For those who do not know who Jim Wallis is, he is President and Chief Executive Officer of Sojourners a Christian organization, if not a movement in itself. His question goes very deep for me. I left the fundamentalist way of thinking in the 1960s because they had become too much of a political organization under the guise of Biblical Christianity. Recently, I gave a teach in on our Main Street about the Health Care Reform Bill and was countered by a bunch of this same kind of people. They were telling people that my information was false(I had actual copies of large parts of the Bill) and were passing out the "real" Bill. Later we found their fabrication on one of Jerry Falwell's sites. They also were passing out religious stuff that claimed to be "Christian". I find this a common way for such sects to behave. The president of an organization I just left starts Board of Directors meetings with prayer and then lies and carries on without restraint. What has happened to "Christianity" ? Read on below for more.
Wallis asks his question: How Christian is Tea Party Libertarianism? on his God's Politics blog named after his best selling book.
Here is Wallis' point:
The insurgent Tea Party and its Libertarian philosophy is a political phenomenon, not a religious one. Like the Democratic and Republican parties it seeks to challenge, it is a secular movement, not a Christian one. As with both major political parties, people who regard themselves as Christians may be involved in, or sympathetic to, the new Tea Party; but that doesn’t make it "Christian." But like the philosophies and policies of the major political parties, the Tea Party can legitimately be examined on the basis of Christian principles — and it should be.
He goes on to do that. Here are excerpts from some of his key points:
Libertarianism is a political philosophy that holds individual rights as its supreme value and considers government the major obstacle. It tends to be liberal on cultural and moral issues and conservative on fiscal, economic, and foreign policy. This "just leave me alone and don’t spend my money" option is growing quickly in American life, as we have seen in the Tea Party movement. Libertarianism has been an undercurrent in the Republican Party for some time, and has been in the news lately due to the primary election win of Rand Paul as the Republican candidate for a Senate seat in Kentucky. Paul has spoken like a true Libertarian, as evidenced by some of his comments since that election last week.
He cited the Civil Rights Act as an example of government interference with the rights of private business. Paul told an interviewer that he would have tried to change the provision in the 1964 Civil Rights Act that made it illegal for private businesses to discriminate on the basis of race. He answered a specific question about desegregating lunch counters by countering, "Does the owner of the restaurant own his restaurant? Or does the government own his restaurant?"
A few days later, he spoke about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Referring to the Obama administration’s criticisms of BP, Paul said, "I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business."
Is such a philosophy Christian? In several major aspects of biblical ethics, I would suggest that Libertarianism falls short.
- The Libertarian enshrinement of individual choice is not the pre-eminent Christian virtue.
- An anti-government ideology just isn’t biblical. In Romans 13, the apostle Paul (not the Kentucky Senate candidate) describes the role and vocation of government; in addition to the church, government also plays a role in God’s plan and purposes. Preserving the social order, punishing evil and rewarding good, and protecting the common good are all prescribed; we are even instructed to pay taxes for those purposes! Sorry, Tea Party. Of course, debating the size and role of government is always a fair and good discussion, and most of us would prefer smart and effective to "big" or "small" government.
- The Libertarians’ supreme confidence in the market is not consistent with a biblical view of human nature and sin. The exclusive focus on government as the central problem ignores the problems of other social sectors, and in particular, the market. When government regulation is the enemy, the market is set free to pursue its own self-interest without regard for public safety, the common good, and the protection of the environment — which Christians regard as God’s creation. Libertarians seem to believe in the myth of the sinless market and that the self-interest of business owners or corporations will serve the interests of society; and if they don’t, it’s not government’s role to correct it.
- The Libertarian preference for the strong over the weak is decidedly un-Christian. "Leave me alone to make my own choices and spend my own money" is a political philosophy that puts those who need help at a real disadvantage. And those who need help are central to any Christian evaluation of political philosophy. "As you have done to the least of these," says Jesus, "You have done to me." And "Blessed are those who are just left alone" has still not made the list of Beatitudes. To anticipate the Libertarian response, let me just say that private charity is simply not enough to satisfy the demands of either fairness or justice, let alone compassion. When the system is designed to protect the privileges of the already strong and make the weak even more defenseless and vulnerable, something is wrong with the system.
- Finally, I am just going to say it. There is something wrong with a political movement like the Tea Party which is almost all white. Does that mean every member of the Tea Party is racist? Likely not. But is an undercurrent of white resentment part of the Tea Party ethos, and would there even be a Tea Party if the president of the United States weren’t the first black man to occupy that office? It’s time we had some honest answers to that question. And as far as I can tell, Libertarianism has never been much of a multi-cultural movement. Need I say that racism — overt, implied, or even subtle — is not a Christian virtue.
As I read over his words I can not help to wonder about our species. Humans are a strange lot it seems. We have this mental capacity and rate it very high. We use words like "rational", "enlightenment", "knowledge", "thinking" and so many others to describe ourselves.
What is wrong with this picture? Something surely is. For over 2000 years large numbers of people have followed some form of "belief" based on an event that might never have happened if one believes the laws of physics or even if one doubts them. The "believers" have fragmented into so many differing sects that this fragmentation alone should call the validity of the whole thing to question.
As I grew up I was taught a history of our species that sometimes made fun of "primitive" ancestors because they often let themselves be controlled by witch doctors, shamans and the like. Is what I wrote above really all that different? Only in that we should know better by now.
So now our Nation ponders how it will be governed in the future on these terms. This is happening while we are facing a real possibility of accelerating our own extinction. Who are we? What are these "minds" we tout really worth? Does anyone have an answer?