more to say on this in my next post.