Are liberal Christians phony?

[El Supremo]

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Source: Sojourners 2004 (c) http://www.sojo.net


Are liberal Christians phony?
by David Batstone

The query came into my in-box this week, with the obvious inference that SojoMail is both liberal and phony. The accuser identified himself by name, adding that he had his Ph.D. and hailed from the state of Texas.

Without getting caught up in political labels - my self-proclaimed "liberal" friends stumble over some of my faith-informed views - I found his theology intriguing. Without a doubt, he clearly drew borders that zoned Christians into different political territories.

He opened his note as follows:

Liberal Christians have no understanding of the God-given role of Government. Liberal Christians are Peter-Pan Christians who demand that Governments, before the return of Jesus, foolhardily beat their God-given swords into plowshares and live according to the Sermon on the Mount. Liberal Christians do NOT realize that the plow-share things happens during the 2nd Coming of Jesus, when Jesus takes back the swords from Human Governments as He establishes God's Kingdom on Earth. This is why our Hero taught us to pray: "Please hurry Thy Kingdom to come, so Thy will is done on Earth as it is in Heaven."

If you have never had exposure to a "dispensational" view of history, my accuser's stream of thought may make no sense to you. I grew up in an evangelical Christian church that espoused a dispensational theology, so let me explain. God, it is assumed, has divided up history into different eras, or dispensations, and each will run its course. In our present era, the forces of good (God's chosen) battle against the forces of evil (under Satan's spell). God looks to government to practice order and suppress evil with the sword. This current dispensation will end with the second coming of Jesus, who will establish God's kingdom on earth.

I often hear non-Christians ask: How can a person who identifies with Jesus Christ espouse actions that run so counter to peace and justice? This theological device enables many Christians to discount the teachings of Jesus as a guide for living their lives. Forgive your enemies? Feed the hungry? Clothe the naked and care for the prisoner? Not a chance; you'd be foolish to adopt these practices in the dispensation in which we live. Governments must take whatever measures are necessary to defeat evil, and we are commanded to be its loyal subjects.

I guess that's what makes me a fool. I take my faith journey as a challenge to embody the teachings of Jesus in an era that cheapens the dignity of life.

In his condemnation of SojoMail, my accuser indicates yet another key theological marker that is worth sharing:

Liberal Christians live in a world of make-believe because they focus almost exclusively on the New Testament, to the exclusion of the Old Testament. Unfortunately for them, the Bible describes the role of Government in detail in the Old Testament, NOT in the New Testament! It is the Mosaic Law & the Mosaic Government that is ordered by God to put to death any person who commits a heinous crime, and goes on to list about 30 crimes as heinous crimes. In the New Testament Jesus is just a private citizen, NOT a member of Government (Moses, Joshua, David, Solomon, etc., were Government Officials). Moreover, Jesus directed His Sermon on the Mount exclusively to private citizens like Himself, and NOT to the Roman Government or the Sanhedrin. Note that Jesus did NOT criticize the Roman Government for not having any Social Welfare Programs. This is because the Romans were doing what was called for in the Old Testament: the Roman Government was using the Sword to maintain Law and Order!

If this viewpoint merely represented a crackpot hiding out on a survivalist ranch in rural Texas, I wouldn't bother to publish it. But it unfortunately has significant credibility among a swath of American evangelicals. With my colleague, Mark Wexler, I have just completed an investigative study of the Religious Right (which will come out in the July edition of Sojourners magazine). It was jarring to realize that many American Christians reject the notion of a separation of church and state as a "humanistic secular plot" to obstruct God's proper ordering of U.S. society. They want to see the establishment of a theocracy that puts into place many of the Mosaic laws as established in the Old Testament. At the moment, they are mobilizing a strong cadre of religious leaders and members of the U.S. Congress to rewrite the legal system.

How ironic that my erstwhile critic praises the Roman Empire for fulfilling the divine mandate for right governance. I fear today that is exactly how the United States is acting in the world - as an empire bent on the expansion of its own interests. If my calling as a Christian is to deliver my full support to that empire, than I indeed must confess that I am a phony.

[ezee]

1. Your Critic should read

Hebrews, I believe its in Chapter 8 where Christ tells us to look at the old testament as one would a school master, to learn from but not to be bound too. Thus negating the "Old Law".For we are under grace, as that is why he came to earth and died for our sins.

[cclark401]

9. Amen!

That's so true. Remember the Babylonians and the Assyrians took the Jewish nation into exile BECAUSE they were not ...taking care of the poor...forgiving debts and resting the land every 7 (or 70) years, etc.

True Christians will try to live by the teachings of Jesus. These people are simply lost in their own desires and are trying to use the Bible to fulfill their wishes.

[zonmoy]

13. since when did Christ write Hebrews.

[squidbro]

2. Religious terrorism is always the worst, no matter the ideology

The founding fathers distrusted state sanctioned religion. Though most professed faith in a God, they built the separation of church and state into the Constitution to prevent the abuses of religion.

How ironic that rightist conservative christians desire to undo one of the fundamental elements upon which the Constitution and this nation are based.

Perhaps when the United States resorts to the same manner of treatments used in the Spanish Inquisition will people realize the horror.

Whoops, I forgot, we are beginning to resort to similar tactics.

How could I forget about the "inquisition" at Abu Gharib? Perhaps our soldiers might have gone easier on the Iraqis if they renounced their faith in Allah and embraced God instead.

Not that extremitst Arabs are any better as the execution of Berg so prominently demonstrated. Perhaps had Berg renounced his faith in Yaweh and embraced Allah he might yet be alive.

Boy, am I getting careless or what? How could I forget that Allah, Yaweh and God really are the same deities?

But then, again, the Muslim has false beliefs about Jesus only being a prophet.

How could I be so careless again. The Jew doesn't even believe that Jesus was a prophet. Yet Jewish Israel is the friend of Christian America. But Arab Iraq and Persian Iran are part of an axis of evil.

I forget, what is the religious fight all about again?

[dae]

4. :-) Nice!

[phaseolus]

3. Thanks

That was interesting, and I'll seek out that magazine in July...

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. That is one of the most ass-backward rationalizations

for sin that I've heard in a long time.

We can't be decent because God doesn't want us to be decent yet?

Puh-LEEZE!

[Rowdyboy]

6. Sometimes all you can do

is feel sorry...........

[belle]

7. What a frootbat. No, Jesus wasn't (just) a liberal; he was a *radical.*

By definition. And no, not a radical theocrat, Mr. Fish On the Back Of Your SUV. A radical subversive. A favorer of the poor and downtrodden, yes. The kind of guy you'd call the cops on if he showed up on your lawn.

And, um, hello: Jesus didn't criticize the Roman government for "not having any social welfare programs" (say wha?) because a) he was savvy enough to know that openly critcizing the Romans would've brought them down on his head a lot faster than even actually happened (remember "render unto Caesar?" and, p.s., i bet you paid your taxes without a murmur of complaint this year, right?) and b) he didn't advocate "social welfare programs" for the same reason he didn't advocate computers in every classroom, or "morning-after" birth control pills to be made available in drugstores: Not really part of 1st century reality, that concept.

What he *did* advocate, and often, was for rich people to give all they had to the poor; for religious hypocrites to stop beating their breasts in a fake show of piety in public and instead pray in private and *live* their faith; and c) breaking bread with the so-called "dregs" of society as equals. Sound like you? No, I didn't think so. You seem to have confused the Jesus of the Gospels with some fanfic Superman character. Now pick up your stones and go *away.*

[cclark401]

10. Great post!

[starroute]

11. Bread and circuses

Jerome Carcopino notes in Daily Life in Ancient Rome that at the time of the Emperor Claudius, the Roman calendar contained 159 holidays, of which 93 were devoted to games given at public expense. In addition, there were games given on special occasions, and others paid for by private citizens; Carcopino concludes that "in the epoch we are studying Rome enjoyed at least one day of holiday for every working day." The games, he says:

formed a barrier for autocracy against revolution. In the city there were 150,000 complete idlers supported by the generosity of the public assistance, and perhaps an equal number of workers who from one year's end to the other had no occupation after the hour of noon and yet were deprived of the right to devote their spare time to politics. The shows occupied the time of these people, provided a safety valve for their passions, distorted their instincts and diverted their activity. A people that yawns is ripe for revolt. The Caesars saw to it that the Roman plebs suffered neither from hunger or ennui.

http://www.spectacle.org/496/dream.html


Once the site of a Phoenician port, over the course of 12 years Herod built Caesarea into the grandest city other than Jerusalem in Palestine, with an aqueduct, hippodrome and magnificent amphitheater that remain standing today. In 6 CE, Caesarea became the home of the Roman governors (Procurators) of Judea.

<snip>

Today, the amphitheater is not only a spectacular relic of the past, but a modern performing venue where concerts are frequently held. Inside the gate of the theater is a plaque with a replica (the original is in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem) of the inscription found during excavations in 1959-63 with the words "TIBERIVM" and "TIVS PILATUS," references to Emperor Tiberius and Pontius Pilate, the governor of Judea at the time of Jesus. This was an important find because it is the only archaeological evidence of Pilate's existence.

http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/vie/Caesarea.html

[meow2u3]

8. It's the radical conservative Christians who are the phony ones

They're just projecting their entrenched, diabolical hatred onto liberals, who have been, since Raygun's era, the chosen scapegoat for what's wrong with the world.

[PATRICK]

12. Easily refuted by the sane

This is classic cherry picking to deviate the main challenges of Jesus.
In fact he was calling for changes without miracles simply by instituting the kingdom here, naked from angelic privileges or illusions. This idiot(I'm being kind here) is not even close to the real debate about Liberalism and Conservatism. In fact Jesus is a bad fit for a political ideology left or right, though the left is closer to the heart and the right is closer to persistent evils and our worse selves.

Setting aside politics or conventional morality in ancient times, this guy is fundamentally ripping the heart out of Jesus' mission. We are
SUPPOSED to live as if this were the Kingdom, whatever the difficulties and that is the whole point of the cross.

This is a form of the oldest heresy: accommodation to evil in redefining Scriptures and heavy editing of the unmistakable heart of the message.
In such forms the Father can even be seen as a super stern evil figure who Christ mediates or even opposes. This is the extreme that Catholics might at one time have seen in turning to the intercession of the Virgin because the Divine males were sanctioning strict judgment and cruelty. That whole mindset is a creative pagan throwback, a balance of human frailties, not a movement or relationship to God.

In the good old days you could challenge whether these heady, simplistic, cult oriented doctrines were even Christianity. "Not everyone who says "Lord. Lord will enter the Kingdom of Heaven". "Do not judge" "Let he who is without sin" etc. When the twisting leads directly to the sanctioning of wars, the death penalty, the old Dispensation its failure as doctrine is transparent and also mentioned often in the Gospels. (By their fruits)

No the real debate is in the limited realm of morality, politics, freedom, where, though no punches are pulled, the early Church itself was busy trying to work out their lives in changing situations with conservative Jewish Christians and more liberal pagan converts. Many liberal causes go way beyond(or fall far short) of the central spiritual challenge. Buddhists could make the same observation. Yet it is the zeal for justice and mercy where even atheists surpass phony Christians whose main goal is self glorification and punishment of their enemies- if not outright worship of Mammon.

When they all give their wealth to the poor and serve as the lowest, then I will be impressed by the purity arguments of either side. Mankind as its own god with five billion babel voices is the destructive joke we live with daily. The people at the Catholic Worker comprise a quixotic study of such a seriously Christian left.

And these people fragment endlessly, as do institutional Churches when they go wrong. There are always clear signs of BS and bad stuff. This guy makes it too easy.

[zonmoy]

14. So simply because the liberals

refuse to see the sadistic, cruel, and evil sides of god they are hypocrites.

[loveable liberal]

15. im agnostic. christianity seems like a cult to me.

take someone, anyone who believes in Christ and challenge their beliefs. Not a pleasant experience. It also seems more and more Christians are becoming less and less tolerant. Maybe this is a phenomenon of the self serving baby boomer generation. I had hopes that the baby boomers would retain their indvidualism and idealism. I was wrong.