Jesus is a Liberal?

Mark Tooley at the American Spectator writes an interesting article on the subject;

A plethora of new books is poring out explaining why Jesus is not a Republican. Supposedly millions of conservatives believe that the Savior does have a political registration. So liberal theologians and activists are rushing to the barricades to correct the record.

The irony is that theological conservatives are the most likely to recognize that the Eternal Son of God transcends human political labels, and the least likely to ascribe salvific importance to politics, important though politics may be.

Theological liberals, who usually have abandoned doctrines about divine transcendence and eternal judgment, are far more likely to prioritize politics. In fact, politics is often all they have.

Tooley discusses the latest polemic, 'Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America: An Evangelical's Lament', by leftist Randall Balmer who denies "he is a theological liberal". As is typical of leftists these days, Balmer's perception of reality & actual events stand in stark contrast with each other.

Indeed, he is a "passionate evangelical" who is distressed by evangelical alignment with political conservatives. He is particularly distressed the conservative evangelicals are supporting the Bush Administration, whose "chicanery, bullying, and flouting of the rule of law...make Richard Nixon look like a fraternity prankster."

Heh! Heh! Here's a "passionate evangelical" who can easily bend the truth beyond recognition to fit his political agenda. Perhaps Mr. Balmer has yet read the 10 commandments or the passages in the bible about loving your brother, judge not lest ye be judged, etc. Besides, compared to the "chicanery, bullying, and flouting of the rule of law" from the liberal MSM & DNC, Bush is a saint. Perhaps Balmer also missed passage in the bible about the seeing the mote in your brother's eye yet remain unaware of the beam in your own eye.

There's more. Balmer,

insists that evangelicals historically and rightly are aligned with "progressive" political causes like the abolition of slavery, universal suffrage, and public education. But seduced by the issues of homosexuality and abortion, much of the organized evangelical movement in the U.S. has now sold its soul to the Republican Party. With his usual nuanced subtlety, Balmer discerns that the Religious Right "hankers for the kind of homogeneous theocracy that the Puritans tried to establish in 17th-century Massachusetts" and "renege on the First Amendment."

Perhaps Balmer is unaware that Republicans were the main reason the US put an end to slavery & that far more Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act than "progressives". Balmer doesn't explain, but I wasn't aware that voting rights & education were the exclusive province of "progressives". I realize that leftists want everyone to vote.... early & often... including felons & even after you're dead. I also know that conservatives only want one person, one vote sans fraud, so I'm pretty sure which side of that issue better represents christian values. And someone should tell Bush that those huge increases in education funding were for naught.

Although I may not be a religious expert, I doubt that God is very fond of abortion or homosexuality. If nothing else, both of these things go against that 'be fruitful & multiply' deal in Genesis.

Isn't "homogeneous theocracy" a meanspirited, unchristian way of saying that conservative christians prefer a generally uniform view of the bible & christianity?

Next Tooley cites Balmer's antipathy toward religious conservatives who continued to support Congressman Randy Cunningham (bribes), Ralph Reed & William Bennett (gambling), calling them hypocrites. Apparently the DNC is free of all sin in Balmer's revisionist world view.

Balmer even bemoans his friends & family who have distanced themselves from him. Tooley notes:

Given the heat and tone of Balmer's rhetoric, it is probably not his politics but his irritable attitude that has estranged his relationships with fellow evangelicals. His anger leads him to distort and assume the very worst about their motives and positions. Who wants to send a Christmas card to the angry cousin who is always denouncing you?

Balmer attacks Tooley's organization, the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) & the Religious Right for refusing to "climb out of the Republican Party's cozy bed over the torture of human beings."

[Balmer] claims, after having contacted us during the course of his book writing, that IRD is "eager to defend" the supposedly pro-torture policies of the Bush Administration.

By "defend," what he really meant is that we declined to denounce the Bush Administration. We also declined to denounce the Clinton Administration. IRD primarily reports about what church officials do and say politically. Almost never do we critique U.S. politicians. Balmer omits that fact because he evidently was looking for a stereotype to fulfill. He was kind enough to include an actual quote from IRD, which was that "torture is a violation of human dignity, contrary to biblical teachings." But because we do not automatically accept his premise that the Bush Administration supports torture and respond with a denunciation, therefore we are soft on torture.

It sounds to me like Balmer wants to impose his version of "homogeneous theocracy" that allows him to "renege on the First Amendment". And if that's not enough he also wants them to convert to his progressive world view too;

Balmer basically wants his fellow evangelicals to stop supporting conservative political causes and candidates and to start espousing the liberal ones that he prefers. Here is how he heatedly describes the highly problematic conservative evangelicals: They support

an expansion of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, the continued prosecution of a war in the Middle East that enraged our longtime allies and would not meet even the barest of just-war criteria, and a rejiggering of Social Security, the effect of which, most observers agree, would be to fray the social-safety net for the poorest among us. Public education is very much imperiled by Republican policies, to the evident satisfaction of the religious right, and it seeks to replace science curricula with theology, thereby transforming students into catechumens. America's grossly disproportionate consumption of energy continues unabated, prompting demands for oil exploration in environmentally sensitive areas. The Bush administration has jettisoned U.S. participation in the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, which called on Americans to make at least a token effort to combat global warming. Corporate interests are treated with the kind of reverence and deference once reserved for the deity.

If nothing else, the man knows how to capture a boatload of less than honest DNC Talking Points in a single paragraph. Tooley continues to shoot holes in Balmer's rhetoric & notes that Balmer predicts that, "the minions of the religious right will seek to discredit me rather than engage the substance of my arguments" & attack him as a "member of the academic elite, spokesman for the Northeastern establishment, misguided liberal, prodigal son, traitor to the faith, etc." Tooley notes;

Balmer takes himself a little too seriously. And he does not provide many substantive arguments with which to engage. Instead, he vents and rages that most evangelicals are conservative rather than liberal.

Tooley ends with this zinger;

True, the Religious Left does not marshal the number of voters that the Religious Right does. Perhaps that is because it is dominated by "academic elites" and the "Northeastern establishment" rather than by ordinary church-going people. But Balmer does not deeply examine that possibility.

Perhaps. Although he doesn't say it here (he does throughout this piece), Balmer & his elitist world view may not resonate with mainstream church-going people because their rhetoric & reality are often in conflict. One would think that would not sit too well with mainstream christians.