The Rise of the Libertarian Jesus
For the last several years, I've been wondering about the rise of what I'll call the "Libertarian Jesus" in contemporary Christian culture. By the "Libertarian Jesus," I mean the anti-government, anti-tax, anti-regulation, anti-redistributive laissez-faire Jesus. These days said Libertarian Jesus also seems to condemn anything that anyone might
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BTW, the proximate cause of this particular stream of consciousness was this set of articles by Professor Corey Robin.
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Otherwise, I would like to see you flesh this out, because there seem to be points of similarity with Ross Douthat's analysis of the Prosperity Gospel in Bad Religion. That, and I think you're partly right and partly wrong, and there is no debate more stimulating than one that tries to refine an idea. :)
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I think you're right though (on me being partly wrong). While the Libertarian Jesus certainly does allow "you be a racist without being a racist" [1], to reduce it to just race (as I did), almost certainly misses a lot of how the Libertarian Jesus came to be so popular.
I find Douthat somewhat hit or miss, but I'll see if our public library has a copy of his book. It might be an interesting read. The Prosperity Gospel is almost certainly connected with the Libertarian Jesus and it would be interesting to see Douthat's analysis. Any other ideas you or lissiehoya want to share to help refine this would be most appreciated!
Peace!
[1] Instead of disliking people of color because of the color of their skin in and of itself, the "new racism" starts by disliking people who are poor and then noticing that people with a different skin color may tend to be poorer than you.
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Person 1: Speaking as, for the most part, a libertarian, this is pretty terrible idea-history, written by someone who doesn't even understand what libertarianism is. First, this is a straw Jesus I've never heard anyone advance, libertarian or not. If anything it resembles the Jesus of people like Michele Bachmann, but then again liberals can usually be counted on to conflate libertarians with neocons, much to the disappointment of libertarians. Second, for the millionth time Ayn Rand was not a libertarian; she hated libertarians. The picture of Nietzsche is thoroughly confused as well--his issue was with the phenomenon of nationalism, not government. Nor did he pronounce God dead; he thought culture had done so. And to suggest that Hayek is pro-dictatorship is insane. He is most famous precisely for his arguments that fascism and communism are two sides of the same coin. Hayek furthermore thought the principle of laissez faire was ruinous, as did ( ... )
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But I will note that Hayek's warm and fuzzy feelings for dictatorships, at least in the form of the dictatorship of Pinochet, can be reasonably well documented.
But the fairer point your friends make is that the "Libertarian Jesus" may not be the most correct name for the idea I'm hitting on. My goal was to critique the Jesus imagined by the Hayek-quoting, Rand-reading portion of the American body politic. I could have easily as referred to this Jesus as the "Tea Party Jesus" instead, but since I tend to identify the "new" ideas the Tea Party has added to modern conservatism as more "libertarian" ideas, I picked the name "Libertarian Jesus ( ... )
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