During the 20th century, the Right took Christianity away from us. They recast the religion of Jesus to stand for aggressive militarism, closed-minded prejudice, and doing everything within your power to make the rich richer. (When did Jesus say, “Blessed are the war-makers” or “Screw Caesar; it’s your money”?) By the time Pat Robertson ran for president in 1988, the conquest was complete. He could style himself as “the Christian candidate” without any significant objection.
It was the Pharisees’ revenge. For those liberals who don’t read the Bible – that’s part of the problem, by the way – I’ll explain. All through the gospels, Jesus is being heckled by the Pharisees, a faction that promoted a strict interpretation of Mosaic Law. Again and again, Jesus sides with the spirit of the law against the Pharisees’ loyalty to the letter of the law. (For what it’s worth, the Pharisees look much more reasonable in Jewish versions of history, where they are not foils for someone else.) The law, Jesus argues, needs to be tempered by compassion and common sense. In the Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10), for example, the priest and the Levite who cross to the other side of the road (rather than help the injured man) aren’t just being jerks. They’re obeying the letter of the law. They’re maintaining their ritual purity by not coming into contact with blood or possibly a corpse. But the Good Samaritan ignores all that in favor of a higher law: Love your neighbor as yourself.
See where I’m headed? When Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and their ilk get going, you don’t hear much about compassion and common sense; but you hear a lot about the letter of the law. As the bumper sticker puts it: “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.” That’s the Pharisee position; it’s not Christian. Jesus would have had no part of it. We need to point that out, again and again. Christianity belongs to us; we shouldn’t surrender it to the Pharisees of the Right.
This will be easier than it sounds, because Christianity has never been as uniformly conservative as the media portrays it. A Soujourners community statement of faith, for example, contains numerous liberal statements like this one:
We believe in binding up the divisions that the world often creates, especially those based on race, class, gender, or culture. We are called to combat racism in all its forms and to build a more just and pluralistic society where diversity is respected, freedom is secured, and power is shared. We refuse to accept structures and assumptions that normalize poverty and segregate the world by class. We are committed to resisting sexism in all its forms and affirming the integrity and equality of women and men both in the church and in the world.
Even the Pope is a flaming liberal when he talks about something other than sex. In Laborem exercens he writes:
Christian tradition has never upheld this right [to own property] as absolute and untouchable. On the contrary, it has always understood this right within the broader context of the right common to all to use the goods of the whole of creation: the right to private property is subordinated to the right to common use, to the fact that goods are meant for everyone. [italics original]
Does reclaiming Christianity mean that the Left needs to throw out all the Jews and atheists? Of course not. It also doesn’t mean that non-Christian liberals should give lip service to a religion they don’t believe. But we need to recognize that Jesus is a cultural icon in this country, and he is on our side. When the Right claims that Jesus is on their side, we need to be able to argue convincingly that they are wrong. That means getting educated about the Bible and learning how to speak its language comfortably – as Kerry could not. (Check out Forrester Church’s God and Other Famous Liberals, John Shelby Spong’s Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, or John Buehrens’ Understanding the Bible.) You don’t have to be black to quote Martin Luther King, you don’t have to be Hindu to quote Mahatma Gandhi, and you don’t have to be Christian to quote Jesus.
Return to 10 Ideas for 2008 by Doug Muder