Posted on 01/01/2007 8:42:45 AM PST by Alex Murphy
It’s an old, old situation linked to Christian faith and politics.
People on the right side of the church aisle are accused of taking the Bible very literally when it comes to sex and salvation. People on the left side of the church aisle prefer to take the Bible literally on issues of social justice and the poor.
The reality, of course, is that Christianity has long offered rock-ribbed teachings on both sides of this equation. Sex outside of marriage? Sin. Ignoring the needs of the poor and the weak? Sin. The real debates, of course, are about how best to involve government in these issues.
So it’s no surprise that the Religious Right taught Republicans how to talk the talk on moral issues. And it’s no surprise that, at times, President George W. Bush tried to expand that message by learning to talk the talk on “compassionate conservatism” issues as well as those edgy wedge issues on sex and marriage.
And now it’s no surprise that Democrats are turning to Bible-friendly consultants to learn how to add some faith-based language on issues of economics, the environment, peace, justice, etc. And it isn’t a big surprise that Democrats are also trying to find a way to use different language on abortion and sexuality, even if there are no signs of compromises yet on the legislative front.
Bush tried to talk differently about poverty.
Democrats are now seeking a way to talk differently about moral values.
Journalists, of course, will have to cover all of this talk, talk, talk.
At the moment, the hot topic is the work of the new faith-based consultants — especially the liberal evangelical activist Mara Vanderslice and her Common Good Strategies consulting firm. Visit the firm’s website and you’ll find all kinds of mainstream coverage, but the recent David D. Kirkpatrick piece in The New York Times hits all the big themes:
Democratic officials in several states said Ms. Vanderslice and her business partner, Eric Sapp, pushed sometimes reluctant Democrats to speak publicly, early and in detail about the religious underpinnings of their policy views. They persuaded candidates to speak at conservative religious schools and to buy early commercials on Christian radio. They organized meetings and conference calls for candidates to speak privately with moderate and conservative members of the clergy.In Michigan, they helped the state’s Democratic Party follow up on these meetings by incorporating recognizably biblical language into its platform. In Michigan and Ohio, they enlisted nuns in phone banks to urge voters who were Catholic or opposed abortion rights to support Democratic candidates, with some of the nuns saying they were making the case in religious terms.
The nuns are a nice detail, don’t you think?
In other words, the key is to find left-of-center evangelicals who are fond of moral nuances on sexuality and Catholic progressives who feel the same way. This is not a big shock.
So if you want to find people who lean left, speak softly on moral issues, yet continue to embrace the name “evangelical,” where would one look? How about the Sojourners community? Sure enough, that is where Vanderslice feels at home.
But first, she grew up in a liberal, secular mecca — the people’s republic of Boulder, Colo. — before finding God.
She joined an evangelical Bible study group at Earlham College, a Quaker campus in Richmond, Ind., and says she was born again one day while singing the hymn “Here I Am Lord.”Once again, there is nothing surprising here.“God’s love was so much stronger than any of my doubts,” she said, acknowledging that like some other young evangelicals she still struggles with common evangelical ideas about abortion, homosexuality and the literal reading of Scripture.
She was baptized by full immersion in Rock Creek in Washington, D.C., while working with Sojourners, an evangelical antipoverty group. She entered politics by working with a group advocating debt relief for the developing world, once participating in a rally organized by a coalition that included the AIDS activist group Act Up.
Note, however, the use of the softening phrase “common evangelical ideas” on issues of sexuality, when the points being debated have nothing to do with evangelicalism — but are conflicts centering on 2,000 years of unbroken Christian teachings in the East and, until very recently, all of the churches of the West.
And what about that “literal reading of Scripture” thing? Oh well, we are back into the same old divide, aren’t we?
This is an important story, but it’s also an old, old story and utterly predictable. The only real news is that the religious left is developing a more articulate evangelical wing.
But the hard issues will not go away, a fact that is obvious in this section of Kirkpatrick’s report about the work of Sapp and Vanderslice:
They persuaded candidates not to avoid controversial subjects like abortion, advising those who supported abortion rights to speak about reducing demand for the procedure. And they cautioned against the approach of many liberal Christians, which is to argue that Jesus was interested only in social justice and not in sexual morality.“The Gospel has both in it,” Mr. Sapp said. “You can’t act like caring about abortion and family issues makes you a judgmental fool.”
Amen. That’s the heart of the story right there.
To me the big difference between conservatives and liberals is that liberals are the ones who shout loudly for a "separation of church and state" but then enact government-controlled social programs and try to sell it to the religious as inspired by faith.
Religion for sale!
If I actually believed that this tactic works, I'd grab the nearest bucket and wretch.
Just another shining example of the hypocrisy of the left. I still don't know how liberal Catholics can justify their pro-choice and pro-gay stands. They are what the rest of us call "à la carte" Catholics.
That is exactly it.
There is no charity in forced taxation. You are giving to the State what belongs to Caesar. You still have your own tithing obligations to God.
**They persuaded candidates not to avoid controversial subjects like abortion, advising those who supported abortion rights to speak about reducing demand for the procedure. And they cautioned against the approach of many liberal Christians, which is to argue that Jesus was interested only in social justice and not in sexual morality**
Got your popcorn?
This should be fun to watch!!
Liberalism and the Left are inconsistent with Biblical values.
Liberalism is the narcissistic worship of selfishness, and it therefore can't tolerate the concept of sin.
We can't have a dualism either of ignoring the poor and the downtrodden while emphasizing sin or vice versa. A good Christian believes in both, but the trouble with Socialists is they implicitly believe in the divinity of the state.
Hedonists have no use for the poor or the sick, so just let the government worry about them. (sarcasm)
The liberal democrats like to twist the issue into one where they get people to think that the bible advocates their heavy taxes.
In fact, the Bible calls for Charity, and their economic views make charity impossible.
Choices can only be truly free when they're determined by the free workings of a volitional consciousness.
Politically, a choice must have legal alternatives to be free, on that scale.
Liberal taxation slaps both of these in the face.
The goodness of anything lies in the freedom of choosing it. A moral creature is a creature that chooses morality freely. Consider, for example, if we were wired so that we only did 'moral' things, according to the designer's beliefs. We would cease to be moral or immoral, because without the reality of being able to choose immorality morality doesn't exist as a facet of our existence.
To impose a state's compulsion on individuals and call it charity is like raping a woman and calling it mere sex.
The moment compulsion enters the scene, free choice is destroyed and only the ugly reality of force can exist.
Thus, by forcing humans to work for one another, collectivists destroy completely the realities of charity and kindness.
Furthermore, such ideals can only exist by the assumption that humans are cattle and must be controlled by collectivist social structures.
Here is a scenario: a gunman robs a wealthy man of some of his money to give it to a poor and starving family. Now, when you consider the net instrinsic worth of such an action, it could be said that it is an essential good. However, morality doesn't exist in the instrinsic good of something. Morality is what imbues actions with their value, and actions with their intrinsic good. Otherwise, one's good is another person's bad. Consider a serial killer: if intrinsic value existed seperate from morality, then who could say that it wasn't a positive action if the murderer enjoyed torturing and killing his victim. Now, you might say that there are moral principles governing whether this is good or bad behavior. However, this exists as seperate from intrinsic value, and thus to deny morality its existence outside it is to affirm the nihilistic vision of subjective intrinsic worth.
Many justify this initiation of force with: 'the ends justify the means.'
To say: the ends justify the means (which is ultimately what any idea saying that the ends determine the virtue of something must boil down to) will give allowance for any atrocities that serve that 'ideal end.' Much like wiping out the Jews was justified for Hitler by the end: a race of perfect Aryan men.
Now, you may say: such an end isn't moral! However, when you define morality by the ends it encompasses, you deny morality its objectivity.
Furthermore, things are defined by their opposites. We only know what freedom is because we know what the lack of freedom is, and without one of those we would have no reference points to know what freedom is.
Let me use a few literary examples:
In 1984, one of the characters says that instead of using words of individual and opposing value, like 'bad,' in new speak the only words dictating the opposite of good are parasitical of the word good itself. They know what 'ungood' is, but they can't define the reality of their moral nature as 'good' because no 'evil' exists in definition.
Or how about A Clockwork Orange. Alex ceased to be a moral creature when he lost his free ability to choose between good and evil. By only being able to physically do the 'good,' he does not become a moral person, but a robotic machine only capable of doing something because he is programmed that way. His nature as a moral being disappears.
It is the same with state compulsion toward 'charity.' Charity doesn't exist, because charity is a moral concept that entails something of a specific moral value. That disappears when the 'ends become the good,' so to speak.
Morality both encompasses and transcends intrinsic worth.
The same reason that is immoral, even though it makes sense on the level of intrinsic worth, is because of the absence of free choice, which determines the moral nature. The man who was robbed was the one that was leeched to give the starving family some money, and yet, one would not say he was a kind man. He gave the money to the gunman because it was his money or his life. There was no moral virtue there.
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