The GOP doesn't own Jesus
By Brooks Harrington
Special to the Star-Telegram
It is time for Christian liberals to respond to the efforts of the Republican Party and all its spokespersons to paint -- with as broad a brush stroke as possible -- all liberals as immoral and anti-religious.
We have been abandoning the field for too long to the so-called religious right, which arrogantly claims that no one can oppose its partisan agendas and be faithful to God.
The preachers of the right like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson have no reluctance to claim God's sanction for President Bush's war and the Republican platform. But ministers and laypeople who know better than to invoke God as authority for narrow political interests remain silent. This needs to change -- now.
In his Wednesday column asking why so many people hate Bush, Cal Thomas implied that all liberals believe that God is merely an idea of man, that all liberals deny that it is God who makes the rules, that all liberals "wish to create their own version of heaven on Earth through the secular god of big government and a capitulation to our lower natures."
Mr. Thomas, I am a Christian liberal. I am a liberal because I am a Christian. What's more, I am not a Republican conservative because I am a Christian.
Only God is good, and I am a very sinful man; but I have feebly attempted at times in my life to act out my faith.
I took five years out of my profession in the 1990s and became the pastor of an inner-city church in Fort Worth, working with poor families, pregnant teens, addicts and the victims of gang violence. I say this not because I am due any credit but so you might accept that faith has not always been just talk for me. I may be mistaken, but my faith matters.
Christian liberals have been instrumental in making this society as (imperfectly) humane as it is. Christian liberals were responsible for public education and land grant colleges to enable the children of farmers, the poor and the working classes to get educations like the children of the privileged.
Liberals were responsible for a minimum wage, Social Security, Medicare, workplace safety regulations, civil rights legislation, a progressive income tax, protection of the environment, and governmental resistance to the efforts of the rich and powerful to run the country for their own benefit.
Why have Christian liberals done this, against the constant opposition of conservatives like you and often against their own self-interests? Largely because of their faith, though we all see through a glass darkly -- because of the vision of human community that God gave to us at Mount Sinai and through his prophets.
It is a vision in which the poor and powerless are to be included and protected and in which the rich are judged harshly when (in the imagery of Isaiah) in their greed or indifference they add house to house and field to field, grind the face of the poor and deny the workers the fair fruits of their work.
Christian liberals have been inspired by the life and death of Jesus -- the one, Mr. Thomas, whom you and I "profess" to be the Son of God. That son did not live among the CEOs and the wealthy of his time. He chose to live among the outcasts and the suffering who were looked down upon by people like your friends (and mine). And he tried in everything he said and did to bring justice and peace and to reduce hunger and sickness and marginalization.
For that, the rich and powerful of his day attacked him as irreligious and immoral and had him killed -- because he threatened their power and influence. Mr. Thomas, Jesus did not die just for our sins; he died because of our sins. Mr. Thomas, you need to read the entire Bible.
Throughout history, every attempt to make things better for all of God's children has been met with idolatrous propaganda from the religious rich, saying just what you say -- that reformers are merely trying to create "their own heaven on Earth." Accept the will of God, says the religious right throughout history -- meaning the way things are and the power and dominance of the elite for whom they speak.
Well, Mr. Thomas, read your Gospels. What example did Jesus set for us but to struggle in love to make things ever better for the poor and the old and the sick? Does anything that Jesus did besides die matter to the religious right? Why do you effectively ignore the way he lived his life before his death?
How can you ignore his teachings on the dangers of wealth and the absolute need for compassion to all, whether you think they deserve it or not? How do you claim to get to Republican economic policies from that life and those teachings? Where in the name of God does your self-righteousness come from?
You write that Christian liberals want to "capitulate to our lower nature." Mr. Thomas, you have that backward. Man's lowest nature is idolatry. And it is idolatry to claim Jesus as the authority for war and protection of wealth and effective indifference to poverty.
It is idolatry to claim that the Republican Party -- or indeed any party -- is the party of Jesus. It is idolatry to try to reduce Jesus to an apologist for any narrow self-interest.
You write that Christian liberals make their own rules and ignore God's. In Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus gave those who profess him as Lord his parting "rules." He told us that insomuch as we help the poor, the sick, the imprisoned and the suffering, we help him.
He didn't add, "But don't you use democratic government to do it." That's something some conservatives try to add. He just said, "Do it."
You and I can debate whether helping the people our Lord wanted us to help can be done most effectively with a mixture of private and governmental efforts or through the private profit motive alone. I would relish that debate.
But we both see through a glass darkly. And God forgive you when you dare to claim that you are any more religiously motivated than anyone else in your political views. I see a beam in your eye, Mr. Thomas, just as there is one in mine.
And to answer a version of your question: Many people hate aspects of the Republican program because of the hypocritical and self-serving claim of some in your party to an exclusive, divine sanction for its war, its effective indifference to the poor and its policies that are intended to solidify the power of its elite.
IN THE KNOW
If you didn't read the Cal Thomas column to which Brooks Harrington is referring, "Why do they detest Bush?" you can find it on our Web site: www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/ opinion/9562555.htm
----------- Brooks Harrington is a Fort Worth attorney and a summa cum laude graduate of SMU's Perkins School of Theology. Brooks Harrington served for five years as senior pastor at Diamond Hill United Methodist Church before to the practice of law.
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" How come people always flip and think they're Jesus? Why not Buddha? Particularly in America, where more people resemble Buddha than Jesus. 'Ah'm BUDDHA!' 'You're Bubba!' 'Ah'm Buddha now..All I gotta do is change 3 letters on ma belt...' " - Bill Hicks