‘Talk more about religion! Now stop talking so much about religion!’

July 14, 2007

Guest Post by Morbo

For years Religious Right leaders have moaned about Democrats not taking faith seriously. Now some Democratic candidates are talking more about faith — and the Religious Right still isn’t happy.

Personally, I’ve heard enough about how much Sen. Barack Obama loves Jesus. But if he wants to continue in that vein, I can live with it. If it’s really his faith that is motivating Obama to advocate for things like universal health care, a living wage and immigration reform, that’s OK by me. I just want to get this stuff done.

One would think the Religious Right would agree. But that would be naive. Here’s how it works in the Religious Right world: Whenever a Republican talks about religion, no matter how obviously shallow or insincere he or she may be, that person is to be lauded as a true Christian statesman. (Recent examples include Newt Gingrich and Sen. David Vitter.) When a Democrat does it, no matter how heart-felt the impression, he or she is always a hypocrite. Nice little trick, huh?

Tom Minnery, one of the chief toadies at James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, has got this down pat. In a recent column that ran on the repulsive WorldNetDaily, Minnery blasted Obama for daring to suggest that government has a role to play in helping the poor.

According to Minnery, Obama started off OK in a recent speech by being compassionate and earnest. But Obama soon went astray, Minnery claims, and became “thoroughly misleading about the proper roles of religion and government.” Minnery writes:

“[I]n the Gospels, the heart of this virtue is found in the parable of the Good Samaritan…. The Samaritan put the injured man on his own donkey, and he dipped into his own pocket to procure the man’s care. It’s important to note Jesus did not blame the government for failing to put police patrols on the road to Jericho. Neither did He blame the government for failing to pay for the man’s health care. His answer to the question that provoked the story — ‘Who is my neighbor’ — is to point out the Samaritan’s personal, voluntary sacrifice to help a stranger who probably hated him in the first place.

“Contrast that to the tired liberal prescription offered by Sen. Obama for the problems of poverty and health care. He’d rather put his hand in someone else’s pocket. Here’s what he was saying, in essence: ‘You are hurting, and that makes me feel bad. I will raise his taxes to help you, and then I will feel better (and I will have your vote.)'”

I know you hate paying your taxes, Tom, but I have bad news for you: Your buddy Jesus wasn’t in favor of you being filthy rich. He once advised a rich man who wanted to follow him to first give away his possessions to the poor. (Matthew: 19:21)

Here are some other passages you might read, Tom:

Luke 12:16-21: And Jesus told them a parable, saying, The land of a rich man was very productive. And he began reasoning to himself, saying, What shall I do, since I have no place to store my crops? Then he said, This is what I will do: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come; take your ease, eat, drink and be merry. But God said to him, You fool! This very night your soul is required of you; and now who will own what you have prepared? So is the man who stores up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.

Matthew 6:24: No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

Acts 20:35: In everything I showed you that by working hard in this manner you must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He Himself said, It is more blessed to give than to receive.

Read that last one again: you must help the weak. You see, Tom, Obama wants to fulfill the mandates of his faith by using the considerable resources and wealth of the state to help those in need. And the great thing is, those of us who are secular but still want to help those in need can agree because when all is said and done, the end result is the same: People getting the health care or other services they are entitled to by the sheer fact that they are human beings.

Shame on you, Tom. If there’s any justice in the world, you will one day be asked to explain yourself as you tremble before the God you so ostentatiously claim to serve but whose dictates you constantly mock.

Help the weak?! Where’s the bottom line in that?

I always thought it noteworthy that Ronald Reagan, the origin and inspiration of modern Republicanism, had the whole Christian thing upside-down. He embraced the Marcoses when their were exiled from the Philippines (Ferdinand began his climb to wealth and power off running teenage prostitution operations) and referred to the chronically poor as “welfare queens” while he and his cabinet considered Mother Teresa to be nothing but a pain-in-the-ass nutcase.

Of course, that’s the whole “Protestant Ethic” thing, isn’t it? According to Max Weber wealth, which from Jesus through the Middle Ages, was a distraction from the holy life, became its measure under Calvin’s doctrine of Pre-destination. Pre-destined for Salvation in the next world, blessed with wealth in this one. The poor — saints for the first 1500 years — become sinners and vice versa.

  • Slightly off track, but the right wing has never quite gotten the point of the Good Samaratin. To the Jews of Jerusulam, the Samaratin’s were the evil scum of the earth, probably what the modern right wing Christian thinks of a muslim. The point of the story is not simply it is good to take care of other humans, but that we should see the good in all people and abandon our bigotry against certain groups. Change the story to the good Muslim and see if the go for it.

  • I want to agree with you about being able to live with Obama’s incessant need to broadcast his belief in ancient superstition, but I cannot. I am terribly discouraged that the new Democratic strategy appears to be one of out-faithing the Christian extremists who have come to dominate the Republican party. I fail to see how more religion is the answer to problematic religion.

    Of course, you are right that the critical thing is whether or not Obama can accomplish some good. And yet, I’ve had my fill of religion in politics under Bush. It is getting harder and harder to remain a Democrat, as I find their Religious Left strategy absurd. It is a price I’m not sure I’m willing to pay for some policy changes.

  • Compared with all the questions about who believes what, “boxers or briefs” seems downright profound.

  • I’m tired of being preached to, of being guilted into thinking I should be driven by religious belief, because that is the only measure of what is moral and what is not. And I am most tired of this coming at me from politicians, from people who want to run the country – you know – all of us? All of us with our many faiths, some with no faith?

    I want to know that the person who wants the top job is someone who knows the difference between right and wrong, but it’s not a requirement – for me – that his or her basis for knowing that is some form of religious belief. I just want to know that this person understands that it is not okay to, for example, lie us into war, or spy on us without our knowledge. I want to know that he or she understands that the principles that underlie this democracy do not call for random snatching of people off the streets and disappearing them for indefinite periods of time, possibly subjecting them to torture and never having to prove to anyone whether there was any basis for it.

    Maybe I’m missing something. Maybe I’m the one who has her head on backwards for thinking that one does not have to be religious, or even believe in a God, in order to know that some things are right and some things are just wrong. As it happens, I do believe in God, but I don’t think I needed God to tell me that it’s wrong to lie, cheat and steal, that it’s wrong to cheat on my husband, and so on. I kind of hope God would like us to understand these basic truths without His help, but that’s just my opinion.

    I think somewhere along the line, we have allowed those with a desire to infuse all aspects of our lives with religion – their religion – to delude us into thinking that if a person does not wear his or her faith where we can all see it, that person must not have any, and without faith, one cannot possibly have the moral fiber to know the difference between right and wrong. Which is utter crap – and it’s time we said so. Not in a defensive kind of way – but maybe in just the way I have here – by asking if people really believe that without God telling them so, we would have no ability to understand what is right and what is wrong.

    Sorry to go on and on, but this is a subject that really gets under my skin.

  • Tom Minnery is a classic “Cafeteria Christian.”
    These folks pick which parts of Christianity that serves their purpose (like not paying their taxes), while leaving behind the spirit of the teaching (…render unto Caesar..).
    Although raised as a Catholic, I couldn’t say true to myself & stay with the church considering the church’s teachings on human sexuality. Think that Tom would have the same problem? Oops, I better not try comparing Catholics & Fundies. I hate hearing people screaming “Die, heretic!”
    My gut tells me that this is more about power in this world than serving God.

  • Of course, it’s karma. Wealth, poverty, sickness, health, in this life, are the results of accumulated causes in previous lives. The main problem with recognizing this is that none of us have much chance of remembering what we were up to in previous lives. However, the truth of cause and effect is not negated by not remembering.

    Another problem is that the connections between cause and effect are not always obvious. In simple day-to-day things we take it for granted. If the results of our actions were random it would be ridiculous — we couldn’t do anything. But on a longer timescale it’s not so obvious. The karmic cause of wealth, for example, is generosity, which may not be so obvious at first glance, but with reflection it becomes clear. The karmic cause of poverty is stealing and being mean. It’s quite a deep truth, but so is nuclear physics and radio astronomy, which doesn’t mean to say it’s beyond comprehension.

    If you take this view it might seem that there’s nothing to be done about the circumstances and conditions people are in. But that’s false. Karma is entirely our own responsibility. We create the causes of everything we experience as we go along, and the better we understand it the better situations we create for ourselves and others.

    So, just because it’s someone’s karma to be sick or poor at a particular moment in their life doesn’t mean that it will always be like that, or that it always has been like that. When we’re ill it’s hard to remember what it was like to be well, even if it was only a few days previously. Similarly, when we’re well we never think about being ill. That’s just the way we are. That we have the opportunity to help others is a great blessing, if for no other reason than that it gives us the chance to accumulate merit.

    My point here is that our ability, collectively, to help our fellow men is enhance, rather than impaired, by the accuracy of our understanding of how these problems arise in the first place. Just because we know that everyone suffers because of their own previous actions doesn’t mean that we can’t participate in alleviating that suffering as well as being aware of the root causes of that suffering and finding ways to encourage the avoidance of actions that brought it about — for future wellbeing.

  • Also the camel through the eye of the needle bit.

    What a hypocrite to deny that the Samaritan was representative of the commons which we use government to support because there are so many of us Samaritans, making Jesus’s way more efficient.

    Another Dobson attack dog so ready to smear a Democrat by any all stretches of the imagination.

    God you forgive them, because I sure as hell can’t.

  • Jesus also said “give to Ceasar what belongs to Ceasar”. He made a distinction between what is God’s and what is the government’s. And based on the following passage, he clearly expected his followers to take care of those less fortunate. It would seem to make sense that government can do this on a much broader scale than any one individual.

    “For I was hungry and you gave me food,

    I was thirsty and you gave me drink,

    I was a Stranger and you Welcomed me,

    36 “I was naked and you clothed me,

    I was sick and you visited me,

    I was in prison and you came to me.’

    40 “Truly, I say to you,

    as you did it to

    one of the least of these,

    my brethren,

    you did it to me.

    Matthew 25

  • Goldilocks writes: It’s quite a deep truth, but so is nuclear physics and radio astronomy, which doesn’t mean to say it’s beyond comprehension.

    This sort of nonsense just kills me. Here you’ve got a bunch of people discussing the foolishness of blind belief, and along comes Goldilocks to supplant it with more blind belief of a different flavor, and with every bit as much false certainty as any christian zealot.

    Of course, it’s karma. Wealth, poverty, sickness, health, in this life, are the results of accumulated causes in previous lives. …Just because we know that everyone suffers because of their own previous actions…

    And how, pray tell, is this worldview in any way superior to Pastafarianism? Or Catholicism? Or Islam? The haughty self-righteousness being wielded here to belittle the other guy’s baseless beliefs is breathtakingly absurd.

    I’m going to go look under the couch for rationality. It seems to have slipped off the computer screen.

  • Oh, I forgot to implore Goldilocks to please cease the outrageous comparison of nuclear physics and radio astronomy with her primitive reincarnation delusions. That’s just beyond the pale.

  • Democrats have taken it on the chin for thirty years because they have been reluctant to talk about the relationship between their political goals, their personal values, and the source of those values. If Democrats of faith want to acknowledge their faith, I”m all for it. And if secular Democrats want to speak in terms of doing the right thing simply because it’s the right thing, I’m all for that too. Bottom line, all the good ideas in the world are useless if we don’t win elections.

  • I find it much more reasonable that Christianity in Europe is widely recognized as aligning with the left. Loud though they may be, the people leading the “Religious Right” simply don’t meet my expectations of Christians.

    Orange.

    • Comments are closed.