Moral Vision of Bernie Sanders

Last September, Bernie Sanders arrived at Liberty University, in Virginia, to give a major speech about religion, faith, and the moral bankruptcy of the American economy. For 27 minutes, Sanders delivered a stump-speech-turned-sermon on economic justice. He quoted the Gospel of Matthew. He quoted the pope. He quoted a passage from the Book of Amos that’s extremely popular among liberal American Jews (“Let justice roll on like a river…”). He asked his audience to help him build “a moral and just society.” It was surreal political theater. Sanders, a Jewish socialist, was preaching to 12,000 conservative evangelical Christians. And he was doing it on the morning of Rosh Hashanah.