{"id":30761,"date":"2015-07-05T15:26:57","date_gmt":"2015-07-05T19:26:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/?p=30761"},"modified":"2015-07-05T15:26:57","modified_gmt":"2015-07-05T19:26:57","slug":"the-pope-the-god-and-the-gop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2015\/07\/the-pope-the-god-and-the-gop.html","title":{"rendered":"The Pope, the God, and the GOP"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"Lukovich<\/p>\n

The cartoon above by Mike Lukovich<\/a> offers an amusing take on a famous painting. It nicely situates Big Oil as thinking of itself as God. One way of understanding it is\u00a0that Big Oil as God is\u00a0taking a bribe from the GOP (the Republican Party) to ignore the Pope. But\u00a0that would represent a reversal of what really happens \u2013 the money passes from Big Oil to the politicians, and\u00a0then they ignore the Pope in favor of their vested interests. So is that what we are meant to envisage going on here?\u00a0Which way do you think the money is supposed to be flowing in the cartoon?<\/p>\n

That\u00a0is but one of several that explores the conservative reaction to the pope\u2019s words about climate change. Below\u00a0are some others, with my thoughts on them.<\/p>\n

This next one could equally substitute a Bible for the Pope, to address how Protestant conservatives deal with their allegedly infallible source of authority. In both cases, they appeal to authority when it suits them, and ignore it when it suits them. And so Catholics and Protestants are not much different in this regard.<\/p>\n

\"Conservatives<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

This next one highlights the hypocrisy of conservative politicians who have consistently played the religion card, and then have responded to the\u00a0Pope \u2013 who also has a background<\/a>\u00a0(a diploma but not a degree) in chemistry<\/a> \u2013 that he should stay out of politics and out of science.<\/p>\n

\"How<\/p>\n

And finally, we have Pope Francis depicted as a modern-day John the Baptist, crying out as a lone voice in the midst of a different sort of wilderness. Of course, we\u2019ve actually done a great deal to address some of the issues of pollution that were even more common a few decades ago \u2013 our cities looked much more like the image in the cartoon in the 1970s than they do today, I think. But that doesn\u2019t let us off the hook, and indeed, it is part of the Biblical tradition\u2019s moral challenge that it does not merely say \u201cYou are doing terribly, stop!\u201d but also \u201cYou are complacent because you are not doing terribly \u2013 but real, profound, meaningful change requires that you do more than you are currently.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Pope<\/p>\n

Are there other political cartoons focused on the Pope\u2019s encyclical, and politicians\u2019 responses to it, that I\u2019ve missed and ought to have included here?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The cartoon above by Mike Lukovich offers an amusing take on a famous painting. It nicely situates Big Oil as thinking of itself as God. One way of understanding it is\u00a0that Big Oil as God is\u00a0taking a bribe from the GOP (the Republican Party) to ignore the Pope. But\u00a0that would represent a reversal of what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":30762,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75,78,165],"tags":[1625,1948,2592,3056,3982,5164,7379,8343,9302,9305,9330,10240,11361],"class_list":["post-30761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-pseudoscience","category-roman-catholicism","tag-cartoon","tag-climate-change","tag-denialism","tag-encyclical","tag-global-warming","tag-infallible","tag-michelangelo","tag-oil","tag-politicans","tag-politics","tag-pope","tag-republican","tag-sistine-chapel"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Pope, the God, and the GOP<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The cartoon above by Mike Lukovich offers an amusing take on a famous painting. It nicely situates Big Oil as thinking of itself as God. 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