A Simple Plea
I have a beef with the Democratic party, progressives, and leftists. I’ve made no bones about the fact that I’m a Catholic. I also have made no bones about the fact that my Catholicism shapes my politics. While it is true that the first amendment guarantees of freedom from religion as much as it guarantees freedom of religion, there is a difference between the reality of policy and the tactics that we use to communicate those policy ideas.
This past Sunday, the gospel reading was the Sermon on the Mount. Obviously, the homily was too. The sermon on the mount was compared to Moses bringing down the ten commandments from Mt. Sinai. In Moses case, he was bringing God’s law down to the people. In Jesus’ case he was trying to lift the people up to heaven. The famous eight beatitudes are listed below:
- Blessed are the poor in spirit
- Blessed are the meek
- Blessed are they who mourn
- Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice
- Blessed are the merciful
- Blessed are the clean of heart
- Blessed are the peacemakers
- Blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice’ sake
This is where Democratic and left wing thought slides off the rails. Many want to shun Christianity in favor of something else. This has given over Christianity and its values to the right wing and the right wing alone. Therefore, people that call themselves Christians can get the vote of others that call themselves Christian without embodying none of the characteristics listed above. Conversely, someone embodying most of the characteristics of above can be called immoral and unfit to lead because the voters reject the packaging that they come in.
Admittedly, it is a tight rope balancing act. The general idea is to make yourself palatable to Christians without pigeonholing yourself as only palatable to Christians. Non-religious people can be most of those things above and many are. People of different faiths can be most if not all of those things above and many are. The simple fact is that there isn’t a single objectionable quality on that list no matter what faith (or lack of faith) tradition you come from.
I hate to use a golf analogy, but there have been many a round that I have played that began poorly. In fact, that’s the norm these days. The road back does not begin with a string of birdies, eagles, and pars. It begins with a single shot. You execute a single shot. Then you execute another and another. When you look up, you have rebounded from your poor start.
In a similar way, our politics will not rebound overnight. A sea of performance artists and carnival barkers won’t suddenly give way to serious people with serious ideas. It starts with a single shot. It starts by asking ourselves one simple question regardless of religious affiliation or not: which candidate embodies most of the qualities above? That’s true whether it is the local school board or the presidency. That’s true whether it is the dog catcher or the governor. It’s true whether they be Republican, Democrat, or third party. Good and wise policy cannot come from bad people. There is no getting around that no matter what they call themselves.
Problem is, people need to look at what politicians *do*, not what they *say*.
Morality does not come from religion. People define their own morality and then find a religion that fits, if they choose a religion at all.
If you vote for someone just because they call themselves a Christian, even as they betray Christian values with their actions, that’s just laziness.
1US Christians scare me, although or perhaps because I was brought up in a conservative Roman Catholic household.
2Points taken. I think there are a lot of Christians that don’t embody the characteristics above. That was probably the whole point of the sermon to begin with.
3Also, Nick, you said that “non-religious people can be “most” of those things above” but people of other religions can be all those things. Which of those thing do you think non-religious people can’t be? I agree with Peon- morality does not come from religion.
4I have no issues with people of any religion until they try to push it on other people. That, I’m afraid, I see way too often.
Technically speaking one cannot be poor in spirit as doctrine defines it if they are atheistic. It’s not a judgment thing but a simple definition that poor in spirit is defined as thirsting or hungering for more faith. If one has no faith and seeks no faith then they cannot be poor in spirit.
5Don’t be sensitive about religion and/or being Catholic. It is just a huge messy topic. Gets everyone all worked up.
6IMO does not this article a promote provincialism, a limitation, to Christian, Christianity that may not be the intent of Christ’s ministry wherein He was essentially a messenger for the actual source, God? Did not Christ say something like, “Not my will but yours”? Isn’t the Good Samaritan story a clue to inclusiveness? Do not many major religions outside of Christianity accept some concept of God as the ultimate source of authority? Though perhaps not in practice? Perhaps people still prefer a figure they can relate to be it human, animal or whatever.
7And being good in spirit is reserved for …… ? And I have faith in most people I know personally. I quit the church in my teens when our pastor came to see my seriously sick mom in the hospital and his first conversation was questioning why our family hadn’t kept up on our tithings. Not arguing. Nuff said.
8Christianity in its public manifestations, as you know quite well, is not about the teachings of Jesus, nor yet the strongly distinct teachings of Paul, but about the secular power of the Church-Institution.
In the American context, the power of the Church-Institution — Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical, Snake-Chunking, or Vaguely-Well-Meaning — is necessarily and immediately (i.e., without mediation) devolved upon the individual members and, in principle, confers upon them power of life and death over their neighbors. Else they wouldn’t care about it: that is the game, the only game worth playing. And it is definitionally the peasant game, which is to say, the low-population-density game. (The high-population-density game is totally disjunct from this, there is no point of contact.)
So, yes, American public Christianity must be rejected, and that utterly. This is without prejudice to private Christianity, to which each of us may resort as we wish, or as we can, or as we must.
9At best some xtians are hypocrites to their BigBook o’BS Fairy Tales, so I don’t trust them to think properly. Normally they are christANALs that are bigoted, racists, hate-filled crazy people who believe their way is the only way. And I totally trust them to be just that!
10This one was shared in a Unitarian Universalist group I belong to:
Religion is like a pair of shoes…
Find one that fits for you, but don’t make me wear your shoes.
George Carlin
I know there are liberal Christians – I went to seminary with a lot of them!
11Background: 8 years Mercy nuns; 4 years Christian Brothers of LaSalle; 4years of Jesuits. Have not been back since except for weddings and funerals!
There are too many nutball Catholics on the Supremes already not to mention political All Stars like Barr and Durham.
We should start a Freedom From Religion party. Wait! Ron Reagan already has……
12Christianity and other world religions espouse similar ideals: no murder, treat each other the way you want to be treated, etc. The difference in in those following their religions and those irreligious is consequences. We seem to be living in a consequence-free era. We see politicians and other celebrities doing things which our mothers taught us not to do and then wonder, could we do that? As belief in religious consequences declines, legal consequences must take over – and they need to apply from the 1%ers to the peons like me!
13Here’s another George Carlin quote on religion:
“Frisbeetarianism: the belief that when you die your soul goes up on the roof where nobody can retrieve it.”
14Nick, it took me awhile to process your assertion that liberals are turning people against Christianity.
15So I gotta ask. Which liberals are doing it?
P.P. (and others),
I once took a religious counseling class in pursuit of my masters in school counseling. The whole idea was to learn enough about all of the world religions to speak their language. The idea was that if you could relate to your patients on that level then they would be a lot more open and a lot more receptive.
My point here is really not to criticize but to make a point. I think the responses have been predictable and instructive. So, to answer the question in #15 I would point to the above comments as examples. I think in the U.S. there exists four groups of people. There are conservative Christians, Liberal or mainstream Christians, non-religious, and those religious of other faiths. All of the charges levied are absolutely true of conservative Christians. We all know many of those. The difficulty comes in how those that are either mainstream but leaning liberal or center respond to these criticisms or charges.
If we paint with a broader brush then we risk alienating them. If we say Christians are bad people or that Christianity has become perverted and people of faith have collectively lost moral leadership then we’ve shunned them to either the political wilderness or to the right.
That’s why I brought up my first paragraph. It’s about couching things in a different way that they can appreciate and gravitate to. You don’t have to convince me that a number of or even a majority of American Christians have gravitated to the wrong message or are backing the wrong horse. I see it every week and see it particularly in lay leadership at my church. It is essentially about battling for our collective soul. I think there is a belief from some that you cannot be an American Christian and be those things listed above. There is a belief by some that being a “devout” Christian and being a good person have become mutually exclusive.
I like Peon’s original point. Perhaps morality doesn’t come from religion at all, but is completely independent of religion. Yet, if that is the case then we would still measure people independent of their religious beliefs. We certainly wouldn’t hold their religious beliefs against them either way. So, this about developing a language that includes them and even invites them. You can be a devout anything and still be a progressive. In fact, I would argue that Gospels demand it.
16religious guy: non-religious people are alienating religious people. also, non-religious people are not as moral as religious people.
17non-religious people: wha?
religious guy: i knew you’d say that.
Why does right wing Christian seem like an oxymoron. Like they read the book and then missed the whole point of loving thy neighbor and who are neighbors. Kick
18Jace 18, wwell said.
Nick C., I usually agree with you, but you use 1000 words when you could get your mesage across with 50. Tighten it up.
19The majority of Jews in Israel are secular. They rarely attend a religious service, except for weddings and funerals. But there is a lot of truth in the statement that, “The religion that most Israelis choose not to practice is Orthodox Judaism.” Even though most Israelis are not religious, they treat Orthodoxy as “real” Judaism. The minority of progressive Jews in Israel are ignored.
I see a similar situation in the US, especially in the media. Journalists are more secular than the general population. But in too many cases, their vision of “true” Christianity is conservative Christianity, and Bible-literalists. This is either because they grew up in and left a conservative church, or they grew up in a twice-a-year church going family, and they have an elementary school level understanding of Christianity. Yes, I’m generalizing about journalists and other secular people, but combining this with 40 years of political activism by conservative churches, and it’s easy to see how liberal Christianity has been erased from the public sphere.
My Twitter feed is full of atheists who were raised in conservative Churches. As someone who’s learned a lot about humanity and social justice from my religion, I want to make an argument for what a non-fundamentalist view of theology can offer. Unfortunately, their previous experience with hate preached from the pulpit makes it difficult to even begin.
20Thank you Joel, but if that is your understanding of my treatise then I’ve somehow failed again.
21Well, it looked short enough that I might not be driven over the brink by the time I finished reading it. It almost was.
Moving beyond the impenetrable grammar of TWMDBS’s resident educator – “without embodying none of the characteristics listed above,” (or is that “without none” double negative construction an accepted Texican dialectical idiom?) what is the rhetorical point of this “Simple Plea?” Not written wryly, like Swift’s Modest Proposal, it is a plea for Democrats to tread lightly regarding the feelings of Christians, lest we drive them from the fold. In the exposition of the point, Carraway is tacitly held up as a Christian who shares the common values of the Democratic Party. Fair enough. He then cites The Imaginary Sky Wizard and offers The Beatitudes as a common ground for Democrats, Christian and otherwise to rally around. While the mythical or allegorical Christ is inspirational on some levels, we as Democrats need look no farther for the universal goals of our party than the Roosevelt Memorial in our nation’s Capitol. These are Democratic values Christians can cleave to, rather than the converse.
*No country, however rich, can afford the waste of its human resources. Demoralization caused by vast unemployment is our greatest extravagance. Morally, it is the greatest menace to our social order.”
“In these days of difficulty, we Americans everywhere must and shall choose a path of social justice…
The path of faith, the path of hope, and the path of love toward our fellow man.”
“Among American citizens, there should be no forgotten men, and no forgotten races.”
“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; It is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”
– all from Franklin Delano Roosevelt
22Non-religious people can be “most” of the things above? I assume you are referring to the eight that you listed? If non-religious people can only be most but not all, just which one or ones can they not be? If you discern that my initial reaction is to be a little bit offended, you are right. Perhaps you meant to say “most if not all” for non-religious people as well?
23Indeed, Vic. The whole idea that “Democrats must tolerate Christians but not the reverse” seems to be the crux of it. Almost as if a Republican wrote it.
24Vic, Nick responded to that question in #5 above, in response to my post. I pushed back but I’m done with this topic. I have nothing against anyone’s religion, Christian or any other, and respect most people as long as they don’t push it on me, whether a liberal or conservative. Exception is TFG who is a fake at every part of being human.
25@CU – We always appreciate editorial criticism from the sidelines.
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