“Compassionless Christianity Is No Christianity”: A Kinder Mix Of Religion And Politics During Holy Week
The Easter season is a celebration of deliverance, and the liturgical calendar sets Easter Week up as a kind of catharsis.
Holy Thursday and the Last Supper have an ominous feel because they are preparation for Good Friday and the dolorous story of Jesus’s crucifixion. Yet two days later, the tale ends in triumph and resurrection. Whatever questions Christians may have about the meaning of that empty tomb, most of us have experienced a sense of joy when the words “He is risen, alleluia!” are shouted out on Easter Sunday.
Christianity, like the prophetic Judaism with which it is inextricably linked, is rooted in the idea of liberation, and I have long seen the Exodus and Easter as twin narratives involving a release from oppression and the victory of freedom. These promises have left a permanent mark on the culture outside the traditions from which they sprang.
Yet even in the Easter season, it’s hard not to notice that Christianity hasn’t been presented in its own best light during this election year because Christians have not exactly been putting forward their best selves.
My colleague Michael Gerson wrote recently about the “crude” way religion has played out in the Republican primaries, including “the systematic subordination of a rich tradition of social justice to a narrow and predictable political agenda.”
Gerson is exactly right, but I don’t propose to use his admirable column as an excuse to pile onto the religious right. Instead, I want to suggest that what should most bother Christians of all political persuasions is that there are right and wrong ways to apply religion to politics, and much that’s happening now involves the wrong ways. Moreover, popular Christianity often seems to denigrate rather than celebrate intellectual life and critical inquiry. This not only ignores Christian giants of philosophy and science but also plays into some of the very worst stereotypes inflicted upon religious believers.
What I’m not saying is that Christianity should be disengaged from politics. In fact, the early Christian movement was born in politics, in oppositional circles within Judaism fighting Roman oppression. There is great debate over how to understand the relationship between Jesus’s spirituality and his approach to politics, but his preaching clearly challenged the powers-that-be. He was, after all, crucified.
But because Christians have a realistic and non-utopian view of human nature, they should be especially alive to the ambiguities and ambivalences of politics. The philosopher Jean Bethke Elshtain captured this well in reflecting on Augustine’s writings. “If Augustine is a thorn in the side of those who would cure the universe once and for all,” she wrote, “he similarly torments critics who disdain any project of human community, or justice, or possibility.”
Christians, she’s saying, thus have a duty to grasp both the possibilities and the limits of politics. This, in turn, means that the absolutism so many associate with Christian engagement in politics ought to be seen as contrary to the Christian tradition. And that’s the case even if many Christians over the course of history have acted otherwise.
Similarly, some Christians encourage a view of their faith as profoundly anti-intellectual. Faith is seen as more about experience than reason, more about loyalty than dialogue. The desire to assert The Truth takes priority over exploring productively and honestly what the truth might be.
In his important book “Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind,” the great evangelical scholar Mark Noll urges Christians down the second path. He argues that “if what we claim about Jesus Christ is true, then evangelicals should be among the most active, most serious and most-open minded advocates of general human learning.
“Evangelical hesitation about scholarship in general or about pursuing learning wholeheartedly is, in other words, antithetical to the Christ-centered basis of evangelical faith.” Noll might have added that a devotion to higher learning does not make anyone “a snob.”
So if Easter is about liberation, this liberation must include intellectual freedom. It entails a tempered approach to politics involving a steady quest for human improvement, not false promises of perfection or wild claims about the demonic character of one’s opponents. Elections, even an election as important as this year’s, should not be routinely cast as Armageddon.
Oh, yes, and a compassionless Christianity is no Christianity at all. I have always been moved by this presentation of Jesus from a Catholic Eucharistic prayer: “To the poor he proclaimed the good news of salvation, to prisoners, freedom, and to those in sorrow, joy.” To which one can say: Alleluia.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, April 4, 2012
“Fool Me Once”: Why Do Reporters Think Mitt Romney Is A Moderate?
They keep saying it, but they don’t know whether it’s true.
I’m sorry, but I refuse to let this one go, even if I have to repeat myself. Time‘s Alex Altman writes, “A very conservative party is on the verge of nominating a relative moderate whom nobody is very excited about, largely because none of his rivals managed to cobble together a professional operation.” I beg you, Alex, and every other reporter covering the campaign: If you’re going to assert that Mitt Romney is a “relative moderate,” you have to give us some evidence for that assertion. Because without mind-reading, we have to way to know whether it’s true.
What we do know is that when he ran in two races in the extremely liberal state of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney was a moderate. Then when he ran in two races to be the Republican nominee for president, Mitt Romney was and is extremely conservative. There is simply no reason—none—to believe, let alone to assert as though it were an undisputed fact, that the first incarnation of Romney was the “real” one and the current incarnation of Romney is the fake one.
Every single issue position that might mark Mitt Romney as a “relative moderate” is something he has cast off, whether it’s being pro-choice, or pro-gay rights, or not hating on immigrants. If you’re going to say he’s a relative moderate, you have to explain how the Massachusetts Romney was an expression of his true beliefs, and the national Romney is the product of cynical calculation, and how you know this to be the case.
It might be the case. But it is just as likely that the Massachusetts Romney was the fake one, and the current Romney is the sincere one. Or that neither one is real, because Romney simply has no actual beliefs about these issues. (I leave aside the possibility that they’re both real, and he underwent some genuine change of heart on most every issue after deciding to run for president. Because no one’s crazy enough to believe that.) So please, reporters: if you suspect that Mitt Romney is really a moderate, then say it’s a suspicion. But don’t treat it like a fact.
By: Paul Waldman, The American Prospect, April 4, 2012
“Let Them Eat Broccoli”: Mitt Romney Doesn’t Have A Health Care “Replace” Plan
Congressional Republicans aren’t the only ones who don’t have a health care plan to comprise the “replace” part of repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act. Mitt Romney doesn’t either, despite his protestations to the contrary. Here he is last week:
“It’s critical that we repeal Obamacare and, by the way, also replace it,” he said. “I think I’m the only person in this race who’s laid out what I would replace it with.”Romney said he plans to give a waiver to all 50 states discontinuing the president’s plan—known formally as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—and returning healthcare responsibilities to the states. He wants to take Medicaid money administered by the federal government and give it to states as block grants. His plan also includes giving individuals the same tax break that companies get when they buy insurance for their employees, allowing individuals to buy insurance across state lines, and encouraging consumers to shop around for the least expensive medical services, creating competition among healthcare providers.
None of these proposals are actually health care reform. They don’t get at spiraling health care costs, at best they just shift costs on to states and consumers. The idea that a patient is going to shop around for the least expensive medical service is utterly laughable. “So, Regional Medical Center Y says they’ll do my chemo treatments for $120K. Can you beat that price, Regional Medical Center X?”
Of course, Romney has a more comprehensive reform plan in his back pocket, the one he invented for Massachusetts that provided the template for Obamacare. But he can’t trot that out, since it’s his biggest liability with his base. So he happily pretends that bankrupting Medicaid and telling people to negotiate the cost of their care is reform, hoping that the lack of a plan will make people think he’s a real Republican. In other words, he’s a fraud, too.
By: Joan McCarter, Daily Kos< April 3, 2012
“The New Nixon”: Nobody Really Believes Mitt Romney
Roll Call‘s Stu Rothenberg is not someone often accused of “liberal bias” or a thumb-on-the-scales in favor of Democrats. So his latest column, illustrating Mitt Romney’s chronic credibility problem as a product of his supporters as well as his detractors, is especially interesting. Perhaps I like it because he’s making a point I tend to obsess about but that is rarely made in bland assessments of Romney: the candidate has been moving as rapidly to the right as he can even as his image within the GOP has moved left. That shows the rightward velocity of the GOP, particularly since 2008. But it is also means that GOP voters are constantly aware of Mitt’s endless repositioning efforts, including moderate Republicans who happily vote for him because they assume he’s lying to the hard-core conservatives who increasingly dominate their party:
For years, ever since he started running against Sen. John McCain for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, Romney has tried to position himself to the right. In fact, four years ago, he succeeded in positioning himself as one of two conservative alternatives (the other being former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee) to the Arizona Senator.
The exit poll from the Florida GOP primary on Jan. 29, 2008, when McCain narrowly beat Romney, 36 percent to 31 percent, and Huckabee came in a weak fourth, showed Romney rallying Republican conservatives who could not accept McCain…..
This cycle, Romney has run right again, to establish his conservative credentials, but he has not been successful. Instead, each and every week, he has performed best among the same voters who chose McCain over him four years ago — and he has done least well among those demographic groups that supported him in 2008.
Romney’s great problem in the GOP race, as pretty much everyone has already observed, is that conservatives don’t really believe that he is one of them….
What’s interesting about Romney and his supporters is that, despite his conservative rhetoric, moderates and country club conservatives continue to support his candidacy.
Think about it. Romney, who stresses his opposition to abortion, talks tough on immigration and rules out a tax increase even to help cut the deficit, continues to get the support of pragmatic conservatives who reject former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum’s ideological rigidity, thought Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.) was too conservative and viewed Texas Gov. Rick Perry as a bomb thrower.
Clearly, establishment Republicans also don’t believe Romney when he talks about his views and his agenda. If they did, they probably would feel about him the same way they feel about Santorum or Bachmann.
Romney’s great asset is that these voters figure he is merely pandering to evangelicals and the most conservative element of the GOP when he talks about cultural issues, immigration and taxes.
The bottom line, of course, is that nobody — not his critics and not his allies — really believes Mitt Romney.
And that’s among Republicans.
For all the differences in personality and background, that’s why I’ve always thought of Mitt as the New Nixon. He may succeed politically because people with money figure he’ll do what it takes for him–and them–to win, because he’s a safer bet than his opponents, and even because people are cynical enough about him to assume he won’t let principles get in the way of doing things the country obviously needs. But (with the obvious exception of LDS folk) he’s not going to inspire much of anybody, and can ascend to a victory over Barack Obama only on the dark wings of an exceptionally nasty negative campaign reinforced by disheartening external events.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, April 3, 2012
“Dangerously Unmoored From The American Consensus”: The GOP Is Crazier Than You Thought
In his latest speech, the president presents the modern Republican Party as a radical aberration from the American consensus.
If there was a question President Obama tried to answer with his speech this afternoon to the Associated Press, it was this—“what happened to the Republican Party?” And to that end, he marshaled evidence from a century of political history to show that today’s Grand Old Party is dangerously unmoored from the American consensus, with a budget proposal that amounts to “thinly veiled social Darwinism.”
To a large degree, Obama’s speech was filled with the frustration of liberals who see the extent to which the Republican Party has rejected the notion of a government that works positively within the economy. “It was Dwight Eisenhower who launched the interstate highway system and made investments in scientific research … Reagan worked with Democrats to save Social Security … It was George W. Bush who expanded Medicare to include prescription drug coverage,” he said, citing Republican presidents who worked to strengthen the social safety net over the course of the last century. “What leaders in both parties have traditionally understood,” he declared, “is that these programs aren’t schemes to redistribute wealth … they are signs that we are one nation.”
Today’s Republican Party, Obama argued, has abandoned this traditional understanding, in favor of a “failed approach” of trickle-down economics. “In this country, broad-based prosperity has never come from the success of a wealthy few,” he said.
Case in point is Paul Ryan’s latest budget, which—like his Roadmap released last year—would require massive cuts to existing social spending and destroy any semblance of fairness in the economy, as the rich received huge benefits from an economy slanted in their favor. As Obama described it, “The Republicans have doubled down and proposed a budget so far to the right that it makes the Contract for America look like the New Deal.”
Indeed, Obama took the time to illustrate the extent to which the Ryan budget would demolish the federal government as we know it, citing the millions of people who would lose health care coverage with Medicaid cuts, the millions of children who would lose access to healthy food with WIC cuts, and the millions of students who would lose a shot at college because of cuts to Pell Grants and other programs designed to make school more affordable.
He pointed out that while Republicans refuse to say where they would make cuts, cuts have to happen if we adopt their budget, “Perhaps they will never tell us where the knife will fall, but you can be sure that with cuts this deep, there will never be a secret plan to protect the investments we need for our economy to grow. This is not conjecture, I am not exaggerating, these are facts.”
From his aggressive tone to his sharp and clear language, this was a campaign speech, and he took care to tie his likely competitor—former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney—to the policies pushed by congressional Republicans. “He called it ‘marvelous’,” said Obama, highlighting the degree to which the “Path to Prosperity” is the Republican Party platform for 2012.
I said this morning that thanks to the short-sighted ideological fervor of Paul Ryan, Obama can make a strong and clear case against the Republican Party. I didn’t realize that this would also be a brutal indictment of the party’s priorities. With his speech, Obama presented the GOP as the defenders of a failed ideology that would leave most Americans trapped in their station, struggling in a hostile economy. If this sounds far-fetched, look no further than the last three years—Republicans have either pushed to eliminate regulations and cut taxes on the rich, or they have stood against any effort to make the economy more fair, or put some restraints on those who caused the financial crisis.
Obama’s challenge is to convince the public that Republicans would continue on that path if elected to office. At the risk of sounding too certain, I think he can do it.
By: Jamelle Bouie, The American Prospect, April 3, 2012
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