Politicizing Christianity

I’ve heard folk recently saying than when we say Christian you think Republican, as though Republicanism was a natural outgrowth of Christian thinking and ethics. That irks me to no end. I also had a young women tell me, “How can you be a Christian and a Republican?” Ah, how we love to point fingers. I have been known to say, “What do you call and enlightened Republican? A Presbyterian.” which is a humorous poke at my own denomination which has a history of being an upper middle class church, a class often identified with Republicans as Roman Catholics have been often associated with Democrats. Gross generalizations are just that, gross. But the basic definition of a Christian is someone who believes that Jesus is Lord. No political party has a monopoly on that. It doesn’t even say if you are a good person or a bad one, just a believer.

The group of radically right Christians that have thrown their weight  behind Republican candidates however fascinate me and I will pontificate of that rather bizarre (in my opinion) inference.

Let me start with Ann Coulter who shivers my timbers. Coulter says that she holds Christian beliefs, but has not declared her membership in any particular denomination – she has mentioned that her father was Catholic while her mother was not.^[56] At one public lecture she said, "I don't care about anything else: Christ died for my sins and nothing else matters."^[57] She summarized her view of Christianity in a 2004 column, saying: "Jesus' distinctive message was: People are sinful and need to be redeemed, and this is your lucky day, because I'm here to redeem you even though you don't deserve it, and I have to get the crap kicked out of me to do it." She then mocked "the message of Jesus ... according to liberals," summarizing it as "...something along the lines of 'be nice to people'," which, in turn, she said "is, in fact, one of the incidental tenets of Christianity".^[58]

Confronting some critics' views that her content and style of writing is un-Christian,^[59][60] Coulter stated that, "I'm a Christian first and a mean-spirited, bigoted conservative second, and don't you ever forget it."^[61] She also said, "Christianity fuels everything I write. Being a Christian means that I am called upon to do battle against lies, injustice, cruelty, hypocrisy—you know, all the virtues in the church of liberalism."^[62] In Godless: The Church of Liberalism, Coulter characterized the theory of evolution as bogus science, and contrasted her beliefs to what she called the left's "obsession with Darwinism and the Darwinian view of the world, which replaces sanctification of life with sanctification of sex and death.  [Source: Wikipedia]

Oh my, me thinks the lady the lady has just thrown out the entire teachings of Jesus as irrelevant. You decide.

Now let’s take a peek at jolly ol Rush Limbaugh. He’s a bit a slippery fella. He says he’s a Methodist but never attends church. Rush is so slippery you can Google him to death and not find out much, which seems to be true of Glen Beck and a bunch of the far out right wingers that habitat places like Fox news.

This is likely a good place to just give up. My Christianity drives my political beliefs and I am sure the same is true for folk who hold completely opposite political beliefs than I do. It’s okay. What I dislike is either group judging the other as being Christian or non-Christian. The only one that can do that is God. I think we ought to let it go at that.

The only real inconsistency I find is those who believe in individualism and the right to individuals to hold on to the personal beliefs condemning others and demanding that the government make them follow their religious belief systems.