  [NOTE: Hooligans, this is my last word on this divisive, decidedly unsexy, topic. Apparently, rants are all the rage, and in an epoch of 'round the clock commentary, entertainment is god. ] In her groundbreaking work on the Gospel of Thomas, Biblical historian and scholar Elaine Pagels presents an alternate view of first century christianity that reveals the multiplicity of views regarding the relationship between faith and politics held by the earliest followers of Jesus. Once again, in "Beyond Belief," one of the few books from the left wing of christiandom to remain on the New York Times Bestseller's List for weeks on end, Pagels compares the nacent attempts by christian apologists to standardize and homogenize the teachings of Jesus to the current attempt by conservatives to hold hostage the rhetoric of faith for its own political ends. urlLink Here Pagels articulates the basis of her fears: The kind of Christianity that pervades the religious right in this country divides the world between the saved and the damned, between God's people and Satan's people, between good and evil. We have all seen how this is played out in our politics. I used to think that President Bush was using this language as a political ploy. I still think he is, but I also think—to my disappointment—that he also believes it. His conviction that he is God's chosen one to "rid the world of evildoers" blinds him to the evil that he—and we, as Americans—are capable of doing.
The conviction that we are on the side of good—of God—is, however, an ancient one—enormously powerful. I'm concerned about our country, because one can see how appeals to religion, like those that are currently being made by the religious right, can work in a democracy to subvert all of the values to which they give lip service. It worked brilliantly with the Roman Empire. Beliefs are overrated in Christianity. Religious traditions have to do with a lot more than beliefs.
Since the late 1970's and early 1980's, the Moral Majority and other "sin-management" based christian movements like Promise Keepers have hijacked religious rhetoric and have waged an all out campaign against the progressive members of their congregations. Culminating in the Republican Revolution of the 1990's, this war of words has significantly diminished the social justice emphasis of the message of Christ while elevating the counter-biblical "us versus them" mentality of the Religious Right.
One left leaning christian author put it like this: [Liberal Christianity] is one of those misleading words like "cult" which can be used simply as a term of insult by "conservatives" against those who do not sustain their literalistic interpretation of the Bible.
. . .
academically "liberal" Christianity is essentially an anti-dogmatic and humanitarian reconstruction of the Christian faith. Last summer before the start of the Primary Season, Amy Sullivan in an article in the Washington Monthly entitled, urlLink “Do the Democrats Have a Prayer?” , made the following observation: I'm constantly amazed at how many progressives seem unaware that liberal Christianity did not die with Dr. King, or that a huge, decent middle ground exists... ...While Bush may have almost a lock on conservative evangelicals, many moderate believers -- Catholics, Muslims, old mainstream church Protestants, and even suburban evangelicals -- are closer in their thinking to Democratic concerns. There are areas of difference -- particularly abortion -- and I don't want to suggest that's not important, but Democratic candidates inability to speak the language of faith, to use it to point out the areas of common ground, is a huge impediment... What Sullivan, Pagels and others have observed is a growing disdain for liberal christians from both the right and the left.
The Right's displeasure with progressive christianity is obvious. What is more difficult to understand, however, is how often unschooled left-wingers attempt to alienate the believers in their midst and relegate them to the margins. This is problematic because the source of most progressive policies throughout the Western world find their roots in thoughtful and justice-oriented biblical exegesis. Moreover, as Sullivan astutely acknowledges, the Democratic Party, the party of the Left, has historically been a broad based coalition of inclusion-minded Americans: Democrats are a coalition party when it comes to religion, much as they are when it comes to race, ethnicity, and class. Gore voters in 2000 were an amalgam of FDR Catholics, marginalized mainline Protestants, secularists, religious African Americans, Jews, some Muslims, and all other minority religious groups except Mormons. "Democrats worry about talking about religion in a way that endorses a particular faith or offends anyone," says one senior Democratic congressional aide. "So they've just decided not to talk about religion around other people, and that's hurting them. " Nearly every Democrat I spoke to expressed concern that if Democrats focus on religion, they will alienate some portion of their base.
But, in fact, 80 percent of Gore's support in 2000 came from religiously committed voters. While Democratic voters may distrust the religious right, they don't dislike religion itself. Despite the foregoing observation, most unthinking liberals use the moniker "Christian" as an insult or an attempt to denigrate believers and control the terms of political debate through name-calling and baseless stereotyping. One writer notes: how often he finds progressives using the word "Christian" as a short hand way to complain about and denigrate the policies of the Christian right. As he points out, a broad brush condemnation of Christians is off the mark and we should be much more careful about how we pick our words so we too can be closer to reality. The carelessness with our language has the potential to divide us when we cannot afford to be divided.
Taking this one step further, liberals who vehemently attack their religious counterparts are unwittingly participating in the Rove-Bush-Frist world view that divides the world into the polar opposites of good and evil or believers and infidels. I am confident (and hopeful) that the bulk of the Hooligans are much deeper and more thoughful than most, but as a final note, please consider the observations of David Chandler, christian hooligan, in his article urlLink A Biblical Basis for Liberal Politics : The "Religious Right" (Moral Majority, Christian Coalition, etc. ) gets so much media attention for its conservative political activism that a casual observer would think conservative Christianity somehow equates to conservative politics. This is not the case. In fact many people with left-leaning political views find a solid basis for their positions in the Bible. America is as much an economic phenomenon as it is a nation. It is built on a system whose driving force is the profit motive.
Our economy blatantly rewards greed. In classic economic theory greed is good. A person who is motivated by greed will create, as unintended byproducts, benefits for everyone, such as employment and the development of new goods and services. Let the rich get richer, the saying goes, and the benefits will "trickle down" to the rest of us. "A rising tide raises all boats. " Under a pure capitalistic system the government keeps hands off and allows the market to decide how the money flows. The problem is, as we have found in this era of deregulation, the money flows to the top. Tampering with the market system to redistribute the wealth or assure that the poor are protected is labeled "socialism. " By these standards Jesus was a socialist. Jesus spoke remarkably often about wealth and poverty. To the poor he said, "Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God," (Luke's version). To the rich he said, "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth," and "go, sell what you have, and give to the poor. " When the rich turned away from him because they couldn't follow his command he observed, "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. " For Jesus, helping the poor and the outcast is not optional: it is the essence of what it means to love God.
[POSTSCRIPT: What appeals to this Hooligan about the christian mythos is the notion of forgiveness. This Hooligan understands that people, like himself, make mistakes, act unthoughfully, forget to acknowledge others, momentarily take paths of self-destruction, get caught up in the twin illusions of greed and vanity, mistake knowledge and wit for wisdom and promote selfishness. All those things can be forgotten. Perhaps this is why the Bush-Myth resonates with weaker-minded christians so powerfully. Bush was able to fashion himself as a born-again believer whose past was just that, past. What we forget about when we bash the other side is that even conservatives (and perhaps especially conservatives) are participants in the same dramatic cycle, mistakes-redemption-mistakes-redemption.
Of course, if you've never made any mistakes or gone down the wrong road, or aren't aware enough to realize it, then maybe the notion of forgiveness just blows right past you, and I don't think any religion can speak to your condition. For the rest of us, at this crucial point in American political life, seeking middle ground, emphasizing our similarities rather than our differences, might be the course that will push BushCo out of office and result in the true spirit of hope, optimism, and national health, that the Two Johns so desperately want us to believe in.
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