On Politics. And Christianity. And Christianity and politics.
So, heavy stuff upcoming, I suppose.
I'll start with something funny.
Click to viewA DISCLAIMER: This post is a lot of my own beliefs, and there's not going to be a lot of Scripture in here. I don't think it's right to take Scripture to try to enforce my personal beliefs on debatable matters.
You know what annoys me? When people dismiss Barack Obama because they think he's Islamic. If you want to oppose him for his politics or policies, or because you think he doesn't have experience or judgement on issues, or because you believe in a small, Constitutionally-limited Federal government, that's one thing, but to listen to b.s. rumors that are bald faced lies and not even look it up to see if it's true? That's the mark of willful ignorance and just being stupid on purpose (or being liars on purpose, which is substantially worse).
Barack Obama is not a Muslim and never has been. He was, however, an agnostic at one time, skeptical of organized religion. Long before he began to campaign for president, Barack Obama gave this speech. He talks about what he believes is the role of religion (and specifically, his own Christianity) in politics. Here is a quote:
"You need to embrace Christ precisely because you have sins to wash away - because you are human and need an ally in this difficult journey. It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street in the Southside of Chicago one day and affirm my Christian faith. It came about as a choice, and not an epiphany. I didn't fall out in church. The questions I had didn't magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt that I heard God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth."
Don't tell me he can't be a Christian because he has different ideas about the role of Christianity in politics than the conservative side does, because he "supports sodomy and murder", as one blogpundit said. He doesn't support homosexuality, he doesn't want to make it the dominant way people live in the United States, he supports the right of free people in a free country to make a free choice. He doesn't want people to have abortions, he supports the right of free people And so do I. I believe that homosexual acts are sin, but practicing homosexuals are no more (and no less) sinners than are the drunkards, liars, and gossip-mongers that populate church buildings. I believe that abortion grieves the heart of God just as much as divorce, pornography, spousal abuse, and adultery. All these sins are forgivable, and all these people are redeemable. If you want to get technical, I support the Constitutional right of free states to vote on it themselves, which makes me more a Libertarian than a Liberal, and neither of these is the unforgivable sin.
I believe he is wrong in his Constintinian views of religion underwriting social justice and liberalism, but I much prefer it to our current president's Constintinian views of religion underwriting a lack of progress on social issues and the unprovoked (and illegal) attack on another sovereign nation's soil, under false pretenses. When it comes to religion and politics, I have to turn to the writings of men smarter than I, Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon. The first paragraph seems to describe Obama's (and other "liberal" Christians) view of Christianity in politics, the second describes what used to be my position, and may be some of yours, and the third position is my current one. Italics are theirs, underlines are mine.
"The activist church is more concerned with the building of a better society than with the reformation of the church. Through the humanization of social structures, the activist church glorifies God. It calls on its members to see God at work behind the movements for social change so that Christians will join in movements for justice... the difficulty is that the activist church appears to lack the theological insight to judge history for itself. Its politics becomes a sort of religiously glorified liberalism.
"On the other hand we have the conversionist church. This church argues that no amount of tinkering with the structures of society will counter the effects of human sin. The promises of secular optimism are therefore false because they attempt to bypass the biblical call to admit personal guilt and to experience reonciliation to God and neighbor... Because this church works only for inward change, it has no alternative social ethic or social structure of it's own to offer the world. Alas, the political claims of Jesus are sacrificed for politics that inevitabley seems to degenerate in to a religiously glorified conservatism.
"The confessing church is not a synthesis of the other two approaches, a helpful middle ground. Rather, it is a radical alternative. Rejecting both the individualism of the conversionists and the secularism of the activists and their common equation of what works with what is faithful, the confessing church finds its main political task to lie, not in the personal transformation of individual hearts or the modification of society, but rather in the congregation's determination to worship Christ in all things...
"The confessing church, like the conversionist church, also calls people to conversion, but it depicts that conversion as a long process of bein baptismally engrafted into a new people, an alternative polis, a countercultural social structure called church. It seeks to influence the world by being the church, that is, by being something the world is not and can never be... the confessing church can participate in secular movements against war, against hunger, and against other forms of inhumanity, but it sees this as part of its necessary proclamatory action. This church knows that its most credible form of witness (and the most 'effective' thing it can do for the world) is the actual creation of a living, breathing, visible community of faith."
Hauerwas and Willimon, Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony, pp.44-47
I prefer Ron Paul, who is a Constitutional Libertarian much like myself. But if I'm going to have to vote for a Constininian, I prefer Obama's brand of liberal Constintianism to the rest. Both of them voted against the war on Iraq from the start, both of them seem to genuinely attempt to work to change this country. I don't necessarily agree with all the policies, all the politics (universal healthcare is going to tank, I expect). And if it came down to who I would want to hang out with and play guitars and discuss Scripture with, I'd probably have to go with Mike Huckabee, who seems like a genuinely nice guy, but I disagree with more of his politics than I do Barack's. Yes, even with Huckabee's support for an anti-abortion amendment and even with his opposition of gay marriage.
We cannot expect a post-modern, post-Christian world to behave in a Christian manner. And we should not try to force it to, because then we become the Pharisees, we become the Sanhedrin calling for the crucifixion of Christ. "'Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.' " We should behave as the Church, God's one True Church which he has called out of denominations and Constantinianism. We should show the world through the Church what life and politics should be, so that they can see God working in us, and glorify him. The city on a hill must not be hidden! We are the light of the world! That's the job Jesus gave us, as the Church.
Too often, it seems, we try to get things done through government taxes and laws that we as the Church should be doing. And why? Because it's so much easier to just give our responsibility to the fatherless and the widow to someone else. The Church needs to be active in caring for these, instead of putting the job on the government through Medicare and Social Services. Can we really trust this govenment with lives and souls? Could we trust the government with lives and souls if John McCain, or Mike Huckabee, or Ron Paul, or Hillary Clinton, or Barack Obama, or even Abraham Lincoln was President and all of Congress backed them up? I say no. Let's stop looking to the government to do our job, Church. Let's get to the helping of the needy and the healing of the brokenhearted and the proclaiming of freedom to those who are captives.
Several links so you can learn more:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/muslim.asp (snopes.com article on Obama's religion)
http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/ObamaonFaith.pdf (quotes from Obama on faith and how it fits into his politics.)
http://www.lifewatch.org/abortion.html (Stanley Hauerwas' speech on the confessional Christian answer to abortion - this was instrumental in my understanding of the confessional church)
Clarification of my position on request. Feel free to explain yours.
And to think this post started out as a minor rant on how people were silly for believing Obama was a muslim because someone (usually an anonymous email writer!) told thems so.
In love, peace, and the Grace of God through Christ,
Galen