"...once religion gets involved in politics I have no need to be tolerant or nice about it."

Ralph at Cliopatria alerts me to this post from Atrios. The title of my post is lifted from his larger piece, which includes this:

I'm tired of liberalish Christians telling me it's my job to reach out to Christian moderates who feel that "the Left" is hostile to them. Screw that. It's time for liberalish Christians to tell their slightly more right-leaning brethren that those of us who fight to maintain the separation between Church and State do it to protect freedom of religion - not destroy it.

Lots of discussion seems to have ensued; check out the coverage at The Village Gate (what used to be The Right Christians). It's good, albeit heated stuff.

I'll just throw in a few of my own thoughts:

My politics are derived from my faith, not the other way around. When I was younger, and a secular liberal, my politics were the only faith I had! Since coming to Christ (and yes, I do call myself "born again" without embarrassment), I have had to rebuild my politics from the ground up. When I consider political questions, I am forced to ask myself what position I believe Christ calls me to. This isn't easy, for any number of obvious reasons, starting with the fact that the New Testament is not a modern political manual. This is why I can't merely allow myself to hunt and peck through Scripture, finding passages that support my already-in-place suppositions about justice. (Many liberal and conservative Christians alike do this; it's an understandable habit, but a bad one). Rather, I have to be open to what the Holy Spirit, the Bible, and my church community are telling me about right, wrong, peace and war and so forth.

I belong to a church that embraces pacifism as the fullest understanding of the Gospel. I belong to a church that opposes the death penalty and abortion, seeing them both as fundamental evils even while recognizing that the latter takes far more lives than the former in this country. Some Mennonites are Republicans, largely because (while pacifist by doctrine) they see abortion as the number one social evil of our age. Most Mennonites lean to the left, building coalitions with pro-choice secular liberals on issues ranging from capital punishment to Iraq to immigration to poverty, all the while willing to gently but firmly diverge from our non-believing friends on issues like abortion and therapeutic cloning.

I have to say that most secular liberals whom I meet impose a double standard on me. When I quote Scripture on the subject of war and justice, ala Martin Luther King, they applaud. When I quote Scripture to explain my position on abortion, they are enraged at my effort to "impose my personal beliefs on them." Obviously, I am as guilty of "proof-texting" as the next person, but I am tired of the double standard.

I've often recommended this First Things article by Stephen Carter, Liberalism's Religion Problem. It's a brilliant piece, I agree with virtually every word, and I love his summation:

Liberal theory continues to be unwilling to accommodate itself to the systems of meaning preferred by the most religiously committed citizens of the nation. Instead, liberalism has grown ever more muscular, pressing theories about education and the public square that few religious citizens will ever support. That is a flaw in liberal theory, not a flaw in religion. For serious religion understands that the life lived without attention to the basic question is life not worth living. In traditional Christianity, discerning God’s will and doing it is prior to everything else. If God’s will is that we suffer, the Christian must suffer. If God’s will is that we change, the Christian must change. If God’s will is that we fight, the Christian must fight. Even when, in secular terms, the battle the Christian is fighting seems to be an appealing one, the Christian’s motive for the struggle must always be to glorify God—and the Christian must never be afraid to say so.

There will be times when this leads us into coalition with liberals. But there will be times when we are far, far apart. The Christian left must be faithful to Christ first, not secular dogma. Where our agendas and our understandings coincide, so much the better. But at times, we will stand with our Christian brethren on the right of the political spectrum, not out of sectarian loyalty but out of a sense that, as Carter said, "discerning God's will and doing it is prior to everything else."

It is no easy thing to claim to have discerned God's will. No wise Christian tries to do it alone. We do it in the light of (thanks Wesley) Scripture, Reason, Tradition, and Experience; above all we do it prayerfully, humbly, and together.

Comments

[annika]

Yet another great post Hugo!

[Hugo]

Thank you, my dear!

[Rhesa]

Good post. =)

[John]

Indeed. ;-)

[The Angry Clam]

And you were worried you wouldn't fit in with the "highminded" Cliopatria...

Great job again.

[Ralph Luker]

As far as we are concerned, Hugo makes Cliopatria "highminded."

[John Sloas]

I'm not liberal or conservative. I find myself not fitting into any nice little boxes. Peace to you.

[Lawrence Krubner]

Slightly off-topic, but this line jumped out at me:

"This is why I can't merely allow myself to hunt and peck through Scripture, finding passages that support my already-in-place suppositions about justice. (Many liberal and conservative Christians alike do this; it's an understandable habit, but a bad one)."

Christopher Hill, in his book The World Turned Upside Down: Radical ideas during the English Revolution, mentions how the rank and file of the new religious movements were often hostile to professional or well trained preachers, at least in part because the preachers could quote disagreeable parts of the Bible. The rank and file of the new movements liked to pick out the parts of the Bible that justified their own beliefs, and they did not like being reminded of those portions of the Bible that held ideas contrary to their own.

Some historians have suggested the Reformation was the natural consequence of the invention of the printing press - that once people were able to own and read their own copy of the Bible, it was natural that they should begin to have their own opinions about it. I've no idea if this is true of the Reformation, but it does seem to have been a fact of the English Revolution - more and more people were getting their own exposure to the Bible, and forming their own opinions of it, some quite wild.

http://www.krubner.com/index.php?pageId=2343

[Hugo]

I've heard much the same sort of thing, Lawrence -- and it has bedeviled Protestantism ever since. That's why Mennonites have an almost Catholic reverence for the role of the community in exegetical work; otherwise, we all "proof-text" away.

[Tyler Watson]

Hugo, thank you for posting this. I find myself in a similar state of limbo concerning the American political scene. I heard Jim Wallis of Sojourners giving an interview on talk-radio and the host - who happened to be conservative - did not know what to do with him. Wallis did not fit into her boxes. Because he was against the war and actively fighting poverty she assumed that he was Pro-Choice and against Judeo-Christian ethics. But when he said he was for faith-based initiatives and quoted the Bible as the source of his ethical stances, she was even more confused. Though I could only hear the voices, I had a vivid image of the host's face scrunched up in confusion. The interview and your post are helpful reminders that I am not alone and that Jesus' words are still revolutionary.

[Jonathan Dresner]

Just a thought on the problem of categorization. If your political beliefs stem entirely from your faith, why use the categories of "right" and "left" which carry such secular baggage and which is a terribly simplistic rubric to begin with.

[Hugo]

Fair enough, Jonathan -- I use them because they have so infected our discourse that it is almost impossible NOT to use them. They can be useful labels, but ultimately constraining ones.