Are payday lenders some of the fake Christians Charles Barkley was talking about a few days ago? According to a new study, predatory lending vultures cluster in areas where conservative Christians are most powerful.
"A generation ago, populist Christian leaders were among the most aggressive opponents of usurious lending. But today, many Christian leaders take large campaign contributions from the credit industry and no longer support the biblical injunction against usury in public life," says Chris Peterson, whose research will be published in Catholic University Law Review.
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"The natural hypothesis was there would be aggressive regulation and less demand for payday loans in Christian states," Peterson said. "We found the opposite was true. We didn't set out to find that. We set out to find where payday lending was happening."
Alabama was among the top three states for payday lending activity -- because we haven't imposed strict regulations on these vultures or banned them outright as Georgia and North Carolina have. The study authors developed a "Christian power index"and correlated that with the density of payday lenders.
"These findings propound a tragic and sad irony. Those states that have most ardently held to their pious Christian traditions have tended to become more infested with the progeny of money changers once expelled by Christ from the Hebrew temple."
Question for the Alabama legislature: Why haven't you expelled these vultures from the great state of Alabama? They are preying on the poorest and most vulnerable of our citizens. Why don't you give a damn about them?
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