Christianity and Politics

There is an old joke in the South. When a southern woman says, "Bless her heart," it isn't a wish of good things for the person about whom she is talking.

I bring this up because Tennessee's Margaret Renkl wrote an editorial for the New York Times, "The Passion of Southern Christians", which reads like a collective "bless their hearts" to southern Christians.

She begins on the wrong foot:

In the world of apostolic betrayals, it’s Judas who gets the headlines, but the everyday believer is more apt to fall in line behind Peter. Coldly handing Jesus over to his death in exchange for 30 pieces of silver was an over-the-top, cartoon-level move, but Peter’s terrified denial of the man he believed to be the savior of the world? That one seems immensely human to me.

How oversimplified can we be? It is so easy to assign Judas the motive of greed, and yet he was just fulfilling prophesy. To be honest, The Last Temptation of Christ's interpretation makes more sense to me, and still remains within the facts as shown by the Gospels: Judas was actually Christ's most loyal follower, and he betrayed Christ per Christ's request to him. Judas's suicide afterwards makes sense in this situation. If Judas betrayed Christ for simple greed, suicide would never happen. Thieves don't commit suicide, especially not after getting away with the crime. Renkl should recognize the truth of this based on her own comment calling Judas's betrayal "an over-the-top, cartoon-level move". She has failed to examine the story beyond the circumstantial evidence.

On the other hand, calling Peter's action "immensely human" only applies if by human you mean "flawed". In no way should Peter's action be aspired to, nor excused.

On with the story:

I have a lot of sympathy for Peter these days. Here it is nearly Easter, and for the first time in my life I don’t want anyone to know I’m a believer. To many, “Christian” has become synonymous with angry white voters in red hats, personally responsible for handcuffing all those undocumented mothers and wrenching them out of their sobbing children’s arms.

Here we have the argument for separation of church and state laid bare. I go into this in more detail in my "Freedom FROM Religion" post from last year.

Then Renkl gets really stupid:

A good number of Southern Christians tend to vote Republican, but in truth the values of the rural South are not incompatible with the policies of the Democratic Party. Our famed Southern hospitality is just an illustration of Jesus’ exhortation to welcome the stranger. And consider what happens here whenever there’s a flood or a tornado: Long before the government agencies mobilize, local churches are taking up donations, cooking hot meals, helping people pick through the wreckage — helping everyone, no matter their religion or the color of their skin or the language they speak at home.

Explain to me how performing your duties as a Christian compares to a political party which wants government to do everything? That sounds like pushing off your personal responsibilities onto the government.

Continuing:

But as with a lot of people, including secular liberals, the way Christians behave as human beings can be completely at odds with the way they vote. 

Quite true. Secular liberals tend to vote for equal results instead of equal rights, which they claim to support.

Continuing:

Partly this divide comes down to scale: You can love a human being and still fear the group that person belongs to. 

But doesn't that run against what Christianity is about? "Love thy neighbor" doesn't mean you get to pick and choose your neighbors based on whatever criteria you like.

Then Renkl gets another one wrong:

Tribal bonds have always been a challenge for our species. What’s new is how baldly the 2016 election exposed the collision between basic Christian values and Republican Party loyalty. By any conceivable definition, the sitting president of the United States is the utter antithesis of Christian values — a misogynist who disdains refugees, persecutes immigrants, condones torture and is energetically working to dismantle the safety net that protects our most vulnerable neighbors. Watching Christians put him in the White House has completely broken my heart.

"Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's". Your political loyalties and your religious views are entirely separate things.

I loved this line from Renkl's editorial:

My husband and I are cradle Catholics, but my husband’s aunt used to refer to us as “cafeteria Catholics,” picking and choosing what we believe. 

Her husband's aunt was right, as Renkl goes on to prove:

Belonging to a community, feeling at home in the liturgy, carrying on a long family tradition — all these intangibles made it easy enough, before the election, to ignore much of what the church gets wrong and concentrate on what it gets right: supporting open immigration, welcoming refugees, opposing capital punishment, housing the homeless, feeding the hungry, caring for the sick and the aged and the lonely. Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” All the rest is window dressing.

Not quite. From the Bible:

"Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."--Matthew 22:36-40

Feel free to explain how a government which uses threat of death (armed force) or kidnapping (imprisonment) to extract money from people in order to pay for its "charitable acts" is somehow an example of loving thy neighbor, which is the second greatest commandment behind loving God?

On top of that, when Jesus said, "Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me", he was talking about YOU doing it YOURSELF. He was not talking about you calling up your neighbor in government to do it for you.

Finally, Renkl goes on to draw faulty conclusions not even based on her flawed interpretation of the Bible:

But I also believe in resurrection. Every day brings word of a new Trump-inflicted human-rights calamity, and every day a resistance is growing that I would not have imagined possible, a coalition of people on the left and the right who have never before seen themselves as allies. In working together, I hope we’ll end up with something that looks a lot like a Christian nation — not in doctrine but in practice, caring for the least among us and loving our neighbors as ourselves.

In Renkl's Christian socialist utopia, "the least among us" will be all of us, as misery gets equally shared.

But Renkl means well, bless her heart.