They say that you're not supposed to talk about politics and religion. I wonder if that means that people are not supposed to talk about these subjects publicly at all, or whether it just means that you're not supposed to talk about them together at the same time. Perhaps politics and religion are like two substances that, when mixed together, undergo a hypergolic reaction and burst into flames. Anyway, I've been careful in my blogging not to do as “they” say. I hope I haven't set anyone on fire (but maybe it would be good if I had). And I'm about to talk politics and religion again. Why here instead of on my other blog, The Well Run Dry? Because I'm in the midst of covering alternative transportation and peak oil on that blog, and I don't want to interrupt the flow. So if you are flammable, you may want to stay away from this blog post.
The election of Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States has produced some rather interesting reactions from various sectors of the American public, including reactions from many leading members of the Religious Right. According to a recent article in The Daily Advertiser titled, “Clergy Urge Prayer for Obama,” James Dobson told his radio audience that he was “bereft” after the election, “in the midst of a grieving process...over the loss of things that (he) has fought for 35 years.” Earlier in the year, he had threatened to sit out the 2008 election if John McCain was chosen as the Republican nominee, but later reversed course and endorsed McCain after McCain's pick of Sarah Palin as his running mate, stating that “it's probably obvious which of the two major party candidates' views are most palatable to those of us who embrace a pro-life, pro-family worldview.” There have also been stark warnings from Georgia Republican congressman Paul Brown calling Obama a Marxist with a Nazi agenda. And there is a Roman Catholic priest in South Carolina who told his parishioners that any who had voted for Obama needed to do penance before partaking of holy communion.
On the other side of the aisle, there are reports of joyful dancing in the streets among Democrats and those who call themselves “progressive.” Many of their spokespeople have called this election an historic moment in which old racist and class barriers were broken, and they speak of the dawn of a new day of “tolerance” and “diversity” and “progressiveness,” dwelling much on the symbolic value of this past election.
To both sides, I have a few things to say, things that will be very hard to swallow. Since I am a conservative evangelical Christian, I will start by addressing the conservative side of the aisle.
As I have said, I am a conservative evangelical Christian. I believe that the Bible is actually the inspired Word of God. My theology is summed up in the Apostles' Creed. I believe that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, and that becoming a Christian means repenting of one's sins. I also believe that homosexuality and abortion are sins, because the Bible says that they are. Such beliefs are in direct contradiction to the views of most people aligned with the Democratic Party. In fact, I disagree with Barack Obama's position on these issues.
Yet I voted for Barack Obama to be the next President of the United States.
Some who know me will say that I voted for Obama because, like me, he is black. Others will question my Christian credentials, unable to grasp the reasoning behind my vote. Really, though, it is very simple to explain. My vote for Obama was not because he is black, although there are advantages to having a man like Obama in the sort of public spotlight granted to presidents. Obama – urbane, thoughtful, educated and well-spoken – is a powerful contradiction of the stereotypical def'-jammin, jive-talkin', b-ball, gangsta-thugga-rappa portrayal of black culture typically presented by the mainstream media. This stereotype is frequently the only portrayal shown in mainstream entertainment, so that when real-life events force people like Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, Nelson Mandela or Barack Obama into public view, it's a surprise to many. Now at least, America gets to be surprised every day for the next four years.
Why then did I vote for Obama? Because the conservatives, Republicans and members of the Religious Right proved themselves to be supporters of a corporatist agenda that benefited a small group of rich elites while destroying poor nations and the poor of this nation, as well as destroying the earth. The evidence of that destruction has been well-documented on my blog, TH in SoC, in the posts titled, “Fighting With Broken Weapons” and “The Sins of the Right.” Here I will list just a few examples: the Iraq war, which was started on a pretext solely to seize Iraqi oil; the subsidizing of biofuels and genetically-modified food which inflated the price of basic food and lead to widespread hunger; the expansion of the private prison industry, which brought many people convicted of nonviolent crimes into long-term slavery while forever depriving them of the right to vote; the promotion of global laissez-faire neoliberal trade policies which destroyed the local farms, manufacturing enterprises, natural resources and economies of foreign nations while enriching Western corporations; the privatizing of public utilities and services in order to enrich private corporations at the expense of the poor and working-class; and the refusal to admit the reality of anthropogenic global warming and environmental degradation.
These are just a few sins of the Right. Many more have been documented in books such as the Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein, and on websites such as the OXFAM site, Casaubon's Book and Navdanya by Vandana Shiva. Eventually these things would lead to the ruin of the United States and any other nation which allowed its economic elites to practice such sins. But the coming ruin has been accelerated by the increasing speed of manmade climate change, as well as the decline in resources due to Hubbert's Peak. Because of resource peaks and climate change, our present corporatist economic system is breaking. Yet under President Bush and the Republicans, average working-class people are being forced by their government into continued reliance on that system while being deprived of the ability to build a safety net of alternative systems. After examining the public service records of John McCain and Sarah Palin, I was convinced that these two persons would have continued the corporatist agenda pursued by President Bush. Therefore I voted against them.
The American evangelical “Religious Right” has sought to portray the Republican party as the party of godliness, Christianity and “family values,” stating that the Republicans are the most “pro-life” of the two major parties. I personally believe that the spokesmen for the Religious Right have been acting simply as builders of a political power base for candidates who have a corporatist agenda. The leaders of the Religious Right have pushed two issues to identify whether a candidate has a “Biblical” worldview and agenda, yet they have ignored the fact that the Bible does not confine itself to just two issues. Also, the Bible defines being “pro-life” much more broadly than just being against abortion. Abortion is sin – make no mistake. But oppressing and robbing those who have already been born is just as much of a sin as killing the unborn; yet the Religious Right is silent when it comes to condemning the murderous practices of rich Western elites.
But suppose I were to believe that the leaders of the Religious Right are sincere in their lobbying and use of political action to try to make America a “Christian” nation. It would be a great stretch to believe this, since they are just as vocal about opposing issues about which the Bible says nothing, issues like mass transit (since when is that a sin?!) and climate change legislation. Still, what if I were to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they sincerely think they are doing God's work? I believe that I would still end up scratching my head in wonder at them. Take Sarah Palin's statement to James Dobson before the election: “I'm going to know, at the end of the day, putting this in God's hands, that the right thing for America will be done.” Indeed, there were many prayers and calls for prayer made by Religious Right leaders in the days up to November 4. One minister at an Iowa McCain rally prayed for a McCain win because an Obama win would cause Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists to think that their god is bigger than the LORD. Let's assume then that religious evangelical conservatives were wholeheartedly committed to the rightness of their cause and to their strategy of political action as a means of advancing the Kingdom prior to November 4.
What then did November 4 teach them? Things certainly turned out differently than they had hoped and prayed. God didn't give these people what they asked for. Does this mean that God does not exist? Is God weak? Was it merely that these people did not have enough faith? Or could it be that they are mistaken about who God is and what He considers important? Most of us evangelicals have been down the political action road before. For years, I unquestioningly supported the Republican party as the party of God and country. For years I actually believed that it was possible to make a nation Christian in character through laws and elections. Much later I realized that this approach cannot work, because it's impossible to get unsaved people to act like Christians via political action. God is calling His people to live on this earth not as supporters of earthly empire, but as strangers, aliens, and witnesses of new life. Certainly all the political agitation of the Religious Right has produced less-than-stellar results. In fact, the country has gone very much in a direction opposite to that in which the leaders of the Right were trying to lead it. Yet they are unwilling to think on the implications of this. Perhaps it's true that the mark of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, yet expecting a different result.
I assert that while the American Religious Right has stated that it's agenda is to use political action to create a Christian nation, its real agenda has been to legitimize the agenda of the rich and powerful, and to promote American (and Caucasian) domination of the world. Their narrow focus solely on homosexuality and abortion galvanizes potential members of their political power base, yet it poses no threat to established economic elites.
What then of the Left? The Left has historically been a critic of the greed and excesses of the Right. The Left has produced many spokespeople who were fearsomely anti-corporate and anti-capitalist, people like Saul Alinsky, Martin Luther King, and folk singers such as Woody Guthrie. Yet in recent years, traditionally “left-leaning” mainstream media outlets have re-defined the “Left” solely in terms of rejecting Biblical sexual morality and being “progressive” regarding sexual issues. This too poses no threat to established economic elites. Thus we were told during the Democratic primaries that we should vote for Hillary Clinton because she's a woman with “progressive” values, and that a vote for her would be a vote for “change!” We know how Barack Obama was able to market himself as a “progressive” candidate, a “change agent,” with a message of “hope” and “inclusiveness” for America. Now that Obama has won, the mainstream media focus has largely been on spokespersons and proponents of sexually “alternative” lifestyles who are celebrating and giving their views on the meaning of Obama's victory for their cause.
My vote for Obama was not a vote for sexually “progressive” values, but a hope that he might tackle a far more difficult job, namely, the preservation of our country from ruin at the hands of economic and political elites. The danger is that the elites of our country may succeed in defining “progressive” values solely in terms of “alternative” sexual morality just as they defined evangelical conservatism solely in terms of sexual morality. Defining societal values in these terms poses no threat to the members of these elites, and allows them free rein in continuing to practice immoral deeds which enrich them while ruining, robbing and enslaving the poor of the earth. Yet by their actions, these elites are on the verge of destroying our nation and our planet.
Therefore I have a challenge for Mr. Obama and the Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. If they are as “progressive” as they have been saying they are, they will quickly enact legislation to break the power of the rich and to prevent the possibility of any one individual or small group of people gaining inordinate wealth or power over the many. They will tell the truth to the American people about our present economic, environmental and energy crises, rather than trying to maintain the unsustainable American lifestyle of ever-increasing consumption. They will lead us into a truly sustainable way of life in which each person's needs – not greeds – is met. And they will remove the power of multinational corporations to extract the wealth of poor nations while destroying the people of those nations.
A good legislative/executive agenda for the first year of Obama's presidency might well look like this:
Break up economic monopolies and oligarchies in America, starting with the media. Enact rules and laws preventing one man or corporation from owning more than one percent of all newspapers, radio/television stations or Internet media services. Period.
Stop bailing out failed businesses that are dying because they based their business models on unrestrained growth of profits. The Big Three automakers don't need a bailout. If they are to be saved at all, let them re-tool to make railroad rolling stock and components, or to make bicycles. Poor “Joe-the-Blogger” Americans do not want to be turned into collateral for bailouts given to cover the bad choices of the rich.
Repeal all government regulation enacted by the Bush administration to prevent poor and working-class people from finding alternatives to products offered by big business. Abolish the National Animal Identification System for starters. Abolish all rules and laws which hinder small businesses through excessive regulation while letting big business off the hook.
If you want to “stimulate” the economy, require creditors to forgive the majority of debts owed by members of the working class, and to forgive all subprime mortgage debt. This will rein in many of the excesses and evil effects of our present credit economy, and will force a change to a more sensible economic arrangement.
Bring American troops home from their far-flung bases, ASAP. Bring the troops home from Iraq NOW. They never should have been sent there in the first place.
Repeal the Patriot Act NOW.
Shut down Guantanamo NOW.
Start NOW to build the policies and infrastructure that will help Americans live in a future with far less natural resources and energy. This does not require new leaps of technology, but simply requires that we honestly face reality. This is imperative, because a poorer, lower-energy, lower-consumption future is coming our way whether we like it or not.
Obama, you and the Democrats have identified yourselves as the “progressive” party, the party of “change.” How about it? Are you enough of a change to enact an agenda like this? Symbolism means nothing to me; I'm only interested in deeds. Show me what you've got.
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