Don S summed up well in one of his posts to the “Republican captivity” post why conservative Christians tend to vote Republican:
I identify with the Republican party more than the Democratic party because it still at least tolerates my values, and at least some office holders and candidates support them. Very few Democratic leaders will stand for absolute right and wrong standards, because they do not want to offend contituents, and they villify me as a “hater” for declaring a sin a sin. They want to grow government to help the poor, but at the same time push any expression of faith from any area of society into which government expands. They use faith to justify the growth of government for this purpose, but deny any individual responsibility to respond to the claims and commandments of Christ, and deny the concept of sin. I am human. If one group of people stands opposed to everything I believe in, and the other group does not, I will stand with that latter group.
Should the Church specifically align with the Republican party? By no means. Can Democrats be Christians? Of course. Will any human government ever achieve heaven on earth or a perfect society? We know the answer to that one. We should never let political involvement distract from our primary purposes of sanctification and evangelism here on Earth. But I don’t think there is a problem with promoting the election of public officials which are more likely to support a governmental environment which will not oppose us in those missions.
One of the other good points that came out of that long conversation is that the mainstream churches (Methodists, Disciples, PCUSA, ELCA, Episcopalians) are definitely in captivity to the Democrats and the whole liberal agenda. (Notice how irrelevant the mainstream liberal churches are, to garner almost no attention through all of this.)
I know many of us conservative Christians used to be Democrats, even liberal Democrats. (I know I was.) Then the party was taken over by 1960’s activists. They ridiculed and demonized our moral conservatism and our pro-life convictions. THAT is what drove us to the Republican party.
We became “Reagan Democrats” and then we shouldered our way into the Republican party. Despite some continued disdain from its country club faction, the party really needed our votes.
If the Republicans become “pro-choice” on the abortion issue, many conservative Christians would abandon that party in a heartbeat. Many would gladly switch to the democratic party if it were pro-life. (I just cannot take seriously all of the Democrats’ rhetoric about helping the poor, the downtrodden, and the little guy, given their stance on abortion.)
But there are other issues that inhibit conservative Christians from the Democratic party. Political liberals today are open to not just political and economic progress, as they used to be, but they also push moral and cultural change. They accept homosexuality, with some even advocating gay marriage. They embrace feminism, even in its most anti-family variety. They tend to be hyper-secular.
In short, conservative Christians were driven out of the Democratic party.
The senator and his doting Obots in the media have gone to great lengths to obscure what Barack Obama does when he’s not being a symbol: his voting record, his friends, his patrons, his life outside the soft-focus memoirs is deemed nonrelevant to the general hopey-changey vibe. But occasionally we get a glimpse. The offhand aside to Joe the Plumber about “spreading the wealth around” was revealing because it suggests a crude redistributive view of “social justice”. Yet the nimble Hope-a-Dope sidestepper brushed it aside, telling a crowd in Raleigh that next John McCain will be “accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten.”
But that too is revealing. As John Hood pointed out at National Review, communism is not “sharing.” In a free society, the citizen chooses whether to share his Lego, trade it for some Thomas the Tank Engine train tracks, or keep it to himself. From that freedom of action grow mighty Playmobile cities. Communism is compulsion. It’s the government confiscating your Elmo to “share” it with someone of its choice. Joe the Plumber is free to spread his own wealth around – hiring employees, buying supplies from local businesses, enjoying surf ‘n’ turf night at his favorite eatery. But, in Obama’s world view, that’s not good enough: the state is the best judge of how to spread Joe the Plumber’s wealth around.
The Senator is a wealthy man, mainly on the strength of two bestselling books offering his biography in lieu of policy and accomplishments. Many lively members of his Kenyan family occur as supporting characters in his story and provide the vivid color in it. But they too are not merely two-dimensional cartoons. His Aunt Zeituni, a memorable figure in Obama’s writing, turned up for real last week, when the dogged James Bone of the London Times tracked her down. She lives in a rundown housing project in Boston.
In his Wednesday night infomercial, Obama declared that his “fundamental belief” was that “I am my brother’s keeper.” Back in Kenya, his brother lives in a shack on 12 bucks a year. If Barack is his brother’s keeper, why couldn’t he send him a $10 bill and nearly double the guy’s income? The reality is that Barack Obama assumes the government should be his brother’s keeper, and his aunt’s keeper. Why be surprised by that? For 20 years in Illinois, Obama has marinated in the swamps of the Chicago political machine and the campus radicalism of William Ayers and Rashid Khalidi. In such a world, the redistributive urge is more or less a minimum entry qualification.
The government as wealth-spreader-in-chief was not a slip of the tongue but consistent with Obama’s life, friends and votes. The Obamacons – that’s to say, conservatives hot for Barack – justify their decision to support a big-spending big-government Democrat with the most liberal voting record in the Senate by “hoping” that he doesn’t mean it, by “hoping” that he’ll “change” in office. “I sure hope Obama is more open, centrist, sensible,” declared reformed conservative Ken Adelman, “than his liberal record indicates.”
He’s “hoping” that Obama will buck not just Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank and the rest of the gang but also his voting record, his personal address book and his entire adult life. Good luck betting the future on that. The “change” we’ll get isn’t hard to discern: An expansion of government, an increase in taxes, a greater annexation of the dynamic part of the economy by the sclerotic bureaucracy, a reduction in economic liberty …oh, and a lot more Chicago machine politics.
Australian journalist Greg Sheridan observes the American presidential election and criticizes both sides, the media, and the American people in general for succumbing to the cult of celebrity:
THIS has been the worst US presidential campaign I’ve ever seen. Vacuous, fatuous, misleading, dishonest, trivial, at times unhinged in its disconnect from reality.
The politics of the world’s greatest democracy has taken something weird in its Kool-Aid.
How can I say this when both candidates are so attractive and so articulate?
There is your first clue. The quality of a politician is frequently in inverse proportion to their good looks. Give me John Howard’s baldness, Paul Keating’s hatchet face, Kevin Rudd’s Harry Potter tonsure. The greatest US president of all, Abraham Lincoln, proves the point. He once remarked that he could not possibly be two-faced: “If I had another face, do you think I’d wear this one?”
This election marks the triumph of celebrity as the essential organising principle of US politics.
His whole analysis is revealing and despite the third paragraph is not just about “good looks.” (I had to include that in my quotation due to the great line from Lincoln.)
Forget Halloween, this is Reformation Day. A day to celebrate that we’ve got the Bible, that we’re saved by the work of Christ, that we have Christian freedom.
Today at Cranach we will stop making people mad by talking politics; rather, we will make people mad by talking religion. We will devote all of our postings for today and spilling over into the weekend to contemplate all things Reformation. That includes thinking how the Reformation applies today.
We begin with two music videos to set the mood, whereupon I invite you to nail your own theses to the door.
Here is a multi-media Reformation celebration, with “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” accompanied by the art of the Reformation, with lots of Lucas Cranach.
Going from the sublime to the somewhat ridiculous and from the 16th century to the 21st, we continue our celebration with the 95 Theses Rap, created by some students at Yale, who recognize just how COOL the Reformation is, with just the right kind of rebellion against established false authorities:
More about this here. And if, like me, you can’t take in rap lyrics without a transcript, here are the words.
OK, the Yalies are a little confused at some points, but they get Luther’s basic points. My favorite lines:
I warned y’all that Rome best agree to the terms.
If not, then you can eat my Diet of Worms!
You think you done something spectacular?
I wrote the Bible in the vernacular!
A heretic! [What?] Someone throw me a bone.
You forgot salvation comes through faith alone.. . .
“Oh snap, he’s messin’ with the holy communion.”
But I ain’t never dissed your precious hypostatic union!
“One place at one time.” Well, thank you Zwingli.
Yeah, way to disregard that whole “I’m God” thingy!
Getting’ all up in my rosary… you little punk.
Your momma shoulda told you not to mess with no monk.. . .
I’ve come back from obscurity to teach y’all a lesson,
Cuz someone here still ain’t read their Augsburg Confession.
I said Catholicism brings a life of excess,
And we all remember what went down with Philip of Hesse!
But you forgot about me and my demonstration?
Like you can just create your own denomination?
“We don’t like this part, so we’ll just add a little twist.”
Now we Anglican, Amish, and even Calvinist.
I gave you the power, you gone and abused it.
I gave you God’s truth, you just confused it.
What needs reforming in today’s church? Do you see any reversions to the medieval errors? Do you see anything new that calls for a return to the Gospel and to the Word?
Tonight, do not give candy out of trick-or-treat coercion or obligation, but as a free gift.
When you see people in masks, contemplate the masks of God; that is, the doctrine of vocation.
When you see our culture’s strange celebrations of death–all the gore, corpses, and graveyards–let it remind you of our Lord’s gruesome death on the Cross, His burial place, and His glorious resurrection.
“I just hate what the Republican Party has done to Christianity.” So said tODD, who had stopped posting for awhile, fed up with the harsh tone of our political discussions. I’m glad he’s back. (And despite his defense of democrats and what some of you have accused him of, he is NOT an Obama supporter after all. He wrote in an early vote for Ron Paul, who is both anti-war and pro-life!)
Isn’t it true that the secular public is confusing conservative Christianity with conservative politics, just as many conservative Christians are doing?
Has the Christian alliance with the Republican party helped the cause of Christianity? Or prevented people from taking it seriously?
Has the Christian alliance with the Republican party helped the cause of political conservatism? Or prevented people from taking it seriously?
I predict that in the likely Republican defeat that seems imminent that Republicans will blame the conservative Christians in their midst.
I further predict that many Christians will retreat into the neo-monastic stance of not wanting to contaminate themselves with the world since politics is dirty, which would also be wrong.
What should Christians learn from all of this, and how should they respond?
So, did you see the Barack Obama commercial, when he commandeered a half-hour of prime time on seven of the major networks? I didn’t. If you did, please report.
He sure has a lot of money to burn, unlike John McCain, the father of campaign finance reform. It is ironic justice that McCain is now hampered by his own free-speech-denying rules.
Commenter Paul gets the virtual prize for his suggestion on the “What shall we call it?” post that the emerging intellectual and cultural movement be called “Reconstructionism.”
Here is what I see is happening. Notice that on university campuses and in the current products of the intellectual establishment, we are not hearing relativism, which considers one truth claim or ideology as valid as any other. Rather, we are hearing what commenter the Jones has described as “absolutist certainty.” Christianity is wrong! Conservatism is wrong! Creationism is wrong!
Nor are we seeing moral relativism, which considers different moral choices as being equally valid. We are hearing dogmatic, judgmental, and intolerant moral denunciations. Christianity is evil! Conservatism is evil! Creationism is evil!
Thus far, the absolutist pronouncements are mostly negative. What these new thinkers believe is evident–conventional leftist sentiments on feminism, the environment, sexual freedom, etc.–though not perhaps ideologically worked out in a positive fashion.
These positions and condemnations are asserted with no epistemological basis in reason or science (modernist style) or in culture (postmodernist style). They are basically assertions of the will and the will to power. This is postmodernist, but taken to a new level and a new phase.
First came the postmodernist project of “deconstruction,” in which all cultural artifacts–laws, literature, philosophy, religion, government, and families–were subjected to a radical critique that undermined them at an essential level. Next comes “reconstruction,” in which cultural artifacts of a different essence will be rebuilt on the ruins.
For example, marriage has been deconstructed by sexual permissiveness. The reconstruction of that institution is gay marriage.
Can any of you see other examples of what I am describing? Thanks, Paul, for your term, which is proving a catalyst for my thinking, making lots of previously disconnected observations come together into a clear pattern!
Lucas Cranach was the great artist of the Reformation. He was a close friend of Martin Luther. He was a businessman, who first printed Luther's translation of the Bible; a politician, who served on the Wittenberg town council and served the city as its mayor; a chemist, who operated a pharmacy; a teacher, who trained a host of apprentice artists; a family-man, who helped arrange Luther's marriage with the two men serving as the godfathers of each other's children; and an active layman in his church, who gave his pastors important personal and material support.
As a Christian who lived out his faith in his many different callings, Cranach thus embodies the Reformation doctrine of vocation, using the gifts God had given him in service to Christ and his neighbor in the church, the family, the workplace, and the culture.
In the spirit of Lucas Cranach, this blog will discuss wide-ranging issues of Christianity and culture with a Lutheran twist.
