The man from Nazareth would have been appalled by the “Christian” Republican candidates
There has never been a more loudly Christian group of
presidential candidates than this primary season’s GOP contenders. From
the start, the campaign has been an exercise in Christian one-upmanship.
Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann set the standard for religious fervor,
boasting of setting her alarm clock at 5 a.m. so she could read the
Bible and issuing born-again testimonials like “I radically abandoned myself to Jesus Christ.” Herman Cain said that he was inspired to run for president by the parable of the talents in Matthew 25. Rick Perry released a video
in which he intoned, “I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a Christian …
As president, I’ll end Obama’s war on religion and I’ll fight against
liberal attacks on our religious heritage.”
Bachmann,
Cain and Perry are no longer sharing their spiritual rectitude with a
national audience, but the remaining candidates continue to flaunt their
Christianity. Newt Gingrich, who has noisily proclaimed that his
conversion to Catholicism saved his soul, repeated Perry’s charge,
accusing President Obama of launching a “war on religion” by requiring
that church-owned hospitals and universities provide insurance that
covers birth control. “It’s a fundamental assault on the right of
freedom of religion,” Gingrich said. “On the very first day I’m
inaugurated I will sign an executive order repealing every Obama attack
on religion.”
Gingrich has framed the election as a battle for America’s soul, warning
that if Obama is not defeated, the United States is in danger of
becoming a “secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by
radical Islamists.” Such apocalyptic warnings, combined with statements
like “I can’t imagine being comfortable with an atheist in the
presidency,” insinuate that Obama is a fake Christian – a widespread
belief among the religious right. (That’s actually a comparatively
moderate view: The hardcore see him as the Antichrist.)
Rick Santorum went even further, essentially calling for America to
become a theocracy. At the Thanksgiving Family Forum last year, Santorum
said,
“Our civil wars have to comport with the higher law … That’s why as
long as abortion is ‘legal,’ according to the Supreme Court, we will
never have rest, because that does not comport with God’s law … As long
as there is discordance between the two there will be agitation.”
The
Republican strategy — loudly proclaiming one’s Christian faith, while
attacking Obama as an agent of secular evil, if not actually Satan
himself – is right out of the Fox News playbook. As the voice of the
American far right, the ultimate undeclared super-duper-GOP-PAC, Fox
News has embraced
the cracked “birther” movement and generally done everything within its
latitudinous definition of “fair and balanced” to portray Obama as a
fake-Christian, foreign-born, America-hating Muslim. (Fox’s “War on
Christmas” rants appear with such clockwork regularity at Christmastime
that I use them as reminders to open my Advent Calendar.)
The only
GOP candidate who has not openly pursued this strategy is the
front-runner, Mitt Romney. Romney has avoided the subject because as a
Mormon, his own Christian credentials are suspect. But as the ultimate
political panderer and opportunist, he would play the Christian card if
he could. Like all the GOP candidates, Romney has tried to paint Obama
as an alien Other, elite, mysterious, malevolent – in a word, slightly
satanic. And also like them, Romney presents his free-market,
anti-government ideology as more “American,” and by implication more
“Christian,” than Obama’s.
As someone who has spent many happy hours studying Christian theology, from Origen to Hans Kung, as well as modern scholarship
about Jesus, I supposed I should be pleased by this eruption of holy
fervor among the Republican candidates for the highest office in the
land. But there’s just one little problem.
Jesus would have been appalled by the whole pack of them.
We
do not know very much about the historical Jesus. But everything we
know indicates that the carpenter from Galilee would not have been
pleased to learn that this pack of coldhearted, sanctimonious,
wealth-exalting politicians were claiming to be his followers.
I’m
not saying that Jesus would have been a Democrat. Anyone who pretends
to find support for specific political policies or ideologies in the
Bible is delusional. Scholars cannot agree if Jesus was a social
revolutionary, a tortured mystic, or something altogether different.
Even what Jesus himself believed about the most essential aspects of
what was to become “Christianity’ – a religion founded not by him, but
by his disciple Paul of Tarsus — is unclear. As leading biblical scholar
Bart Ehrman noted
in “Jesus, Interrupted,” some of the most important Christian
doctrines, including the divinity of Christ, the Trinity and the concept
of heaven and hell, were not held by Jesus himself: They were added
later, when the church transformed itself into a new religion rather
than a Jewish sect.
Ehrman told me that the authors of the four
Gospels portray Jesus in such contradictory ways that there is no
intellectually honest way to reconcile them. Mark, for example, depicts
Jesus as doubting and despairing on the way to the cross, while Luke
portrays him as calm. Ehrman argues that such contradictory accounts can
only be reconciled by creating, in effect, a bogus “fifth Gospel” that
does not exist.
But having said all that, we still have the
evidence of the Bible itself. And one does not need to believe in the
infallibility of that document to see that the Jesus who is depicted in
it was implacably opposed to authoritarianism, warmongering, contempt
for the poor, exaltation of wealth, conformity, and sanctimoniousness –
in short, everything the contemporary Republican Party stands for.
In
an ugly culmination of the successful, race-baiting “Southern strategy”
that has essentially driven the GOP for decades, the Republican
candidates have vied with each other to demonize poor people, especially
if they’re black. That’s why Gingrich has repeatedly attacked Obama as
the “food stamp president,” and why Mitt Romney went out of his way to
say “I’m not concerned about the very poor,” contrasting his stance with
that of the Democrats, of whom he disparagingly said, “We will hear
from the Democrat Party (about) the plight of the poor.” (As Gail
Collins wrote in a hilarious column, “It is interesting to hear a candidate directly attacking the opposition for being concerned about the destitute.”)
We
have no idea what position Jesus would have taken on progressive
taxation or whether he would have supported the Dodd-Frank Act. But we
do know that Jesus, unlike Gingrich and Romney, was concerned about the
poor. In fact, he made it clear that concern for the poor was an
absolutely essential principle of his faith.
This is not
surprising. For Jesus himself was completely destitute, and he insisted
that his companions be as well. As they traveled around Palestine, they
ate whatever they were given and slept in whatever house would take
them. If no shelter was offered them they slept outdoors. As he told his
12 disciples in Luke 9:3, “Take nothing for your journey, neither
staff, nor bag, nor bread, neither money, neither have two coats apiece.
And whatever house ye enter into, there abide, and from there depart.
And whoever will not receive you, when ye go out of that city, shake off
the very dust from your feet for a testimony against them.”
Romney’s
statement that he was “not concerned about the very poor” is telling.
For Jesus explicitly stated that he was concerned not just about the
poor, but about the poorest, the lowest and most despised members of
society. Jesus’ famous saying in the Beatitudes in Luke 6:20 is usually
translated as “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven.” But as biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan noted in “The
Essential Jesus,” “Greek has two different words for ‘poor’ (penes) and ‘destitute’ (ptochos),
so it should be ‘blessed are the destitute.’” Crossan argues that
Jesus’ mission was revolutionary precisely because he proclaimed,
against all tradition, that the Kingdom to come was not just for the
respectable poor – the “deserving poor,” in Republican parlance – but
for the destitute.
Jesus again makes this explicit in Luke 9:48:
“And said unto them, Whosoever shall receive this child in my name
receiveth me: and whosoever shall receive me receiveth him that sent me:
for he that is least among you all, the same shall be great.”
Jesus
demanded that his followers help the neediest. In Matthew 19:21 he
says:, “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell what thou hast, and give to
the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven.” But Jesus went
further, warning that the mere possession of wealth, and the
overvaluation of worldly possessions, stands in the path of salvation.
From Matthew 19:24: “And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel
to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the
kingdom of heaven.”
But Jesus’ most explicit repudiation of the GOP’s ethos is found in Luke 16:19, in his famous story of Lazarus and the rich man.
There
was a certain rich man, who was clothed in purple and fine linen, and
fared sumptuously every day. And there was a certain beggar, named
Lazarus, who was laid at his gate, full of sores, and desiring to be fed
with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table; moreover, the
dogs came and licked his sores. And it came to pass that the beggar
died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom; the rich man
also died and was buried. And in hades he lifted up his eyes, being in
torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he
cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that
he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am
tormented in this flame. But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in
thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil
things; but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. And besides all
this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that they who
would pass from here to you cannot, neither can they pass to us, that
would come from there.
The Republican candidates all
claim to be devout Christians. But between the compassionate teachings
of Jesus and their coldhearted, mean-spirited ideology, there is a great
gulf.
Whether Gingrich and Romney’s callous attitude toward the
least among us will hurt them with the 78 percent of Americans who claim
to be Christians is uncertain. From the 1925 publication of “The Man
Nobody Knows,” a bestseller that depicted Jesus as a successful
businessman, there is a long tradition of smug, self-serving
Christianity in this country, a Christianity easily compatible with the
harshest and most uncharitable values and beliefs. But in their zeal to
win over the most resentful, hate-filled members of their party, the
Republican candidates run a greater risk. They are turning before our
eyes into archetypal villains, bad guys out of our collective cultural
memory bank.
And fittingly, the villain they are becoming is associated with Fox News’ favorite holiday, Christmas.
For
some devout Americans, Christmas is a primarily religious occasion. But
for most, it is a secular holiday, a time to make children happy, see
friends, and eat and drink too much. However, it also carries, in its
own modest way, a deeper meaning, even for those who are not religious
at all. That meaning is imparted by our culture, but it taps into our
desire to rise above ourselves. The bell-ringing Santas collecting for
charity on street corners, the heartwarming movies like “It’s a Wonderful Life,”
create a small but real sense that Christmas is, or should be, about
regeneration, kindness, a new start — what St. Augustine called “The
enchiridion of faith, love and hope.”
The most powerful expression of this humanistic and moral approach to Christmas is Charles Dickens’
“A Christmas Carol.” In the beginning of Dickens’ tale, the wealthy
businessman Ebenezer Scrooge is approached by some fellow businessmen,
collecting for charity.
Scrooge’s reply tolls like a great, black bell.
‘Are there no prisons?’
‘Plenty of prisons,’ said the gentleman, laying down the pen
again.’And the Union workhouses,’ demanded Scrooge. ‘Are they still in
operation?’
‘Both very busy, sir.’
‘Oh. I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had
occurred to stop them in their useful course,’ said Scrooge. ‘I’m very
glad to hear it.”
… “I help to support the establishments I have mentioned — they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there.’
‘Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.’
‘If they would rather die,’ said Scrooge, ‘they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
It is one of the great indirect cries from the heart in all of literature.
“Are
there no prisons?” may play well with the resentful Republican base.
But Romney, or whoever runs against Obama, may discover that the
American people are not going to vote for Scrooge.
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