I had 12 years of religious education, and all I got was a bad taste in my mouth, especially when it came to politics. Every time some polarizing issue sprang up in the public sphere ““ adultery, terrorists, torture, war ““ I could smell the zealous blood of Christ boiling in the veins of every right-wing fundamentalist whose ideologies had become my curriculum.
And if this past election is any indication, traditional Christianity aligns itself primarily with a conservative, free-marketeer bourgeois politick. There are exceptions, no doubt, but for the most part, you’re hard-pressed to find any traditional Christian who doesn’t cringe at the thought of a welfare state or who didn’t vote in favor of Proposition 8.
Such right-wing thinking has characterized conservative Christians since the Camelot golden age of Reagan, justified, allegedly, by the Word of God itself. But is this fiscally hands-off, socially hands-on approach to politics truly consistent with Christian ethos?
Tax cuts, competition, the “invisible hand” of the free market ““ these are all terms I’m sure every proponent of the religious right knows all too well. The right has been consistently skeptical of a welfare state, decrying Marxism and its variants as erroneous at best, blasphemous at worst.
I don’t go to Bible study every Wednesday, but I do recall a passage in the Good Book about loving one’s neighbor as oneself. Or, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” It doesn’t take a PhD from Bob Jones University to see how incompatible egocentric capitalism is with Christianity, especially when 35.9 million Americans lived below the poverty line in 2003. There doesn’t seem to be anything remotely Biblically justified about making a profit when the top 1 percent of households own 34.3 percent of the nation’s wealth.
If “Sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor” isn’t a redistribution of wealth, I don’t know what is.
Just look at the society founded by the early Christian Church. Seems awfully socialist, doesn’t it? Of course, the right-wing response would be that while this type of society is ideal, it is not the government’s role to intervene and enforce good behavior. Free will is, after all, an exceedingly important element in Christian life.
Why, then, is the religious right so intent upon legislating its standards of morality on the rest of society? I thought people should choose to act morally, not be forced by Big Brother to behave properly. But fundamentalists vote against taxes to support the poor while voting for laws that say what goes where behind closed doors. Love and freedom to love ““ God’s greatest gift and Jesus’ only commandment ““ is only OK if your second chromosome is different from your partner’s.
Wasn’t Jesus an illegal immigrant in Egypt? Didn’t he turn water into alcohol? There are laws against sodomy, against same-sex marriage, against undocumented workers and against saying the words “God” and “damn” together on the air. So much for free will.
If it is truly the government’s place to cultivate virtue, even against the desires of the people, why is basic Christian charity exempt? If the ability to freely choose goodness is so important, why is right-wing morality still enforced? There are certainly many Christians whose sincere conviction does not necessarily align itself with this mentality. But thus far, the religious right has only proved itself to be logically inconsistent, other than in its scathing bigotry and unadulterated greed.
Manalastas is a first-year political science student.