The left taps the contemporary Christian market

I thought that the Emergent Church had been doing this for years. Velvet Elvis and Blue Like Jazz are full of politically liberal anecdotes.

But still, there’s nothing distinctly anti-doctrinal about left leaning Christians, at least when it comes to most issues. Being for gun control, regulated markets and public services make you no less of a Bible beleiving Christian than being against them.

Of course, abortion will inevitably come up in this discussion, probably euthanasia and homosexuality, too. But you don’t neccessarily have to be pro these issues to be a liberal.

When a person lacks the doctrine of the two kingdoms, faith and politics can blur together. When a person’s religion has agreed to conform to the culture, the foundation for making a decision is as shifting as cultural norms. When a person’s religion is based on sound doctrine, certain issues always land on one side of the fence or the other.
Taxes and transportation regulation are issues that rely less on scripture and doctrine; more on common sense. Abortion and end-of-life issues rely more heavily on scripture and doctrine. If there is no basis for taking a certain position on these issues, it is easy to be swayed.

Ethan, that’s so sick its funny!

But if that’s all it takes to steer people in a different direction, dontcha think we ought to be trying get the Word out a little more assertively as Christ-centered and Sacrament-driven Christians?

First of all let me say that I am a life long Republican and a member of the Canadian Progressive conservative party (I am a duel citizen) I have been active in electoral politics on both sides of the boarder since I manage the George Bush (senior) election campaign in my middle school’s mock republican primary I am pro life pro Iraq war (reluctantly) and an economic conservative I am also a conservative (relatively) Anglican. Regardless of weather or not Republicans or the Democrats (or conservative/liberals in Canada) win in November Abortion will remain legal in the United States. Even if a conservative supreme court manages to overturn Roe verses Wade it will simply revert the decision to the states where it will continue to remain legal most states until we experience a radical transformation of popular opinion (a Day I hope and pray for). All that being said the vast remaining issues that divide the left from the right are issues of policy not morality. What is the best way to manage the economy, issues of war and peace and social equity? I am sick to death of people talking (and acting) as if there is a clear cut “orthodox christen” position on these issues. In Europe where most main steam political parties support abortion rights the majority of orthodox Christians can be found on the left. Please let’s take a page from the English evangelical Anglican Oz Guinness’s book and eject a little civility into this discussion.

The biggest anti-Christian element of left wing political theory is its antagonism toward the Church and the family. This goes all the way back to Marx and even farther back to the French Revolution. The whole basis of this political theory was (and for a lot of the left, remains) that human nature is good, or evolving into good, and that the central planning of the state should replace the archaic and feudalist based family as the basic social unit. Religion, called by Marx the opiate of the masses, was (and for a lot of the left, remains) a mythological distraction from, and impediment of, the social evolution of humanity into a more benevolent socialist society.

Basic tenets of classical leftist political theory are that families need not care for each other because thae state will fill that need and because loyalties to entities other than the state are very much to be discouraged. Further, under this political theory the idea that charity for the less fortunate should be addressed by the Church is to be opposed (often by violence). The last thing that true political leftists wants is a cultural institution that thinks it should be taking care of society’s unfortunate, which is to them usurping the role of the government. And the last thing that true political leftists want is for an institution, like the Church, telling everyone that they are fallen by nature, that their only hope is redemption in Jesus Christ, and that no government program will make them ok or cure the ills of society.

I suppose “secular humanism” is kind of an outdated term, but I think that something like it is the foundation of all leftist, or liberal, political theory. Since this secular humanism is, in fact, antithetical to Christianity, I’m afraid that I DO believe that there is something about being a political liberal that is basicly inconsistent with being a Christian. This is not to say that people don’t try to be both, and this is not to say that plenty of Christians don’t adopt ideas that aren’t really consistent with Christian doctrine (and this is not confined to political liberals). It is also not to say that plenty of those who have opposed the left don’t have real theological problems of their own.

But, it IS to say that Christianity and leftist political theory are fundamentally inconistent. You can’t really accept the basic tenets of one without opposing the other.

You may have already heard about this, but our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters who are Democrats, may be at the infancy of a movement to put a few pin holes into the pro-choice platform.

May we add our prayers to theirs! God may be at work to infiltrate and bring down this monster from the inside!

Pro-life Democrats met in a very small room in Denver http://www.tulsabeacon.com/?p=854

There is plenty of room for political disagreement within Christianity. As C.S. Lewis wrote in an excellent essay, “By the natural light He has shown us what means are lawful: to find out which one is efficacious He has given us brains. The rest He has left to us.” (“Meditation on the Third Commandment,” found in God in the Dock)

The first part of the essay is posted here: http://web.mit.edu/bcf/www/BSJ97/cslewis.html

What follows is from ABC News today and pertains to the story two days ago here about how horrible Obama was for his hubris in thinking he was already the president as he undermined all things American.
_____________________

Undermining McCain Campaign Attack, Republicans Back Obama‘s Version of Meeting with Iraqi Leaders
September 19, 2008 1:06 PM

Earlier this week, the campaign of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., seized upon a column in the New York Post that described Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., as having urged Iraqi leaders in a private meeting to delay coming to an agreement with the Bush administration on the status of U.S. troops.

“Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence,” Post columnist Amir Tehari wrote, quoting Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari who told the Post that Obama during his meeting with Iraqi leaders in July “asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington.”

The charge — that Obama asked the Iraqis to delay signing off on a “Status of Forces Agreement,” thus delaying US troop withdrawal and interfering in U.S. foreign policy — has been picked up on the internet, talk radio and by Republicans including the McCain campaign, which seized on the story as possible evidence of duplicity.

The Obama campaign said that the Post report consisted of “outright distortions.”

Lending significant credence to Obama’s response is the fact that — though it’s absent from the Post story and other retellings — in addition to Obama and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, this July meeting was also attended by Bush administration officials such as U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and the Baghdad embassy’s Legislative Affairs advisor Rich Haughton, as well as a Republican senator, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.

Attendees of the meeting back Obama’s account, including not just Sen. Jack Reed, D-RI, but Hagel, Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffers from both parties. Officials of the Bush administration who were briefed on the meeting by the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad also support Obama’s account and dispute the Post story and McCain attack.

The Post story is “absolutely not true,” Hagel spokesman Mike Buttry told ABC News.

“Barack Obama has never urged a delay in negotiations,” said Obama campaign national security spokesperson Wendy Morigi, “nor has he urged a delay in immediately beginning a responsible drawdown of our combat brigades.”

Buttry said that Hagel agrees with Obama’s account of the meeting: Obama began the meeting with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki by asserting that the United States speaks with one foreign policy voice, and that voice belongs to the Bush administration.

A Bush administration official with knowledge of the meeting says that during the meeting Obama stressed to Maliki that he would not interfere with President Bush’s negotiations concerning the US troop presence in Iraq, and that he supports the Bush administration’s position on the need to negotiate as soon as possible the Status of Forces Agreement, which deals with among other matters US troops having immunity from local prosecution.

Obama did assert at the meeting with the Iraqis that he agrees with those – including Hagel and Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — who advocate congressional review of the Strategic Framework Agreement being worked out between the Bush administration and the Iraqi government, including the Iraqi parliament.

The Strategic Framework Agreement is a document that generally describes what the relationship between the two countries should look like over time.

According one person present at the meeting, Obama told Maliki that the American people wouldn’t understand why the Iraqi Parliament would get to have a say on the Strategic Framework Agreement but the U.S. Congress would not, especially since the President Bush is only months from leaving the White House, regardless of whether Obama or McCain succeeds him.

Morigi said in a statement that “Barack Obama has consistently called for any Strategic Framework Agreement to be submitted to the U.S. Congress so that the American people have the same opportunity for review as the Iraqi Parliament.”

It’s possible, Obama advisers believe, that either Zebari or columnist Taheri confused the Strategic Framework Agreement, which Obama feels should be reviewed by Congress, with the Status of Forces Agreement, which Obama says the Bush administration should negotiate with the Iraqis as soon as possible.

Two officials of the Bush administration say that if Obama had done what the Post story asserted – which they believe to be untrue – U.S. Ambassador Crocker and embassy officials attending the meeting would have ensured that the Bush administration heard about it immediately. If such an incident occurred in front of officials of the Bush administration, it would have constituted a foreign policy breach and would have been front-page huge news; it would not have leaked out two months later in an op-ed column.

Nonetheless, based on nothing more than the Post report, McCain senior foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann issued a statement earlier this week expressing outrage.

“It should be concerning to all that (Obama) reportedly urged that the democratically-elected Iraqi government listen to him rather than the US administration in power,” Scheunemann said, apparently not having talked to anyone with knowledge about the meeting in Bush administration, the US Embassy in Baghdad, GOP Sen. Hagel, or any Republican staffers on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“If news reports are accurate, this is an egregious act of political interference by a presidential candidate seeking political advantage overseas,” Scheunemann continued. “Senator Obama needs to reveal what he said to Iraq’s Foreign Minister during their closed door meeting. The charge that he sought to delay the withdrawal of Americans from Iraq raises serious questions about Senator Obama’s judgment and it demands an explanation.”

What actually demands an explanation is why the McCain campaign was so willing to give credence to such a questionable story with such tremendous international implications without first talking to Republicans present at Obama’s meeting with Maliki, who back Obama’s version of the meeting and completely dismiss the Post column as untrue.

– Jake Tapper and Kirit Radia

Sam (@16), for extensive quoting of material that is found on another Web site, may I recommend a link? I’m not even sure why you posted that in this thread.

Sam,

Thanks for the article, but the link would have worked just as well. I hope that we are not so set in our opinions that we won’t follow a link.

Grrr, so my entire argument from the other day disappears. Sigh. Now why couldn’t the Obama spokesperson have said that right away?

tODD @17:

The reason I bring up the history lesson on the origins and development of left wing political thought is because we are now faced with the reality that the Democratic Party has become the home of the American left wing. This was not always true. As recently as 50 years ago, there was plenty of diversity of opinion in both parties, which made bi-partisanship much easier.

Today the Left, and its secular-humanist (which I see as inherantly anti-Christian) principles dominate the Democratic Party.

If you look at western civilization you can see where the statist, secular humanist, ideology took root, and where it has been largely rejected. Leftism (if I can use this name as shorthand) has been substantially successful in Europe. Europe is where statist, largely godless, humanist political ideologies took deep root. And these ideologies gave the world its most destructive wars in human history. But most of Europe has now settled into kind of a nanny state culture with a controlled economy in which religion is largely considered a quaint historical mythology without contemporary relevance.

Europe is the culture that the American Left wants for America. And you also find plenty of statist, secular humanist, Europeans who want America to become like Europe is now. I don’t know if I can speak for the entire American right, but I think that the present condition of Europe is a fate Americans and Christians should oppose with every fiber of our being. But anybody who doesn’t think that there is no connection between the influence of Big government in Europe, and the dominance of atheism in present European Culture should reexamine the situation over there.

So, when 200,000 Europeans gather to praise Barack Obama, that makes me want to get as far away from him as possible, even at the cost of making a largely inexperienced Alaskan Vice-President. But I digress.

The point is that the big-government ideology so popular in the Democratic party today is strongly linked with its anti-religious ideology. You commenters on this blog may be the exceptions, but for most of your fellow Democrats the whole basis of their ideology is to replace God and the Church with big government. Maybe you think you can somehow cleanse the Democratic Party of its American leftist (and therefore anti-religious) foundations, but I don’t think you can.

oops—blush—double negative in comment 22. That should be:

anybody that DOES think that there is no connection between the influence of big government and the dominance of atheism in present European culture should reexamine the situation over there.

tODD @ 17,

“Why not agree that all political parties and ideologies are afflicted by this shortsightedness, if perhaps in different ways?”

Great words. The crux of the issue, in my opinion. We’ve got to stop pointing fingers, sit down, and figure these things out together, since we’re all affected by our common troubles.

Michael:

Geez! One of the things you add to our discussion here is that you force us, or at least me, to research my assumptions. But the questions you pose @27 have generated whole libraries full of books worth of discussion.

Let’s start with the difference between the USA ans Europe. You will find some statistics here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_atheism

My own denomination, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, supports missions to various European Countries, including, of all places, Germany. And that’s just us. Many other American denominations have sent missionaries to Europe to try to re-plant Christianity there.

As fo the atheistic nature of the great totalitarian regimes that gave us WWII, I should think that Communism is pretty obvious. The marxist antogonism to Christianity, as well as all religion, is well known and clear from all its propaganda. The fact that Communism was unable to stamp out Christianity completely is a testamony to the faith of those who held out, but the persecution Christians endured is well documented. For further details, if you want them, I commend to you the book: “Tortured for Christ”, by the Rev. Richard Wurmbrandt.

In order to address the foundations of Naziism, we have to begin with a dicussion of the development of philosophical thought in Western Europe. The thing about Christian Churches in Western Europe, is that they had become political institutions instead of separate centers of faith. As such they were attacked polotically. They were also under pressure from the developing schools of philosophical thought, such as the existentialists, the rationalists, etc. At the same time, advances in science, and new scientific theories, such as darwinian evolutionary theory, freudian psychology, eugenics, etc. began to emerge and merge with political theory. The concept of social evolution is deeply embedded in marxism. Marx believed that society would inevitably evlove from feudalism, to capitalism, to socialism, and finally to communism. Communism was, for Marx, the final stage of evolution at which point the need for government would end and the socialist state (which up to this point would hold society together in a cooperative system) would “wither away”. Marx believed that all mankind would sufficiently evolve to the point at which total cooperation among citizens, aka “communism”, would be possible. But other philosophers did not agree, or at least they did not agree about everything.

But before I go farther, it is important to remember that none of these 19th and early 20th century philosophers accepted Christianity. They all found the Christain concept of a fallen mankind in need of a savior to be mythology for the weak, and totally inconsistant with the concept of an evolving mankind.

oops, one of the links should be

http://www.authorhouse.com/BookStore/ItemDetail.aspx?bookid=30568

Michael:

The “head-spinning” feeling is mutual, amigo.

I do try to find the facts. This is probaly due to my training as well as my nature.

I understand all you said @31, and I don’t know that I dispute it. I understand that there is one school of thought that Hitler simply implimented Nietzsche’s ideas, but Nietzsche’s defenders, like you aparently, believe that Hitler was perverting them. I don’t agree with Nietzsche’s ideas, nor do I have much confidence in Darwin’s, but one thing I am NOT saying is that anyone who agrees with them is a Nazi. Clearly, the Nazis took these ideas and ran with them in a direction that was different than most.

But I was responding to your claim that Naziism was Catholic. NO NO NO! Nazism was either an extension or a perversion of Neitzschean and Darwinian theory, which would make it decidedly NOT Christian. And it would make Naziism atheist, even though most sane atheists would reject it, because the master race (twisted overman) oriented Nazis rejected the idea of subordination of their will to any concept of God.

Plenty of evil has been done in the name of the Roman Catholic Church, and doubtless some evil has been done in the name of my own. But you can’t hang Hitler on us.