Am I A Conservative?

From time to time, people will ask me if I am a conservative. Usually it is because something I say, or the way I say it, just doesn’t sound right to them.

I usually smile and reply that I am.

But am I?

Or perhaps I should ask another question: “are there only two camps of people in our country now – conservatives and liberals? To fail to be in one camp automatically places one in the other?”

Has it come to that?

This matter of political labels is a particularly difficult issue for Christians. Jesus said, “If you have two coats, give your brother one.” Does that make him a liberal? The early believers in Acts had “all things common.” Was that socialism? One the other hand, St. Paul said, “if a man will not work, neither shall he eat.” Does that make him a conservative?

What do these labels mean for a Christian?

Last week, Jack Kemp died. He was truly one of America’s great patriots and public servants. He deeply influenced the nation’s political life through his influence upon Ronald Reagan. Jack Kemp was called a “bleeding heart” conservative.

He was conservative but…

He once wrote a book called Liberal Concerns; Conservative Solutions. I really, really liked that book. It gave me words to express my own political beliefs. Kemp was a fiscal conservative, which meant that he did not believe that government should operate with huge budgets and massive social programs. But he also believed all citizens had a responsibility to care for those who could not care for themselves. He cared about mass transit, health care and education and explored ways to address these needs of a well-ordered society that was consistent with his conservatisms.

He deplored the cold hearted “that’s just the way it is” kind of mentality that was increasingly gripping his party and his nation.

The reason I liked Jack Kemp was that a Christian simply cannot embrace an “everyman for himself, social Darwinist philosophy.” The Bible forbids that path in its opening chapters, with the story of Cain. So if a believer knows, really knows, that people suffer because of systemic failure or neglect – such as a lack of urban infrastructure – he or she cannot ignore it. (I was hungry and you wouldn’t feed me.)

Serving a mid city congregation for ten years forced me to become aware of urban poverty and of the systems and lack thereof that maintain that poverty. We could find work for our people but since there was no effective mass transit, (that situation has now improved in Phoenix) the people were forced to buy cars. Furthermore, the cars had to pass emissions. Furthermore, the cars had to be insured. Furthermore, the jobs did not provide health insurance, which meant that the workers either had to go to work ill – even if they were flipping hamburgers – or to miss pay (or get fired) for not showing up to work.

During that decade, I became aware that my pat and packaged answers to urban poverty, health care and mass transit were inadequate and cruel. However, when I tried to explore my concerns, fellow Christians would look at me with horror or amusement; I was either “one of them” or idealistic and naive.

Meanwhile, I watched families struggle in neighborhoods that were veritable hellholes of poverty and crime, trying to get up and get out before their children would have to go to bad schools, resist violent gangs and escape the scourge of drugs. The parents had to guide their children through this mess while trying to get rides to work and then trying to get home again before their children had to spend too many unsupervised hours; trying to keep the kids healthy without health care, trying to survive in the world’s wealthiest nation.

So I decided that an economy of the “quick or the dead” was not one I could embrace as a Christian. I remained a capitalist and a free-market person but I no longer believed in social Darwinism or liaise-faire capitalism. I was definitely not a libertarian, which was the direction my party and fellow conservatives seem to be embracing.

So what was I?

I was a Christian conservative. However, the word “Christian” would define the type of conservative I had become.

What I meant by that was simply that from now on, the words of Jesus would trump the words of Adam Smith or the actions of Donald Trump. The authority of St. Paul would supersede that of Jack Welch or of Rush Limbaugh. In fact, I would reject the group-think of my party altogether. I would continue to vote with my party most of the time but I would no longer take for granted that my party (or that American conservatism) was right. I would think for myself, as the light of scripture and the power of prayer molded my thoughts as well as my emotions. I would think about “the least of these” and the impact of my theories and my votes on the social structures in which they live. I would do these things because my Lord commands me to do them.

Those were my thoughts last Saturday when I learned that Jack Kemp was dead.

He did not become president. He did not become vice-president. He was merely a congressman and a football player who although a loyal Republican and conservative, had the decency to listen to the other side from time to time and to acknowledge the strength of their concerns.He was a man of integrity; a patriot who remembered that public service is a calling to be of service to the public.

May his tribe increase.

Should I Eat Pig Feet?

I wrote the other day about Perez Hilton and his questioning of Miss California.

I’m not sure I made my point as strongly as I would have liked. I wasn’t addressing the issue of same sex marriage; that is another topic for another day. I want to make sure that my thoughts are understood, because they regard what I think is currently an alarming trend in our society.

I see two issues here: the social requirements to maintain American democracy and the commitment that Christians have made to a faith that precedes and supersedes their national loyalty.

The second issue is what has always infuriated nations, kings, emperors and ideological narcissists against Jews. Jews are going to keep the Sabbath, refuse to eat shellfish, and circumcise their male children. The Jews that do not participate in these things practices nearly always begat children and grandchildren who no longer view themselves as Jews. Naturally then, the Jews who survive as Jews are the ones who “keep covenant for your children’s’ children and those who are afar off.”

Jews have often risen to the top of the social order in terms of advisory influence upon rulers and other cultural influencers. They have done this in Babylon, Egypt, Rome, England, and even the Soviet Union. They are smart. They give really good advice. So, they are useful.

However, there always comes a time when the Jew is asked to become a “real” part of the culture in which he resides. Joshua Wisenbaum gets invited to participate in some national religious ceremony or a ceremonially unclean social gathering. (Hey, come with us and eat some pork rinds with the boys. Afterward we’ll all bow to the statue of Bazabaheliah. Shucks, none of us believe that stuff either, Mr. Wizenbaum, we just do it to show our national pride! Come on; join us down at the temple. And why can’t you stop practicing that ancient barbaric ritual of cutting your little boys taliwhacker? Is doing that nasty piece of business really all that important? Isn’t it all just symbolic anyway?)

And so forth and so on.

They won’t do it. So they get disinvited to the culture.

Christians have faced this too. In ancient Rome, for example. In recent times, they faced it in the Soviet Union.

We have never faced this in the United States. The nation has resonated with some of the most cherished values of Christianity. This is because (as the Christian right continually points out) many of the colonies were established for religious reasons. However, there is another reason: the social contract implied by our founding documents and restated in our greatest speeches.

We form temporary alliances with people who have serious differences. Our economic system and political system has taught us to do this. We take for granted that you can make a business deal or broker a political agreement without agreeing in many other important ways.

Many societies have never learned to do this. It requires a system of habits called social graces and an attitude called civility.

The word “civility” is closely tied to the word “civilization.” A civilized people learn to treat another person with respect, even when in sharp disagreement if that person is an honorable man or woman.

A civilized man or woman does not purposefully expel gas in public, eat with his mouth open, or remind everyone at a party that the host’s father was a horse thief.

Civility means that we assume that a person’s political or religious views are honestly formed and sincerely healed. Once we have a relationship that allows a discussion on these topics, the assumption is that each person involved in the conversation is looking for truth. While the ideas under discussion are in mortal conflict, the conservationists are not.

Civility allows a Ronald Reagan and a Tip O’Neil to meet once a week for lunch. They respected one another as men – and as elected officials of a nation they both loved -- while maintaining sharp differences about what was right for the nation. They didn’t call one another names or call the patriotism of one another into question.

Christians should be civil, even with people whose ideas and ideas are deeply at odds with the gospel. This is not a compromise of the faith; indeed it affirms a central tenet of the faith: namely that all human beings bear the image and likeness of God. Our faith forbids us to humiliate others or to speak ill of our national leaders. We can disagree with them; we cannot rail against them or call them insulting names.

We remain civil in disagreement and treat even our enemies honorably.

But we do not bend. We do not bow. We do not conform.

The way Perez Hilton and Miss California have spoken of one another reveals this difference.

So far this has been true: one attacks; one remains civil. One speaks gently of her beliefs; the other demands compliance even of our private opinions.

What would a Jew do?

The Culture Wars and The Loss of Civility

I don’t get angry very often about the culture wars stuff like I did the other night.

I figure that the nation is not a church and that unbelievers have as much a right to express their lack of faith, as I have to express mine. I would not want to live in a theocracy even if we had the ability to vote one into power. (Would you want any of our denominations or parachurches to control the government? I wouldn’t!)

I really do believe in freedom as a basic human right and am persuaded by conviction and experience than a coerced faith is no faith at all. So I am much more comfortable living with difference of opinion and lifestyle than many of my fellow Christians.

But the other night, I was outraged.

I wasn’t watching the beauty pageant when Miss California gave her now famous answer. I would rather walk three miles in the rain than watch a beauty pageant. As far as I am concerned, it is of no consequence at all whether the judges select Miss Twittlely Dee or Miss Twiddddley Dum to be the reigning monarch of bathing suits and hair stylists.

So I don’t care who wins. (Unless and until one of my granddaughters decides to enter the contest, which may change my present opinions about the entire subject.)

OK. Here’s what angered me.

Imagine this scenario:

There is a beauty contest and I am a judge.

I do my homework and discover that Miss Tennessee is a Hindu.

It comes time to ask my questions of the contestant and so I say, “Many states of our country have already passed legislation that recognizes the Judeo-Christian roots of our county. Do you support the current efforts of many in Tennessee to support such legislation in your state?"

Well, can you imagine? Even Christians would be outraged!

What possible justification is there for such a question to ever be posed to a beauty pageant contestant?

We all know better. The issue here is that a known gay advocate has been allowed to escape any consequences for his violation of this young lady’s rights. He is being allowed to escape because his cause is so just, so vital to our national interests, so upright and moral – that he can with impunity harass and insult someone who did not even wish to express her opinion about the subject.

In other words, she was judged not because she came armed and ready to fight, but because of a suspicion that she might have a private opinion that differed from that of the judge.

So this is democracy? This is a neutral public forum?

If a brain-dead, culturally irrelevant and spiritually vacuous event like a beauty pageant is not safe enough for a young lady to hold a private opinion that she does not even plan to express, what, pray tell, is a safe place now?

If this polarization continues, how will our democracy survive?

Orthodox Christians will not embrace a secular worldview. They will die first. They will resist the state. They will not conform.

Secular minded people will not embrace a Christian worldview. They will rebel against laws that impose faith upon them. They will not conform to Christian values.

Is this a new situation? No! It is as old as our Republic.

So what has changed?

Our loss of civility, of that unspoken contract that we will reserve our ideological struggles with one another to certain venues: the ballot box, the party platforms, the magazines and radio programs, and blogs. In other words, we have thought it civil to offer our political opinion only in those times and places in which people CHOOSE to offer and to hear political opinions.

When it comes to the American culture wars, I am one of those despicable moderates. I didn’t choose the adjective “despicable” for myself; the likes of Rush Limbaugh chose it for me. (I actually agree with Rush most of the time, but as with all narcissists, even 80% agreement is not nearly enough for the king of American conservatism.)

I am a conservative that still relates to the ideas of William Buckley, a great thinker from the bygone days before “conservative” came to mean “libertarian.”

I am not a libertarian. Therefore, in the eyes of a new generation of conservatives, I am not a “Real Conservative.” I view political opinion as a spectrum instead of just two huge groups of “them” and “us.”

I am a Christian first, a patriot second, and a conservative third.

My Christian beliefs are formed by my view of scripture, which one might call Protestant orthodoxy. I believe and confess without internal reservation the two great creeds of the historic church and hold to the major tenets of the Protestant reformation. That is about as “conservative” as it gets, at least when it comes to Protestant Christianity.

As for my patriotism, I believe I would lay down my life for the ideas of contained in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and the nearly biblical lines of the Gettysburg Address and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural. I even believe that an exercise of American citizenship ought to involve the memorization and understanding of these documents.

That’s pretty conservative.

I reject libertarianism because it is only a half a shade removed from anarchy. If the government is always the problem, then what do we do with the fact that in a democracy “government” is simply the way the people rule themselves?

I believe that our increasingly inflammatory talk about the government and our disdainful attitudes toward our elected officials is incompatible with Christianity. Jesus Christ did not allow his disciples to fight the temple guard or to even take up arms against the Romans. He was willing to give his life on behalf of those who opposed him and prayed for them as he was dying.

How then should we live in a cultural situation that is only mildly uncomfortable for our faith?

Like that young lady in the beauty pageant... she kept her end of the unspoken contract. She was civil. She entered an area of the public arena where people of vastly different views and beliefs are supposed to be able to meet and enjoy the event.

There was an understood cease-fire agreement so everyone could take a break from the culture wars.

Mr. Pervert broke the cease-fire.

So who is at fault? The young Christian woman, apparently.

What will we do if neither Rush Limbaugh nor Perez Hilton allows anyone to be moderate or civil? We will fight – first with words and then with more dangerous weapons.

Welcome to Yugoslavia.

Welcome to Sodom.