US and UK Christians and Politics

[Matt Black]

Jim, I'm interested in where you get that distinction from Scripture. Clearly, the Christian Socialist movement in the UK has come to a different conclusion from Scripture. Also, would you accept that government should equally stay out of moral issues such as gay rights?

Yours in Christ

Matt

 

[Pennsylvania Jim]

Matt,

Scripture is full of comands to individuals to care for their needy neighbor. But it nowhere charges government with the task.

And, theft is obviously unbiblical. If I steal from you for the purpose of giving to someone who is needy, it is still theft. If I get together a group of people ("government") who agree to take your posessions by force to give them to someone else, it is still theft.

Charity is giving your substance to someone in need, not taking someone else's and giving it.

 

[The Galatian]

The shift of the Dems to the moral left in the 80-90s alienated that massive voting block, and along with it the "Bible Belt" evo vote.

It was largely Nixon's doing. He was a very astute politician, and saw that democrat support for civil rights could be used to leverage the South away from the democrats.

He very capably used anger against civil rights, focused against the democrats who supported it, to crack the "solid south."

The "Southern strategy" was the great political shift of the second half of this century.

 

[church mouse guy]

Originally posted by Gina L:
Biased in what sense?
I disagreed with the CP on the war.

I agreed with them on the issue of taking away power from the state and making state issues national.

The US is in debt. People are going hungry, going without medical care, and losing work. When my children and my neighbors children are hungry and I have food I feed them all. When my children and my neighbors children are hungry and I have a little food I feed my children and tell the other children to go home so their own mom can make them lunch.

You can attack the CP (or any other party) all you want, I really don't care. I'm an American before a party member and as a Christian, arguing with you about it isn't something I want to spend time on.

You can discount my posts, but that doesn't make them invalid.

Gina

What gets me about all of you Constitution types is that you say that you don't support your party on major issues but you go ahead and vote for them anyway. If you had won, then you would be wanting to try Bush and the military as war criminals because that is what your party is about.

 

[church mouse guy]

Originally posted by C4K:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by church mouse guy:
You have to be wealthy to be interested in the Constitution Party.

ROTFL - you've onviously never been to my house

Can we get this back on track to the intent of the OP please? </font>[/QUOTE]Your posts are the epitome of aristocratic points of view. You were missing in action when the issue of the black churches and the 501s came up again. I guess that even you would have to admit that repression of the clergy is wrong--at least, you never hesitate to say whatever is on your mind--it's just that you don't think that other clergy should have the same rights that you take for yourself.

 

[Matt Black]

Jim, if you look at the injunctions of many of the OT prophets, they are full of calls for the rulers and people of Israel to be compassionate to the poor, the widows and the orphans. Now,as Baptists, you and I may be more NT-separation-of-church-and-state people than OT-theocracy-types, but there is nevertheless a case to be considered there.

I think what is more interesting is how and why American and British Christians arrive at these differing interpretations of the same Scriptures. I think this is largely because of the different social, political and cultural milieus in which we do that interpretation. I have said before that sometimes ISTM that Christianity in America has more to do with the American Way of Life (TM) than the Bible. That is perhaps a rather unfair comment, and American Christians would be well within their rights to retort that the reason for that is that the American Way of Life (TM) is largely founded and built upon Christian principles and values. I think that both 'pathologies',as it were, work side by side in parallel: America, founded by those seeking to set up their own version of True Religion (TM), developed as a place of rugged individualism and that in turn shaped the forms of Christianity that took deep root there, which tends to be anti-government interference and respectful of the autonomy of the individual and in particular their property rights. In the UK, however, although we had Baptists and other non-conformists, the major expression of Christianity was one of Establishment, and hence we developed over time a perhaps more consensual, collective and corporate approach to politics. (The closest perhaps we got to a more North American expression of 'Christians-in-politics' was in the mid-17th century when the non-conformists ruled the roost, which was an experiment which went rather wrong and ended up ironically threatening private property rights, thus prompting a backlash in favour of the Establishment and property in the 1660s Restoration period.) Despite the respect for private property (don't forget, "an Englishman's home is his castle"!), therefore, politics in England has always been about much more than just the individual, and the rich and propertied have tended to feel a sense of obligation towards those less fortunate than themselves. Add to that the fact that Christians, particularly evangelicals, have been heavily involved in the business of government and social reform, for at least 200 years - Wilberforece and the Clapham Sect abolishing slavery, Shaftesbury abolishing child labour, the founders of the Labour Party being more Methodist than Marxist* etc - and you get a very different relationship between Christians and politics here than in the States.

* Another main point of difference is that all three main parties here have Christian roots: in addition to the origins of the Labour Party referred to above, the Conservatives started off as the Tories who were Anglicans largely, and the Liberal Democrats were formally the the Social Democrats (who split off from Labour in 1981)and the Liberals who were formally the Whigs who were the party of the non-conformists (Baptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, etc)

Yours in Christ

Matt

 

[Gina B]

Originally posted by church mouse guy:

What gets me about all of you Constitution types is that you say that you don't support your party on major issues but you go ahead and vote for them anyway. If you had won, then you would be wanting to try Bush and the military as war criminals because that is what your party is about.

You're right. I've been very bad and must punish myself. I'm grounding myself from being allowed to discuss this with you until I learn my lesson.

Gina

 

[Matt Black]

I also disagree with you, Jim, on your 'taxation is theft' line; I view taxation as being part and parcel of the compact between rulers and ruled in a free democratic society - it's part of the price one pays for being a member of such a society. (But we did fight a civil war over that one 350 years wgo...)

Yours in Christ

Matt

 

[mioque]

billwald
"The average poor person has a roof over his head, food, and clothing . . . a TV, a VCR, a car, and air conditioning."
"
I don't own a TV, a VCR, a car, and air conditioning. The computer I use to post this is one of the two in the churchlibrary, I don't own one of those either. Still I do have a better vacation schedule and money to spend on it than any American employed inside the US, so it isn't all bad.

 

[Matt Black]

I still don't fully understand why evos en masse defected to the Republicans, placing all their eggs in one political basket in that way, particularly as some Republican views on say gun control and the poor-big business relationship seem to many of us over here to be counter-Scriptural?

Yours in Christ

Matt

 

[Pennsylvania Jim]

Matt,

Thanks for your post, I agree with a lot of it where you talk about the background of political-ecclesiastical relationships in England vs. the U.S. I also will admit to some extent that you are correct that American Christianity often reflects our culture rather than the other way around. That bothers me, too.

As to proper governmental functions, I still maintain that, in neither the OT or the NT, is the civil government charged with redistribution of wealth. Karl Marx came up with that, not God. God charges individuals and ecclesiastical leaders with concern for the poor.


Obviously the government must collect some level of tax in order to function. But to empower civil government with the ability to confiscate an individual's wealth for the purpose of giving it to another individual is counter to freedom and the Bible. It gives to the civil government a power that does not belong to it, and is dangerous as well as wrong.

 

[NaasPreacher (C4K)]

Kudos to Jim and Matt for a gentlemanly discussion

 

[Pennsylvania Jim]

Hey, whaddaya mean by that, you little...uh...ahem...uh...thanks, C4K.

 

[The Undiscovered Country]

Originally posted by Pennsylvania Jim:

As to proper governmental functions, I still maintain that, in neither the OT or the NT, is the civil government charged with redistribution of wealth. Karl Marx came up with that, not God. God charges individuals and ecclesiastical leaders with concern for the poor.


Obviously the government must collect some level of tax in order to function. But to empower civil government with the ability to confiscate an individual's wealth for the purpose of giving it to another individual is counter to freedom and the Bible. It gives to the civil government a power that does not belong to it, and is dangerous as well as wrong.

I think that that is a really difficult distinction to make. The logical conclusion of what you say is that a truly godly government should not seek to help the poor at all becuase that would be more godly than helping them. That would surely be a peverse line to take. If the line of argument is that civil governments are not scriptually mandated to care for the poor, one could equally argue that they are not mandated to pass laws on abortion or sexual matters but I rather suspect that a number of contributors to this Board would very much want governments to take action on those areas. Scripture does not make distiction between care for the poor and other areas of morality. It sets it out as one package of right ways to live. One either has to argue that governments, however imperfectly, should seek to act right in all areas or in none. A middle ground does not seem to me to be sustainable.

Do I believe that governments can ever truly replicate what can only be done by people acting in the power of God? No I don't but neither do I believe that that means that governments should act in an ungodly manner or turn their backs on right ways to live and right concerns to have. Scripture makes it clear that when those who do not know God nevertheless choose to live in a godly manner, that simply reflects the underlying understnding of right and wrong and of a unconscious awareness of of God's exisitnace that He has placed on thier hearts. That also applies to governmental decisions.

 

[Matt Black]

I'd like to second what TUC said. This is what I & no doubt many other Brits find bizarre about some US evangelicals - the demand that government intervene in some moral areas, notably sexual morality, and not others, notably the sphere of social and economic ethics. ISTM that you can't have an either/or approach here; a more intellectually honest view is an all or nothing stance - either you want government to be interventionist or you don't, either some measure of authoritarianism or complete libertarianism in all spheres

Oh, and thanks to Roger and Jim too!

Yours in Christ

Matt

 

[Pennsylvania Jim]

Originally posted by The Undiscovered Country:
The logical conclusion of what you say is that a truly godly government should not seek to help the poor at all becuase that would be more godly than helping them. That would surely be a peverse line to take.

No, your argument is not logical. It assumes that all societal functions are supposed to care for the poor. How would you like it if you called the fire department, and they said, "sorry, you'll have to burn...we're delivering turkeys to the homeless"? My point is that it IS Godly to help the poor, but it IS NOT a function of the civil government. That IS NOT what civil government is for.

If the line of argument is that civil governments are not scriptually mandated to care for the poor, one could equally argue that they are not mandated to pass laws on abortion or sexual matters

One could argue anything one wanted to, but Scripture sets up the function of civil government; it is to preserve civil order and protect the innocent against aggression, not to feed the poor. That's the job of individuals, families, and churches.

Scripture does not make distiction between care for the poor and other areas of morality. It sets it out as one package of right ways to live. One either has to argue that governments, however imperfectly, should seek to act right in all areas or in none. A middle ground does not seem to me to be sustainable.

It's not a question of middle ground, it's that government, church, and family are separate institutions with different functions. Does God command that we observe the Lord's Supper? Of course. Should it be administered by the government? Of course not. Should the government tithe to the church? No, that's for individuals. Should families seek vigilante revenge against someone who has committed a crime? No, that's for the Government. Should the church punish children for cheating on a test? No, that's for the family.

So, you can't say "God says this is good, therefore the government should do it". Well, actually you can, and have, said it; but I contend that it's wrong.

 

[church mouse guy]

Originally posted by Gina L:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by church mouse guy:

What gets me about all of you Constitution types is that you say that you don't support your party on major issues but you go ahead and vote for them anyway. If you had won, then you would be wanting to try Bush and the military as war criminals because that is what your party is about.

You're right. I've been very bad and must punish myself. I'm grounding myself from being allowed to discuss this with you until I learn my lesson.

Gina </font>

Can you cook anything but tripe?

 

[Matt Black]

Originally posted by Pennsylvania Jim:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by The Undiscovered Country:
The logical conclusion of what you say is that a truly godly government should not seek to help the poor at all becuase that would be more godly than helping them. That would surely be a peverse line to take.

No, your argument is not logical. It assumes that all societal functions are supposed to care for the poor. How would you like it if you called the fire department, and they said, "sorry, you'll have to burn...we're delivering turkeys to the homeless"? </font>[/QUOTE]Surely this is not an 'either/or' situation, Jim. Over here, the government manages to do both reasonably well

Yours in Christ

Matt

 

[mioque]

Ofcourse Pennsylvania Jim's line of reasoning means that government&church should also get out of the marriage bussiness. In the Bible getting married was simply a contract between 2 families, no preachers or government officials involved.

 

[Pennsylvania Jim]

Originally posted by Matt Black:
Surely this is not an 'either/or' situation, Jim. Over here, the government manages to do both reasonably well

Yours in Christ

Matt

Matt,

Just because your government manages to do it well doesn't mean that it is a proper governmental function. As I pointed out above, your government could probably put on a dandy Lord's Supper service, but that is the job of the church.