Talk Elections

Based on this list from Wikipedia.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_left#United_States

Though mixed, my opinion of the Christian left leans strongly FF (the latter being what I voted for).

Take a guess. :)

That list is kind of weird though especially with the inclusion of various "liberal Democratic politicians who are Christian", which is basically "liberal Democratic politicians who aren't Jewish, Keith Ellison or Pete Stark."

I remember when you made a statement that the Christian Left is more civilized then the secular left and the Christian Right. I have to side with you on that issue, seeing that the worst people out of that group is Hugo Chavez and then Jesse Jackson.

Yes, as I've pointed out before, there haven't been any Christian left terrorists, or any murderous dictator slaughtering people in the name of liberal Christianity.

All the liberal Democratic politicians on the list are Christian though.

*or André Carson ;)

Firmly support.

Ah yes. And there's also the two Buddhists in Hawaii and Hank Johnson.

That's kind of a stupid list (though by the standards of most Wikipedia lists it's not really worse than average), it includes a ton of people who don't have anything to do with Christianity besides a nominal affiliation (like the vast majority of people in the Western world), and even some people who don't have much to do with the left either. Like I love Mr. Rogers as much as anyone who was a kid during the era I was, but it's quite the stretch to call him a left activist. And I'm sure Katherine Jefferts Schori opposed the Iraq War and she was OK with Gene Robinson's consecration but to stretch from that to "religious left" is also a leap (and yeah I'm sure she voted for Obama too but did she even make a public statement to that nature?)

joke distortion of Christianity

I found this quote retweeted by the Twitter of the church the woman who spoke yesterday mentioned as the one she went to when she was teaching at a Christian college in Santa Barbara:

1) Jesus did NOT use the state to provide healthcare, nor did the NT church...rather they taught individuals to provide for the poor.
2) Any form of Christianity not preaching repentance from sin is a sham.


(Of course, I'm talking to someone with a reprobate mind.)

Entirely setting aside the sheer ridiculousness of the idea that the precise means by which the poor are provided for is of anything approaching primary importance, why on Earth would you assume that leftist Christians do not preach repentance from sin?

He's obviously referring to LGBT acceptance.

1) There was no such thing as government back in Christ time and if there was a state to provide Christ would strongly support it.

2) I'm not even  goingthere.

Would you care to cite a verse for us where Jesus said the state was not to provide healthcare or otherwise provide for the poor?

I'd like to point out that in Leviticus 14:21-22, the offering that was to be made when a person was cleansed of tsara’at was lessened for the poor, (as were other offerings in other circumstances as well). It would appear to me that God is in favor of adjusting charges for health care downward for those unable to pay the the full price.

Oh, the messaging that I'm engaging in with regards to the ridiculousness of what jmfcst is saying isn't directed towards jmfcst any more, believe me.

You have to turn a blind eye to an awful lot in order to make this statement. Violent Sandanista revolutionaries.  Irish Marxist Catholic terrorists.  Hugo Chavez squelching democracy.  Al Sharpton inciting violence against Jews.   Self-proclaimed prophet and child murderer Nat Turner.
There are some on the Christian Left who support voluntary, nonviolent action to be in solidarity with the poor, and I have a great deal of respect for them. But you also have those who preach that the Kingdom of God is established through violence and power against the oppressor class.

Of course there was a government in Jesus' time. It killed him.  Jesus had little use for it, his reign being not of this world (that is, not to do with political power).

Government was certainly around during that time, but honestly I'm not sure when government assistance was first implemented in a country, let alone thought of.

Does the phrase bread and circuses mean anything to you?

Subsidized grain for the poor first began to be distributed in Rome under Gaius Gracchus in 123 BC and the subsidies grew greater over the centuries.  Wasn't until the 19th century that governments started dealing with health care in a general fashion, but until then it was arguable if going to a doctor was a boon or a bane for most people.  It was his doctors' efforts to care for him that most likely killed George Washington.

mixed...the Christian left is almost as vague (and useless) of a term as "christian" (or left for that matter)...mainly for the reasons BRTD has mentioned.  Not only is it vague, it's also used for people that aren't defined by their leftness or Christianity.

The omission of Obama is also fairly curious considering all the included failed Democratic candidates, I can understand McGovern who has always been a pretty outspoken Christian but Mondale, Gore, Kerry and Dean aren't any moreso than your average politician and certainly less than Obama.

hey, BRTD is the one that brought it up, as if Jesus' miraculous healings is somehow a command to vote for universal healthcare by proxy (through the use of someone else's taxes), instead of making it a personal responsibility to care for others....BRTD is somehow tapping into Jesse Jackson's way of thinking.

But, if you think providing for others by proxy (taxing others) is a substitute for the commands of Jesus, then you're not reading the same book as I am.

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sexual immorality - primarily fornication and homosexuality

I don't think it's a 'substitute', no, mainly because I don't artificially separate these issues according to the dictates of a bourgeoisie, at heart profoundly secular political tradition.


If that's your definition of sin, then I suppose so, but the possibility is there that using that definition says more about your interests than it does about sin.

then I guess I am also interested in impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like.

Thankfully a lack of kindness or perceptiveness doesn't seem to make the list.

great point!  kindness certainly does make the list, it's right beside sternness: 

Rom 11:22 "Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God: sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you, provided that you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you also will be cut off."

I'm not entirely convinced God is the one being stern in some of these conversations.

that's because you ignore the parts of scripture you believe are too stern

That's actually not even remotely why, but I'm seemingly never going to convince you that I actually am considerably better acquainted with me than you are, so you go ahead and keep thinking that.

you're forgetting that I have witnessed you doing so...


as you said, you throw those passages away - in other words, you IGNORE them

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but, hey, you're going to continue to do what you want...just don't kid yourself into believe I am going to buy into it.

No. You're applying motivations to me that don't exist because you think that your being familiar with the fact that I use roughly the same non-crypto-idolatrous method of Biblical analysis as everybody else in the pre-nineteenth-century Church means that you know me better than I do.

Why don't you knock it off with them negative waves?  Why don't you dig how beautiful God’s boundaries for human sexuality are? Why don't you say something righteous and hopeful for a change?!

Boundaries?  They're not boundaries if you can ignore them, jmfcst.  A sexual boundary would be for example - you can only do it so many times per day, or you can't do it after you become too old and decrepit.  Now those are 'god-given' boundaries.  Not just stuff you made up.

Since the Christian left is mostly blacks, does this make jmfcst racist?

Because when I do you don't recognize it as righteous or hopeful. (To be fair, it's true that my attempts to be relentlessly positive about the Will of God might entail being negative about a lot of other things.) The thing about you and I is that we both suffer from confirmation biases on this issue, and will thus both downplay scripture that problematizes our claims. There is nothing any more inherently wrong with this than with any other basic feature of our fallen nature but we don't even speak the same theological language on this subject so I have no basis on which to engage you about it any more, if I ever did.

Even if every black Christian was part of the "christian left" (and I'm not buying that for a second) they still wouldn't make up a majority of them.  Unless you just meant that most blacks were part of the chirstian left and misstyped...but even then I'd want to see some evidence of that before I bought it.

You’re ducking the issue with this denominational and/or bias cloak, and you are definitely confusing me with someone else:

My confirmation came when I received the Holy Spirit in ’92 alone in my apartment while I wasn’t even attending any church, and before I had any bias…so I have no denominational loyalty or bias of any kind, except  a bias to the God who confirmed me with his Spirit and birthed be through the scripture while I was alone.  And the commission God gave me that night upon his confirmation of me, sent me to a group of friends who did belong to a denomination, who did have very strong bias, as their parents were very high up in the leadership of that denomination.  In fact, I didn't find a church for myself until 5 months later and after I had read the bible, esp the NT and the Pentateuch.

After 5 months, I attempted to be baptized and met with a Baptist pastor during lunch on a work day.  He said he would agree to baptize me then and there, but only if I agreed to come back on Sunday and be baptized again in front of the congregation.  I was thunderstruck and stated I didn’t care if the whole world was witness to my baptism, but that I didn’t see a reason to be baptized twice in a week.  I disagreed because I had no bias other than the scripture, to the point that I walked out and left without being baptized at all, and went back to work.

When I arrived back at work, a Christian woman (who knew I was going to be baptized) asked me how it went. After I explained what happened, she said, “I know a pastor who will baptize you today.”  So I asked her to arrange it after work.  After talking with him and explaining my testimony and what I interpret the scripture as saying, we determined we were 95% on the same page.  And he’s been my pastor ever since, even though we still do not see eye to eye on everything.

And that church, the very one I have been attending for 19 years, is an inter-denominational church.  I have no loyalty other than to the scripture.  I have NOT rejected denominations, rather the biases of those denominations have rejected me, even though I can go to any denominational service and feel at home to worship God, whether it be a protestant service or a Catholic service.  

I was born to God through the testimony of the bible.  I am rejected by many denominations because my loyalty is to the scripture and not to their man made rules.  And even though I am willing to be tolerant with man made rules, I will not allow them to turn scriptural commands (e.g. baptism) into a promotion that honors the number of converts a denomination has gained, which is what the Baptist preacher was doing by his insistence that I be rebaptized in front of the congregation, he wanted to bring glory to the works of his church.  But that’s what man made rules do – they honor the works of man and denominations instead of the grace of God.  I belong to an interdenominational church because I myself was born to God alone in my apartment, apart from denominational influence and apart from biases.  

Any attempt to do accuse me of a bias only allows me to trump it with my testimony, and that testimony is perfect and without flaw because it is not a recanting of my actions but rather is my eyewitness account to what God did.  And that is why this accusation of yours, that I am blinded to scripture by a bias, is so easily trumped by my testimony of God.

My testimony was discounted at first by those to whom I was sent, because their denominational bias stated you had to be baptized before you could receive the Holy Spirit, and since I wasn’t baptized at the time I claimed that I received the Holy Spirit, they didn’t believe it.  But their objection was refuted by the example of Acts 10:44-48 which shows some converts receiving the Holy Spirit before they were baptized.  

Others have made other objections that were just as easily refuted.  No one has ever been able to find a single issue with my testimony, and I have been vindicated of every attempt to ascribe a motive or bias to it.  So, you can take issue with me for my obvious sins, but you will not be able to accuse me of having loyalties to a bias before scripture, because my testimony was a product of the testimony within scripture and is what gave me my respect and loyalty to those same scriptures.  And my loyalty to those scriptures has been evident to everyone on this board.  And that loyalty led me, even from the beginning, to testify contrary to the beliefs of the woman I loved and contrary to the beliefs of the families of my closest friends…I was newly born Christian without a church, but I was willing to stand before their church's leadership and preach the truth to them, risking all bonds of friendship and turning the world that I knew upside down.  And although painful, I did so in love and with an eye towards something of greater worth than this world.  And I did so unwillingly at first– at first I ducked my commission and attempted not to make any further contact with them (much like Moses or Jonah, who attempted to duck commissions they saw as unpleasant), but within a week I would answer their phone calls and spill the beans.

So, I have proven I am more than trustworthy and willing to dissolve any bonds for the sake of truth; therefore, any attempt to ascribe to me a bias against scripture is futile:

Isa 54:17 “No weapon forged against you will prevail, and you will refute every tongue that accuses you.  This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and this is their vindication from me,” declares the LORD.

It's a good thing we've agreed that these man-made scriptures are automatically right because otherwise we might have to debate claims based on their own merit rather than on where they come from.

well, at least you seem willing to acknowledge what those scriptures, regardless of their origin, actually say.  For even if they are from God, you're still not going to be able to find God through them if you're not willing to be honest about what they say.

Mixed; Some elements of the Christian left do great things for a lot of people when they focus on social justice, preferably in their own personal life rather than only in politics (that goes for the "Christian right" and morality just the same). Many on the "Christian left" are considered that because of their economic views and commitment to the poor, even if their economic views are sometimes a bit misguided, and not because of any will to deny the existence of sin or deleted certain sins from our catechism (or whatever the Protestant equivalent might be). However, some on the "Christian left" (that is a horrible monicker, sort of how the "Christian right" isn't a great monicker) take the openness to the point where they espouse basic doctrinal beliefs that are somewhat removed from Christianity, eg. non-Trinitarian, universalists, churches that dispute the divinity of Christ, the Resurrection, etc. Or they consider "sin" in a relativistic context that one must simply follow his feelings rather than seeing a struggle against concupiscence.

Right; a lot of the 'Christian left' isn't really 'Christian' any more (though I would submit that it's a little easier to mount a doctrinal defense of universalism, broadly defined, than the rest of your examples; albeit still not immensely easy and certainly not as easy as Balthasar's 'dared hope' and hence not as worthwhile because daring to hope doesn't make a mockery of the matter by shrouding God's actions with absolute human statements).

The good old, "We have to believe in hell but we don't have to believe there's anyone in it" isn't necessarily heretical, but does require a good bit of naivety about humanity and what people actually do if it doesn't also contain a disbelief in sin. Anecdotal evidence of the world around me at least suggests otherwise, not to say that just seeing someone commit acts of grave matter necessarily means that person is headed for hell, but more understanding the likelihood that win many, many people do, at least one of them are almost certainly headed to hell if we think about it statistically. Of course, we should then "dare to hope" that my "statistical assessment" is flawed in some way and that everyone will be saved. Yet, just like the complete avoidance of sin altogether, it's more a "hope" than a "belief" when applied in the world. I think it is a belief that both the "Christian left" and "Christian right" share.

Yes, it's certainly, in the form in which it is acceptable and doesn't require such naivety, much more a hope regarding God than a hope regarding the world. It's entirely more reasonable to belief that God would be good enough to redeem all men than to believe that all men are good enough to be redeemed by God, which as you said any sort of examination of the world as it is will show not to be the case to all but the most depraved sort of moral relativist (there exist non-depraved (though still wrong) moral relativists, and in my experience being at a major university they're usually anthropologists of some description).

Once you start to movie beyond hoping that God will have mercy on all the world and begin to assume he will, it starts to run afoul of Church teachings on sin, mainly the idea that obstinately remaining in a state of mortal sin will lead to that person going to hell. Hoping that God will withhold such a punishment is about as far as it can go before it conflicts with other teachings and unless one rejects those teachings the whole thing starts to become unintelligible.

I know of at least two evangelical churches that preach openness to universal salvation (My own and one planted by a buddy of mine that I've helped out with.), at the very least they do obviously reject that no one isn't Christian can acheive salvation, that's quite obvious from some sermons at that neocharismatic (and incredibly nasty holy roller right wing one if we believe afleitch. ;) ) Seriously though there was even a sermon encouraging people to study and look for value in other religions and the intro to Advent one took time to note the work of God is not restricted to people who are Christians noting the Magi who followed the star to the birth of Jesus were not Christians or Jews and there is no mention of them becoming so either. And this has been part of ELCA doctrine too for as long as I can remember.

That's a bit different than universal salvation, though; that's just a fairly liberal extension of the concept of the Church Invisible.

TJ, hoping is about as far as I'm willing to go too, but I try to maintain as strong a hope as I can without falling into assumption; because as you say, here to assume is to presume and one must never act presumptuous toward God.

I suspect this is another area in which we have differences of interpretation that are in the grand scheme of things theologically somewhat minor but that would unfortunately be socially constructed as much more important, if anybody actually gave sincere thought to sin or salvation any more. (Even though honestly I'd bet my bottom dollar that our views on 'extra Ecclesiam' are much more different from each other's than are our views on sexuality.)

My buddy kind of rejects the "traditional" view of the afterlife in favor of a N.T. Wright type view and all of his first couple sermons were on moving the past the traditional evangelical "being saved" type dichotomy. I'd actually be interested if jmfcst ever came to Minneapolis for whatever reason debate him on things like his interpretation of the true meaning under John 20:15-17 except I have a feeling jmfcst would just end up turning the whole thing into being about gays.

I still think the most sensical and best way to conceive of an afterlife that weds absolute love with absolute justice is the traditional Eastern Orthodox model.

I'd be interested to look into that.