I still remember a time in politics, back when I was a lad, when the conservatives were the people who thought that you created the fewest number of laws you could get away with and the liberals
were the ones who thought that if something was a good idea it needed
to be enshrined in law. Sounds like the opening of a science fiction
story, doesn't it? It doesn't bear any resemblance to the politics of
today's America.
Now, I don't always agree with everything Media Girl says -- far from it! -- but she's spot on the money with her musings about the modern conservatism.
What has happened to the Republican Party over the last twenty-odd
years is frankly quite frightening. What I as a Christian find most
frightening is the rise of the "Moral Majority", the Religious Right --
the people whose careers in church and religious ministry appear to be
aimed not at feeding the hungry, healing the sick, and clothing the
naked, but rather at forging and wielding a political power bloc that
wants to proscribeall the things one cannot do if one wants to be a
good Christian and good American (with the assumption that the two are
inseparable).
It seems to me, from all those Sunday School lessons and Bible
studies of years past, that I can remember hearing about some other
active group of religious leaders who merged religious and political
power towards the goal of describing exactly how good people should
live their lives: the Pharisees.
It seems to me that Jesus spent an awful lot of time talking about
how they needed to pay more attention to their own lives and hearts and
less time trying to tell people how to live, less time pretending to be
the very model of a modern Jewish Orthodox.
It seems to me that Jesus didn't spend much time at all talking
about how his followers were supposed to focus their eyes on gaining or
wielding political power.
It seems to me, in fact, that many people tried to get Jesus to
endorse one political position or another -- usually the independence
of the nation of Israel from hated Rome -- and failed to do so. I think
I remember something about "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's" and it
applying to money and taxes, but I could be wrong there; everyone knows
that we Episcopalians don't like to talk about money, as that might
lead to tithing.
It seems to me that Jesus had a well-defined description of the sort
of reception his followers could expect to receive if they were really
following Him. Again, my memory might not be perfect, but I don't
recall anything that implied that His followers would be flocking to
the polls to make the Beatitudes the law of the land.
In fact, the more I've re-read the New Testament, the more I see an
explicit example of separation of Church and politics. Time and again
various groups tried to hijack Jesus's popularity for political ends;
time and again, He refused to endorse the platform.
"What would Jesus do?" was a popular rallying cry for Evangelicals a
few years back. Somehow, I don't think helping Texas become the
nineteenth state in the Union to pass an anti-gay marriage amendment
would be one of the things Jesus would do. He wouldn't be one of the
folks holding clipboards and soliciting signatures; He wouldn't be
calling around urging you to vote for Proposition 2. He'd have better
things to do with his time, like feeding the hungry, healing the sick,
and clothing the naked. He'd be the one sitting in the hospital waiting
room comforting the man who was kept out of the room in which his
partner of multiple decades lay dying, unable to go in and visit with
his loved one because he wasn't family by any legal definition. Jesus
would be the one cleaning the cuts and bruises of the high school kid
who just got beat up by the jocks (all from good Christian families)
for being a fag. He'd be holding these people close, crying with them,
ministering to their hurts and changing their lives for the better one
by one.
The only people Jesus consistently spoke against were those who
presumed to know the mind of God and who dared to stand in His place
and usurp His voice. All the rest of us sinners, He came to love and
redeem. He wasn't here to advance an agenda or to make a "Christian
nation". He was a fisher of men, wherever they might be found. He
called them to a new type of life, one in which kings and governors and
secular powers faded to unimportance beside the call to mission and
ministry.
So yes, my fellow Christians, let's do what Jesus would do. Let us
keep our churches from becoming institutions that grab for secular
power. Let us refrain from using the law to terrorize each other. Let
us worry more about how to help the outsider than about how to protect
ourselves. Let us preserve our values by putting them into practice.