“We believe that God assesses the value of a nation by the way in which it cares for the marginal – for those people who cannot care for themselves,” implored a United Methodist bishop at the press conference, which my colleague Jeff Walton attended. “Our task is not simply to address the world of today, it is to see to it that those who come after us in this world will be advantaged by the abundance of this wonderful planet on which God has placed us.” But how can there be “advantage” for future generations if the U.S. federal government is straddled with tens of trillions in unredeemable debt, crippling taxes, bankrupting entitlement programs, an enervating Welfare State, and crippling regulations? The Religious Left’s faithful budget prophets do not explain.
Traditional Christianity envisions a world of balance in which all persons are called to contribute towards the common good with their own God-given talents. Traditional Christianity sees all persons as moral agents responsible for their own decisions. And traditional Christianity sees all persons as sinners who often need rewards, punishments and incentives as well as ongoing challenge and accountability. But in the Religious Left’s surreal universe, all persons are intrinsically good but victimized by oppressive social systems, for which they are entitled to endless redress by a mammoth, centralized state, controlled of course by the enlightened Left.
In their 50 page budget vision, the Faithful Budget Campaign calls for “substantial” increased federal spending on public education, “affordable” housing, homelessness, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families , global and domestic hunger, AIDS, Global Warming, “renewable energy,” home energy assistance, and “environmental justice,” along with the United Nations and the U.S. Institute on Peace. How to pay for all these additional expenses? Cut nuclear weapons, submarines and aircraft, along with prisons, and immigration law enforcement.
In other words, the U.S. government should stop defending the American people from terror, aggression and crime. Instead, it should spend even more on discredited fantasies of the last 50 years that assumed federal checks could solve poverty, eliminate the need for fossil fuels, and establish global peace based exclusively on good will. Additionally, productivity should be punished by higher tax rates. And inactivity should be rewarded with permanent subsidies.
Christianity is a very earthy, no nonsense faith embodied in St. Paul’s admonition, “If you don’t work, you don’t eat.” The early church fathers and sensible churchmen ever since have believed that governments are ordained mainly to defend their people with armies and police, to punish the criminally wicked, and to sustain public order so that honest people can exercise their virtues freely to the glory of God.
But the Religious Left chooses to see Big Government almost as a replacement for God, the church, the family, and virtually all other human institutions. They ascribe to the federal Welfare and Regulatory State powers and mysteries that even the most zealous of ancient pagans never ascribed to their favorite golden idols. Most sensible people, even in Congress, will recognize that the Faithful Budget Campaign’s dreams do not merit attention or faith.
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Excellent points. I would add that the allegedly Christian version of the "religious Left" routinely denies the deity of Christ, his exclusivity for salvation, the authority and accuracy of the Bible, and so much more. We have a term for people who hold their views: Non-Christians.
"But in the Religious Left’s surreal universe, all persons are intrinsically good but victimized by oppressive social systems, for which they are entitled to endless redress by a mammoth, centralized state, controlled of course by the enlightened Left."
Yes, and it never occurs to the Religious Left that those systems had to have been designed by all these "intrinsically good" people.
"Sanctimoniously, the Sojourners mobilizer bewailed that the “vulnerable” may lack super PACs and “gangs of lobbyists . . ."
Sadly, the most vulnerable — innocent human beings in the womb — have the Sojourners and the rest of the religious Left either ignoring or advancing the ultimate social injustice of abortion. They love to quote the "least of these" part of Matthew 25 while ignoring that they all want taxpayer-funded abortions. That means they think one of our problems is that we aren't killing enough unborn children.
This article is an example of Iran Contra era CIA infiltration of the Religious Right. I am a supporter of the separation of church and state, so this opinion article rubs me the wrong way. Here, a CIA member started a Christian Think Tank to combat the involvement of Protestant churches in the Sandinista movement. Years later, the organization "Institute on Religion and Democracy" tries to tell us who to vote for, what to believe in church, and what we may hold as articles of faith. In that sense it is a psychological operation. THIS IS the organization behind the current effort to destabilize the United Methodist Church.
LOL! Mark didn't start the "Christian Think Tank." He was not even employed by IRD when IRD was speaking out (rightly so) about the mainline churches' love affair with the Sandinistas.
Yes. I stand corrected. He did not found the organization. But he is the president and oversees the operation against the Methodist Church. The characterization of the organization is accurate. The internet is now awash in failed campaigns such as Kony2012, Save Darfur, and now the assault on the Methodist Church, thanks to these types of think tanks.
The operation against the UMC is the General Board of Church and Society which takes money from radical, militant athiest and Marxist organizations to foist their socialist, worldly agenda on the Church.
It is very hard to do social analysis without analyzing all the unfinished revolutions extant since the 16th century. I wrote about that here: http://clarespark.com/2009/07/04/unfinished-revol…. I would also look at Leo XIII and his Rerum Novarum, that commands attention to the plight of the working class, implying bigger government. I often find little to separate some strains of Catholicism and Marxism. The intellectual I analyze here, Nicholas Boyle, is not even in history, indeed rejects history as an illusion. So much for non-worldliness.
"But the Religious Left chooses to see Big Government almost as a replacement for God, the church, the family, and virtually all other human institutions. "
No "almost" to it….the God of the Left IS the state (Govt). The Social Gospel is a delusion of the left which allows them to think they can pick and choose the parts of the Bible that they agree with and ignore the rest. Romans 1:25 says "They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things (ie the Govt/state) rather than the Creator…"