From: Warren Reports
Whatever Happened to the Golden Rule?
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By Chris Fonzone - September 22, 2005, 10:28PM
In their analysis of the current American political environment, The Right Nation, John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge relate a telling story. While meeting with a group of Christian conservatives to conduct research for their book, one of the authors made the off-hand comment âthat Jesus Christ was something of a socialist.â Hardly a remarkable statement about a man who endorses the Golden Rule that everyone should love their neighbors as themselves and, the night before his crucifixion, said that the way to tell the righteous from the damned was to see if theyâd fed the hungry, slaked the thirsty, clothed the naked, welcomed the stranger, and visited the prisoner. However, in Christian America today, such a statement was received as blasphemy. Micklethwait and Woolridge report that their comment sparked a half hour of âwhat might be described as emergency Bible study.â
Micklethwait and Wooldridgeâs story is far from surprising; they were right to identify âChristianityâ as an incredibly powerful force in the United States today, and they were also right to point out that, in many places, the version of âChristianityâ that is ascendant would be largely unrecognizable to Christ himself. What they didnât do is discuss what the consequences of this cooption of Christianity (outside of the political sphere). That task is taken up in part by Bill McKibben in his excellent article âThe Christian Paradoxâ in this monthâs Harperâs.
McKibbenâs two-part thesis is simple. First, the âChristianityâ of Christ is being replaced by two distinctly American constructs: the End Time-ism of Tim LeHaye and the mega-churches of a Christianity whose dominant message is âGod helps those who help themselves.â While McKibben isnât a huge fan of End Time-ism, the brunt of the second part of his thesis is addressed to what he calls the âsuburban mega-churches.â In his view, not only are these churches ignoring the âlove thy neighbor as thyselfâ call, they actually make it âharder to love the neighbor a little farther awayâparticularly the poor and the weak.â
But how could this be? How could a religion so obviously focused on charity be turned into a vehicle for personal selfishness? McKibben finds the answer in the fact that âthe soft-focus consumer gospel of the suburban mega-churches is a perfect match for emergent conservative economic notions about personal responsibility instead of collective action. Privatize Social Security? Keep health care for people who can afford it? File those under 'God helps those who help themselves.'â
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McKibben is not alone in ruminating on the current role and the proper role of Christian Thought in the public sphere. Harvard Law Professor William Stuntz has also addressed this topic recently, in his âBook Review: Christian Legal Theory.â (For the lawyers among us, 116 Harv. L. Rev. 1707.) Although Stuntz is a criminal law scholar and is thus focused much more on than the criminal justice system rather than social economics, his conclusion is surprisingly parallel to McKibbenâs â religion SHOULD be a powerful force for humility and the equalization of justice to all classes (âStill, those of us who live outside [the prisons] have good reason to be penitent for what we have done to, and failed to do for, those inside.â) Although we may like to think of the Old Testament âeye for an eyeâ God, the New Testament which Christianity is based upon is much more about âturning the other cheek.â
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As a (some of the time) practicing Catholic, I have seen the powerful good that religion can bring to peopleâs lives. On top of being incredibly positive influences on their devout parishoners lives, many churches in this country do extraordinary work tending for the infirm and the sick. (McKibben does not deny this and is, in fact, a practicing Christian himself.)
However, despite this, I am deeply concerned by the new role religion has taken on in our public sphere. Itâs become more politic, itâs become more organized, and, at least in some places, itâs become less Christian. Itâs not clear to me what the ânext stepsâ are to address the concerns raised in this blog post; obviously, this is a woefully inadequate space with which to discuss these issues. However, one thing of which Iâm fairly certain is that the best path is NOT to completely ignore the role of the new American Christianity on the recent legislative action around bankruptcy and tax cuts and consumer protection and education. Instead, my gut feeling is that the battle should be addressed âhead onâ in some fashion; in other words, religion has been taboo on the left in many ways (largely for social and not economic policy reasons) and perhaps it shouldnât be. (Is it really surprising that one side of the political divide has exploited religion when the other side wonât even address it?) For one, the true message of Christianity is such that, in many areas, particularly concerning distributive fairness, it dovetails precisely with Democratic ideals. For two, how can we expect voters to know that it was Adam Smith and not Jesus Christ who championed free markets unless we have a voice telling them so?
