A “Progressive Christianity” stance toward OWS as articulated by pastor of Pilgrim United Church of Christ in Carlsbad CA,  Rev. Madison Shockley II

Occupy Wall Street’s message to the church is, “If you were doing your job we wouldn’t be necessary.”

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/jesus_and_the_99_percent_20111202/?ln

The above quote comes close to my sense of this.  If the church were actually accustomed to being advocates for the poor,  the place to which things have gotten in our nations’s capital would have been the target of more churches for much longer than a few months.  This place in which we now find ourselves has been in motion since 1980.  The only Democratic administration since then ended up being a “pro corporate” and “lax regulation” administration,  which allowed the income gap to continue to widen through the 90’s ,  before the process shot up even more dramatically under “W”.  As Shockley puts it,  had the church been actively protesting such misplaced priorities (as MLK was attempting to dramatically expose in his last months before his assasination)  ,  an OWS would not have been necessary.  Now it’s the church that has to ba “awakened” by the larger response of an awakening 99%.

A prominent mention of Mark Tooley,  the Al Moehler of the United Methodist Church who seems to consider it his mission to preach nationalism as the official theology of the church:

Mark Tooley, president of the ultra-right Institute on Religion & Democracy, commented, “Amid our many blessings is a spirit of entitlement and resentment, embodied in the Occupy Wall Street movement, supported even by religious voices who confuse the Gospel with coercive wealth redistribution.” A search of the website of the Southern Baptist Convention finds no mention at all of OWS.

Speaking of Al Moehler (President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary),  the Southern Baptists are “not mentioning OWS at all”.  When I was comparing the various “mainline denominations”  websites regarding their various attention to the economic voodoo being advanced by the various GOP governors and the Republican controlled House,  I did not even include the Southern Baptists (SBC)  on the list of those denominations.  The SBC seems to have turned itself into a self-contained “Christian Right” coalition of its own.  Southern Baptists have moved so far to the right that there are several “Cooperative Baptist” churches that have separated themselves from the extreme right postions taken by the SBC.