Posted on 05/10/2006 6:28:01 AM PDT by bondjamesbond
A believer spells out the difference between faith and a political agenda
Are you a Christian who doesn't feel represented by the religious right? I know the feeling. When the discourse about faith is dominated by political fundamentalists and social conservatives, many others begin to feel as if their religion has been taken away from them.
The number of Christians misrepresented by the Christian right is many. There are evangelical Protestants who believe strongly that Christianity should not get too close to the corrupting allure of government power. There are lay Catholics who, while personally devout, are socially liberal on issues like contraception, gay rights, women's equality and a multi-faith society. There are very orthodox believers who nonetheless respect the freedom and conscience of others as part of their core understanding of what being a Christian is. They have no problem living next to an atheist or a gay couple or a single mother or people whose views on the meaning of life are utterly alien to them--and respecting their neighbors' choices. That doesn't threaten their faith. Sometimes the contrast helps them understand their own faith better.
And there are those who simply believe that, by definition, God is unknowable to our limited, fallible human minds and souls. If God is ultimately unknowable, then how can we be so certain of what God's real position is on, say, the fate of Terri Schiavo? Or the morality of contraception? Or the role of women? Or the love of a gay couple? Also, faith for many of us is interwoven with doubt, a doubt that can strengthen faith and give it perspective and shadow. That doubt means having great humility in the face of God and an enormous reluctance to impose one's beliefs, through civil law, on anyone else.
I would say a clear majority of Christians in the U.S. fall into one or many of those camps. Yet the term "people of faith" has been co-opted almost entirely in our discourse by those who see Christianity as compatible with only one political party, the Republicans, and believe that their religious doctrines should determine public policy for everyone. "Sides are being chosen," Tom DeLay recently told his supporters, "and the future of man hangs in the balance! The enemies of virtue may be on the march, but they have not won, and if we put our trust in Christ, they never will." So Christ is a conservative Republican?
Rush Limbaugh recently called the Democrats the "party of death" because of many Democrats' view that some moral decisions, like the choice to have a first-trimester abortion, should be left to the individual, not the cops. Ann Coulter, with her usual subtlety, simply calls her political opponents "godless," the title of her new book. And the largely nonreligious media have taken the bait. The "Christian" vote has become shorthand in journalism for the Republican base.
What to do about it? The worst response, I think, would be to construct something called the religious left. Many of us who are Christians and not supportive of the religious right are not on the left either. In fact, we are opposed to any politicization of the Gospels by any party, Democratic or Republican, by partisan black churches or partisan white ones. "My kingdom is not of this world," Jesus insisted. What part of that do we not understand?
So let me suggest that we take back the word Christian while giving the religious right a new adjective: Christianist. Christianity, in this view, is simply a faith. Christianism is an ideology, politics, an ism. The distinction between Christian and Christianist echoes the distinction we make between Muslim and Islamist. Muslims are those who follow Islam. Islamists are those who want to wield Islam as a political force and conflate state and mosque. Not all Islamists are violent. Only a tiny few are terrorists. And I should underline that the term Christianist is in no way designed to label people on the religious right as favoring any violence at all. I mean merely by the term Christianist the view that religious faith is so important that it must also have a precise political agenda. It is the belief that religion dictates politics and that politics should dictate the laws for everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike.
That's what I dissent from, and I dissent from it as a Christian. I dissent from the political pollution of sincere, personal faith. I dissent most strongly from the attempt to argue that one party represents God and that the other doesn't. I dissent from having my faith co-opted and wielded by people whose politics I do not share and whose intolerance I abhor. The word Christian belongs to no political party. It's time the quiet majority of believers took it back.
Pilate once said: "What is truth?".
1. Of course the solution to all this is to stick to the clear teachings of Bible, with the writings intelligently interpreted in their literary and historical contexts. When they apply to life, even political life, apply them.
2. Andrew Sullivan's concept of conservative evangelicals is a bigoted, narrow minded sweeping generalization. Of course, since he is insulting Christians he will be lauded rather receiving the condemnation his vile drivel deserves.
(In any case, this is not the only relevant passage. Hint: "Samaritan" is to "1st century Judean Jew" as "Negro" is to "19th century American white".)
Oh brother! Read my tagline.
He's a talented writer, and you're right, it is painful to see his struggles with his conviction of sin, because the Lord's mercy is *so close*.
> Freedom of religion is guaranteed by the Second Amendment.
Exactly so. So, don't be too surprised when the people who are incessantly evangelized decide that "Christianists" are worrysome, and express themselves accordingly.
Of course, there's also the little probelm that "freedom of religion" is held in some considerable disdain by those very Christianists... when the religion is not their own.
That's entirely different. Paul is referring to people that refuse to work.
The "eating from any person's field" was more for people that had reasons, not for perpetual freeloaders.
You are the one who said: "I am compelled by my faith to try and make them see the error of their ways"
What gives you the right to pass judgement on a person's life? What gives you the insight to determine a person's religion is wrong?
For another example of the difference between God's Law and Moses's:
Matthew 19:
3Some Pharisees came to Jesus, testing Him and asking, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?"
4And He answered and said, "Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning MADE THEM MALE AND FEMALE,
5and said, 'FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH'?
6"So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate."
7They said to Him, "Why then did Moses command to GIVE HER A CERTIFICATE OF DIVORCE AND SEND her AWAY?"
8He said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.
9"And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery."
> Why do you attack me?
Wow. You're really working the whole victimhood angle, ain't'cha.
The "GOP convention" <> conservativism.
Got it?
I completely disagree. The Bible makes it very clear that humans have the right to food. It makes a clear distinction between eating food and taking food.
You are distorting history and culture.
There's a bible verse that says: If a man will not work, neither shall he eat.
And yet the Romans did have a form of welfare and Jesus did not condemn it or suggest that taxes not be collected to support it.
If government does supply aid to the poor, what would Jesus say to taking that aid away from the poor? If our understanding of Christianity condemns abortion and as Christians we feel compelled morally to pressure government to pass laws prohibiting abortion, then why don't we also extend to government the duty to care for the poor? Why not pass laws requiring farmers to leave a portion of their crops for the poor? Why should one be a matter of choice and the other not?
Another one...
I think the story of the good samaritan which you are referring to has much more to do with love and compassion as well, and less to do with equality, as we think of it today.
I could be wrong. My original comment on this topic had to do with the lazy habit of people have of ascribing whatever they see to be desirable to Christ, and thinking they have made an argument.
I could be wrong. I certainly don't mean to denigrate equality or tolerance.
See? You are just proving my original point... Jesus would be labled a liberal by modern conservative Christians.
> But sometimes you have to hit certain people between the eyes with a two-by-four to get their attention...
Bear this in mind:
"A wayfarer should not walk unarmed,
But have his weapons to hand:
He knows not when he may need a spear,
Or what menace meet on the road."
Whack someone with a two-by-four, and you could well end up on the pointy end of a pike or a sword. "Turn the other cheek" is a bizarre notion to those in many religions.
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