Because Jesus Wasn’t Kidding About Loving Your Neighbor
Indeed, the Republican rhetoric to support tax cuts completely undermines any idea that the money will be freed up to help the poor—for Republicans, the tax cuts boost the economy by being reinvested (usually as capital), not by being bestowed upon the poor as private charity. Simply put, starving the social services is starving the poor. Cutting social services is the policy option railed against by all the prophets, and it is thoroughly unbiblical.
Time and again the Bible makes clear that what God demands and takes pleasure in is not acts of piety and the scrupulous following of purity codes. Instead, God asks His followers to witness love through our actions and the policies we enact in government, business, and all other institutions.
Isaiah’s statement of hope makes very clear what all those who pray “thy kingdom come” should demand of their elected officials. The policy implications of this vision are obvious, and the contrast between the depiction of God’s Holy Mountain and the “kingdom” that our own institutions perpetuate is damning.
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There’s a lot of talk about the relationship between church and state. Whether it’s the Catholic Council of Bishops accusing President Obama of trampling on their religious liberty over contraception or the long-awaited and disputed opening of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro who have been told their faith is not a religion and threatened at [...]
The Bible has a lot to say about economic policy and the responsibility of government leaders to care for the vulnerable. The Bible leaves no room for trickle-down economics. Jesus and the Prophets do not say, “Help the widow and orphan by supporting businesses in an effort to prop up the stagnant economy”! The Bible’s call is for direct action, and it is a call placed on both society and government.
Republicans are still trying to have it both ways–claiming the mantel of faith and citing Scripture on a few hot button issues—and then putting away their Bibles and turning to Darwinian social and economic theories to support their primary policy positions. Republicans have largely been getting away with it because we don’t call them on their hypocrisy.
We now find ourselves in much of the same place we did in 2005. We face major challenges and deficits in how voters view Democrats when it comes to faith. The majority don’t even believe our President is a Christian. The good news is that the reason has much less with what Democrats have done, and definitely isn’t a result of what we believe, and is mostly a result of what we haven’t done: we’ve stopped engaging with and communicating to America’s faithful.
Democratic faith outreach shouldn’t look like what the religious right does. When our outreach works, it’s authentic and humble and focused on relationships and clearly-articulated values. And when it works we win because when American voters understand what our core values are, the vast majority recognize they are the ones they share. But we can’t count on voters to figure it out. And as the Pew poll shows, we can’t expect them to ignore the lies from the Right if we ignore them.
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