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.
It wasn't so superficial as taxation... that was one reason among dozens.
You are correct that we didn't break it off due to religion. However, many of our early settlers came here for just that purpose. It is recognition of this central tenet of the inhabitants that led to the first amendment.
The original settlers came to flee religious persecution, not to establish a new religious country. They were still loyal to England, as were most colonists for the next 100 years.
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“The general principles upon which the Fathers achieved independence were the general principals of Christianity… I will avow that I believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.”
• “[July 4th] ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty.”
– John Adams in a letter written to Abigail on the day the Declaration was approved by Congress
"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
--John Adams, October 11, 1798
“ God governs in the affairs of man. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? We have been assured in the Sacred Writings that except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. I firmly believe this. I also believe that, without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel”
-–Benjamin Franklin, Constitutional Convention of 1787
I never said they intended to establish a theocracy. No, they established what was consistent with their Christian worldview... our country governed by its Constitution.
The Bible makes it very clear that humans have the right to food. It makes a clear distinction between eating food and taking food.
It also makes clear distinctions between people that don't have the means to feed or otherwise do for themselves and those that can but refuse to do so. That parable of the talents is one great example.
The Bible also makes absolutely no assertion that "humans have the right to food." Again, if so, please show where.
What the Bible does say is that for believers God promises us food and clothing. There are also no other promises to believers of anything more in a material sense. Nothing.
I don't know where you are getting your info, but it's not from the Bible.
One of the problems I have with Sullivan and others like him is that their concern about religion in politics is always so one sided. Do you ever see these same people complain about the political activism of a REV Jesse Jackson, or a REV Al Sharpton? Did they ever show any concern when FATHER Robert Drinan was in Congress, or that the Southern CHRISTIAN Leadership Conference was leading the movement to change the law? (Naw, Lefties don't get on me for that one as if I endorse segregation. I am merely drawing the parallel). No, their concern is always and only when Christians involve themselves in CONSERVATIVE activism. Then, and only then, does the separation of church and state become an overriding concern. The word for such people? Hypocrites.
"...they established what was consistent with their Christian worldview..."
Exactly...based upon Biblical principles.
That's great. Now can you make a logical argument or are you going to keep pasting meaningless quotes?
SURELY if the founders wanted this to be a religious government, it would have been written into the Constitution. It wasn't. Therefore, it was not their intent.
Keep up...
Deuteronomy 25:24-25
Alright, enough with the jokes!
I thought you were serious. Silly me...
You are unreachable because you are unreasonable. A wise man once said (paraphrased), "Reason will only lead someone out of ignorance if it was reason which led him there in the first place."
May God bless you.
A very good answer. Very good.
> The Communists are atheists. They want no gods at all.
Except for the State, which makes them theists.
> These rights were considered Divine because they are God given...
Show me where "divine" shows up in the Constitution.
A whole lot of quotes, not a one of which taken from the Constitution.
Why is the Constitution considered so... unworthy to you and those like you? Can you not justify your position with *relevant* quotes?
Reading's not your strong suit obviously.
Except for the State, which makes them theists.
Circular references wont fly.
the·ism - Belief in the existence of a god or gods, especially belief in a personal God as creator and ruler of the world.
"'The Communists are atheists. They want no gods at all.'
Except for the State, which makes them theists."
Wrong. The State is man-made, and the Communists know it. A god is divine, and the Communists reject the idea of a god because they reject any form of divinity. They believe only in what is human and material. Therefore, they hold that a superior group of humans composing the State should make all the decisions for everyone else. They are not theists. Theism would threaten their system by persuading people that there are truths to believe in higher than a man-made State.
The US Constitution is a legal framework. It is government established by men and empowered by the consent of the governed....to secure the inalienable rights endowed upon all ..... by their Creator. To govern a nation protected by Divine providence.
Suggest you read the Declaration of Independence, which the OP was referencing.
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