"...taking these passages so savagely out of context."
Are you serious? No one takes biblical passages more out of context than Christians themselves who pick and choose the bits they want to believe in, and then try to shoehorn 2000 year old writings into the modern world, even to the extent of decrying scientific discoveries made in those intervening years.
"Most Christians and historians agree that the Sermon on the Mount contains the most spiritually inspiring words ever uttered by Jesus Christ..."
Sheer nonsense. You would be hard pushed to find an historian worth a damn who would agree that Jesus actually existed. There are no legitimate records of his existence before the gospels were written 200 years after his supposed death, and one would think that someone wandering around doing everything he was meant to have done would have at least received a footnote from Roman and Greek historians of the day. The life of Jesus is a reworking of the mythical life of Horus, the Ancient Egyptian sun god from 3000 years earlier. Most religious icons can also be traced back to Horus as they all share many of the same characteristics.
It's about time there was an American politician not prepared to kowtow to the religious right.
