Since I signed up on Kos to lurk in 2008, but then especially when I became a contributor after deciding in 2015 to begin voting Democratic, I have seen that Kos writers in general are thoughtful, fair, and reasonable, in stark contradiction to the “Crazy Socialist!” label that so many conservatives love to pin on all Democrats, let alone Progressives. This fairness even extends to discussions of religious faith, where I find that the voice of reason and tolerance usually rules. Usually. However, there have been times when I found my faith being disparaged for no good reason except that the other person had a personal dislike for Christianity. Generally, I like to follow the principle of “seek to understand rather than to be understood,” but in this case I think it might be helpful to say something to Kos readers about my Christian faith (which is also shared, broadly, by many others on Kos, even if only a minority), and which was the reason for my finally abandoning the Republican party after decades of being a good conservative voter. I certainly was late to the party, but the reader might find it helpful to understand both why I finally came around, and also why it took me so long.
Understand that what follows is not meant to change anybody’s mind about Christianity, nor to provoke any pie fights. This is totally about what I believe, why I believe it, and why it affects my political positions. If asked, I will freely answer any questions that are asked because of genuine curiosity about the answer, but I choose not to engage in any arguments or debates. In the context of the purpose of Kos, the only relevant things are how and why one votes, and the “why” is all I wish to talk about here. Why is this “Bible-believing” Christian voting Democratic?
Naturally, my self-description begins with my believing in a transcendent God, and accepting that the description of Him found in the Bible is an accurate one. I came to this position, not as a child, but as an eighteen-year-old reading the Bible for myself and asking questions of a close friend who, like myself, had been an atheist all through high school, but had become a Christian the year before. He made no attempt to argue with me, or even to persuade. He didn’t even really volunteer all that much about his personal beliefs. He merely stated that he had become a Christian, and answered my questions when I asked.
After some time spent in personal study, I arrived at a place where I accepted the basic teachings of the Christian faith. Then I decided to enroll in a nearby Bible college to find out as much as I could about what the Bible said. I graduated four years later, then embarked on a career in Christian schools (with one brief stint as a pastor of a small Baptist church in New Hampshire), and also married a college classmate, to whom I am still married 44 years, 5 children, and 14 grandchildren later.
All of this matters because of what Jesus said to an inquirer who asked “Which is the greatest commandment?” He answered that the greatest commandment was to love God with all one’s heart and mind and power, and then he added that there was another commandment like it, which was to love one’s neighbor as oneself. Ergo, loving God, and desiring to live according to His ways, is the motivator which is supposed to result in loving other people. Other places in the Bible go further, and say that anybody who says he loves God but does not love his neighbor is a liar. Harsh language, but true and necessary to say, in my view. But I think that most of the Bible is clear enough to allow for broad agreement on basic points, and civil discussion of honest disagreements. While it has often been said that a person can prove anything he wants to from the Bible, the same charge has been leveled against logic, and in both cases the accusation is a misrepresentation. But that brings me to the point that I want to make: many people on Kos unthinkingly deride Christian faith as foolish, or even intellectually bankrupt. However, I think many of the critics are unaware of the rich history of Christian intellectuals who have discussed Christian beliefs in great detail, not shying away from the parts that are difficult. No Christian thinker has come up with an answer for every objection, but many have produced good answers for many of the more common objections. (Fun example: have you ever heard that the Bible says pi is equal to exactly 3? That old story is a good illustration of objections that are based on a simple misunderstanding of what the Bible really says. But I digress.)
As far as addressing the problem of believing in the “supernatural” or “impossible,” I will defer to other writers who explain it much better than I can, such as C. S. Lewis, the Oxford professor who wrote the fictional Narnian Chronicles and also some excellent defenses of Christianity, including the book Miracles. I also like to refer people to Wernher von Braun, arguably the greatest rocket scientist of them all, who was head of NASA during the time of the Space Race and the moon landings. Von Braun argued publicly that the concept of Intelligent Design should not be ignored in public education. The term “Intelligent Design” covers a broad range of views as to what constitutes “intelligence,” but it always includes a belief in something more than pure chance, random mutations, and survival of the fittest. Von Braun believed, and I agree, that pure chance is totally inadequate to explain what we see around us. Although the reader is certainly free to disagree, I think it is difficult to support a charge of “intellectual bankruptcy” leveled against a scientist of von Braun’s stature, whether or not one thinks his conclusion is correct.
Another Christian thinker for whom I have great respect is Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician, inventor, and Catholic thinker, who wrote the well-known “Letters to a Provincial” in the 1650s. Those 18 essays consisted of sharp attacks on the prevailing religious views which justified the immoral conduct of the French nobility (sound familiar?) The letters succeeded in turning most of Paris against the dominant religious establishment of the day. (>sigh< If only. . .)
I write this not to criticize, but to remind, Kos readers that real tolerance is both necessary, and also not always easy to achieve. Think of Star Trek, which with the best of intentions corrected the famous line “to boldly go where no man has gone before” to “where no one has gone before,” thus unthinkingly zeroing out all of the non-humans who were already there. Or think of the Great American Melting Pot of the 1920s through the 1950s, where in historical myth the great nation of America welcomed the “huddled masses” to come in and add their contribution to the American Dream, but in reality the newcomers were expected to come in and conform themselves to the American/English ideal, which often included changing their names if their native names sounded too “different.” (My mother and one of her sisters shortened their Slavic family name by several syllables to live their adult lives under a very respectable English name.) In a similar way, I sometimes see modern liberals ostensibly fighting for individual freedom when they actually seem to be pushing for conformity to the existing liberal cultural mind-set. For example, a woman’s freedom to pursue a career outside the home is one thing; a perception that a woman who stays at home with the children is doing something wrong is a different thing entirely. Caution: if the reader is not personally guilty of this mistake, it is best not to argue that no liberals are guilty of this, because some of them are. Perhaps only a few by intent, but many others through careless slips of the brain and tongue, such as when Hillary Clinton offended many by seeming to imply that a woman staying home and baking cookies was a bad thing. True, that wasn’t what she meant, but that’s the way many people heard it. And she is far from the only liberal who has stumbled that way. Again, I point that out only as a caution, not as a condemnation.
But here is where my religious faith really comes into play. It is the reason why I decided to vote Democratic.
But if that is the case, why did I vote Republican for 40 years?
Because it seemed sensible at the time. I believed in things like personal responsibility, equal opportunity rather than guaranteed equal outcome, racial color- blindness, freedom from excessive government interference, and honest work rather than handouts. And I believed that Democrats generally didn’t agree. Easy choice. Except that for 40 years I failed to see the whole picture, and instead allowed myself to be captivated by incomplete generalities.
So why the change in my viewpoint? No one thing was the sole driver, but part of the reason was that I started to see that a rising tide does not lift all boats, and that opposition to universal health care because my costs would go up if we let all those uninsured get into it was indefensibly selfish. Plus, I had long been uncomfortable with the idea that voting solely because of a single issue—abortion—potentially made that voter a patsy to any candidate who promised to support that one thing, regardless of anything else. I also came to a clearer understanding of freedom of conscience. I had always supported the concept, but had not appreciated the extent to which conservative Christians (including myself) had failed to live up to an ideal which is actually taught in the Bible. I could go on, but let’s just leave it at my truly thinking that I was being reasonable, but eventually coming to see some of the gaps in my understanding of what the Bible actually taught. And that mattered because I believe that the Bible points to something bigger than myself, and I am willing to follow it when my own inclinations might lead me in a different direction. If I see a difference between what my faith teaches (for instance, “do not return evil for evil”) and what I personally would prefer to do (get even), I will (I hope, anyway) choose to follow the instruction of my faith, not my own impulses. In other words, to voluntarily follow the Commandments of a Higher Authority.
Some here have strongly condemned such an authoritarian mindset, and not without reason. Authoritarianism can lead to the suppression of other people’s freedom. But that is where voluntary acceptance of authority comes into play. I don’t trust just anybody to rule over me, but I do trust Jesus Christ. And before you criticize me for looking to anybody outside myself for guidance, here is my take on that: if you want to encourage somebody to follow her own star, march to her own beat, not let other people tell her whether she can or can’t do something, make her own independent moral decisions based on what she feels is right. . .well, I think that all sounds good at first blush, but it seems to me that the Current Resident of the White House is doing exactly that. And if anyone objects that he is hurting others thereby, and we aren’t supposed to use our freedom to hurt others, he could reply, “You say it’s wrong for me to hurt others, but I don’t agree. My values say that everybody should look out for Number One, and that is exactly what I’m doing.” See, the idea that freedom does not include the right to hurt others is a shared value, but somebody who does not share that value is under no compulsion—except that of brute force—to comply with it. The fact that there are so many who don’t hesitate to hurt others (we call them “criminals” when they are small, but when they are Large we tend to call them by name, followed by “. . .the Great”) is why we do have instruments of force, such as the police and the military, to enforce (or defend) our shared values.
Anyway, I do trust the words of Christ and of those who wrote the Bible. But I interpret those words as I understand them (as a “good Protestant” should) and I do not have to agree with other people, regardless of their societal stature, who have (mis)used the Bible to defend practices such as torture of heretics, military conquest, slavery, and so on. Instead, I use the plain sense of the words written in the Bible and try to distinguish between what is actually written and what comes under the heading of “traditions of men.” (Do I always get it right? I’m sure I don’t, but I do the best I can.) My understanding of the Bible leads me, first, not to try to impose my personal values and preferences on people who do not subscribe to my faith (because the Bible actually tells me not to do so), but, when interacting with the secular society outside the jurisdiction of the Church, to work, as a voting American citizen, for social policies that will bring the greatest good to the largest number of people.
This has two important results. One is that I myself support Progressive goals such as universal health care, a healthy environment, economic justice, and so on. The other is that I can use my position as a knowledgeable Evangelical to reach out to other Evangelicals on their own (Bible-based) terms, and show them why the Authority that they say they trust is telling them how to demonstrate Christian love even for people who may not self-identify as Christians. One’s “neighbors” include more than just those who attend church or who live nearby. In other words, this Evangelical is working to be a political “evangelist” among my own people to advance Progressive political values. In the process, I try to share how non-religious Progressives can understand and reach out to their own relatives and acquaintances who might have an Evangelical outlook. Evangelicals are, for the most part, not evil people; they are just sadly misinformed about what their own Book actually teaches, and unaware of what so many Evangelical leaders are leaving unsaid when they proclaim “Biblical” values. My primary mission, if you want to call it that, is to correct that misinformation—and especially the omissions—whenever and wherever I can.
Evan