“In news releases, mission statements and interviews, prominent social conservatives increasingly are using the small-government rhetoric popular with the tea party activists and long used by economic conservatives — but with a religious bent…

“‘The reason why social conservatives and economic conservatives can play well together . . . is the guy who wants to go to church all day just wants to be left alone. So does the guy who wants to play with his gun all day, and the guy who wants to make money all day,’ said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. ‘They don’t agree on how to spend their time, but they do agree on their central issue: They want to be left alone.'”…

“‘We will always have the abortion fight; that should never be given up,’ Tyler said. ‘But when the central issue of the times is jobs and the economy, we can’t just abandon the field. We must provide a Christian message about jobs and economy that is based in faith.'”

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“I’m begging you, your right to religion and freedom to exercise religion and read all of the passages of the Bible as you want to read them and as your church wants to preach them . . . are going to come under the ropes in the next year. If it lasts that long it will be the next year. I beg you, look for the words ‘social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes!”

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“This week the remarks prompted outrage from several Christian bloggers. The Rev. Jim Wallis, who leads the liberal Christian antipoverty group Sojourners, in Washington, called on Christians to leave Glenn Beck.

“‘What he has said attacks the very heart of our Christian faith, and Christians should no longer watch his show,’ Mr. Wallis wrote on his blog, God’s Politics. ‘His show should now be in the same category as Howard Stern.'”…

“Religion scholars say the term ‘social justice’ was probably coined in the 1800s, codified in encyclicals by successive popes and adopted widely by Protestant churches in the 1900s. The concept is that Christians should not merely give to the poor, but also work to correct unjust conditions that keep people poor. Many Christians consider it a recurring theme in Scripture.”