I am a Liberal Because I am a Christian

[bekkilyn]

***Note this is posted in the LIBERAL CHRISTIAN faith forum***

Been decluttering my email inbox and came across this blog post which was originally published back in April and thought I would share.

I am a Liberal Because I am a Christian

 

[SkyWriting]

***Note this is posted in the LIBERAL CHRISTIAN faith forum***

Been decluttering my email inbox and came across this blog post which was originally published back in April and thought I would share.

I am a Liberal Because I am a Christian

Odd he didn't go into details on why Christians should be considering progressive positions.

 

[JohnAshton]

The is the Liberal Christian faith forum, not one for evangelical attacks on progressive Christians.

 

[GACfan]

***Note this is posted in the LIBERAL CHRISTIAN faith forum***

Been decluttering my email inbox and came across this blog post which was originally published back in April and thought I would share.

I am a Liberal Because I am a Christian

Thank you for sharing this blog post, bekkilyn. I appreciate it very much and I appreciate its author's willingness to address the topic too. I have always leaned left in my faith regarding social justice and environmental issues. As a registered Independent, I would vote Republican if I thought that was the better choice, but I've changed my mind about voting for a conservative again because of the current Republican Party under Trump. I won't say anything more than that and derail the thread though.

 

[dqhall]

***Note this is posted in the LIBERAL CHRISTIAN faith forum***

Been decluttering my email inbox and came across this blog post which was originally published back in April and thought I would share.

I am a Liberal Because I am a Christian

We have the worse income inequality since 1929. The Trump admin has grown a 1.3 trillion dollar deficit over the trailing twelve months. There is evidence Trump evaded taxes in the State of New York. Billionaires claimed taxes are unfair and demanded government services. It is far from Jesus teaching the rich should help the poor. They would rather enslave them. Liberals might do some good.

 

[PloverWing]

@bekkilyn : Thanks for the link to the article. I also am ethically/politically liberal because I am Christian. I especially liked this quote from Buttigieg: "When I think about where most of Scripture points me, it is toward defending the poor, and the immigrant, and the stranger, and the prisoner, and the outcast, and those who are left behind by the way society works." This describes my own encounter with the Scriptures as well. I have become more aware over the years of my responsibility towards the poor, the immigrants, all the various minority groups who are marginalized by society, exactly because I have been reading Scripture.

I haven't paid a lot of attention to Buttigieg, because there are so very many candidates running. If his path has been that close to mine, I'll have to take a closer look at him.

 

[Hammster]

ADVISOR HAT ON


This thread has undergone a clean up. This thread is not for everyone. If you do not consider yourself to be a liberal Christian, then don’t post here.


ADVISOR HAT OFF

 

[GodLovesCats]

I don't know anything about Buttgieg, but totally agree Scripture is the basis for the Democratic platform. It would take a long time to list all of the Bible verses that suggest Christians should be liberals politically. There is only one issue (you all know what it is) that apparently contradicts this belief. I can summarize a variety of reasons without looking up references though.

 

[mcarans]

How is the term "liberal" being applied? I like to split the traditional left right axis into two axes, social and economic.

Within the Democratic platform, there are those who are both economically and socially liberal - these candidates are often termed "progressive" or "socialist". Then there are those who are socially progressive (eg. on gay marriage, abortion etc.) but not so much economically (on collective wage bargaining, workers rights, taxes, regulation etc.) - these candidates are often termed "centrist" or "moderate".

My understanding of Scripture leads me to conclude that the economic axis is at least as important as the social axis.

To give some idea, in the following, "left-right" is the economic axis and "authoritarian-libertarian" is the social axis:
The Political Compass

 

[GodLovesCats]

I hate the word "socialist" being used in reference to liberals because conservatives use it to criticize how involved the government is in managing our lives. They think liberals want the government to control too much and call liberals socialists to drill down that point. A liberal is a liberal, not a socialist.

Progressives are liberals who seek changes such as LGBT rights and single-payer health care that nobody thought much about when Bill Clinton was the President. They changed the Democratic Party platform.

 

[mcarans]

I hate the word "socialist" being used in reference to liberals because conservatives use it to criticize how involved the government is in managing our lives. They think liberals want the government to control too much and call liberals socialists to drill down that point. A liberal is a liberal, not a socialist.

Progressives are liberals who seek changes such as LGBT rights and single-payer health care that nobody thought much about when Bill Clinton was the President. They changed the Democratic Party platform.

Yes I know socialism is a dirty word in the US often confused with Communism with some even attempting to call fascism socialism. I think the answer isn't to abandon the word, but to educate people to understand what it means.

My understanding of liberal would be someone who is progressive on social issues but conservative on economic issues (similar to libertarian), but your description would be more consistent with what I would call a progressive.

 

[GodLovesCats]

Is socialism supported in the Bible?

 

[mcarans]

Is socialism supported in the Bible?

There have long been Christian socialist movements: Christian socialism - Wikipedia. In the link, you can see the Scriptural backing.

 

[GACfan]

If I may interject in the current discussion for a moment, I would like to share the description of a liberal given by John F. Kennedy in his speech when he accepted the nomination for President.

If by "Liberal" they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of "Liberal." But, if by a "Liberal," they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people - their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties - someone who believes that we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say that I'm a "Liberal."

Address of John F. Kennedy Upon Accepting the Liberal Party Nomination for President

 

[mcarans]

An example of a modern Christian socialist:
António Manuel de Oliveira Guterres ...is serving as the ninth Secretary-General of the United Nations. Previously, he was the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees between 2005 and 2015.

Guterres was the Prime Minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002 and was the Secretary-General of the Socialist Party from 1992 to 2002. He served as President of the Socialist International from 1999 to 2005.

In both a 2012 and 2014 poll, the Portuguese public ranked him as the best Prime Minister of the previous 30 years.

His election represented a break with tradition for the Socialists: he was also a devout Catholic, running counter to the party's historical secularism.

 

[hedrick]

The distinction between social and economic is interesting. While Jesus probably wouldn't have considered it economic, it seems like the most direct Biblical support is for the things you list as economic. This support includes also the Prophets. The social issues I think follow from Jesus teachings pretty clearly, but he doesn't mention them explicitly.

I think traditional Catholic teaching has tended to be liberal in economic issues and conservative on social ones. (Of course actual Catholics in the US tend to be liberal in social issues, despite the official teachings of the Church.) Among Protestants in the US both combinations seem to exist.

I tend to avoid the term socialism, because Americans think of Russian communism and similar schemes. The early Christians seem to have practiced a fairly complete socialism, but it's not so clear that if you apply that to a whole nation like the US you'd get a result that Christians would like. There are few real socialists in the US. Mostly they want government priorities to align more with Jesus', and they're willing to see more government control of the economy in areas where pure market incentives either fail to take account of all the costs of an activity or they don't function at all, but they're still far from true socialism.

 

[mcarans]

I think that different ideas have been conflated in order to make a simple left right divide. Hence socialism as an economic system has been associated with authoritarianism even though there is no need for socialism to be authoritarian any more than capitalism as an economic system needs democracy - China has transitioned successfully from authoritarian Communism to authoritarian capitalism for example.

Socialism comes in many forms. For example a successful supermarket and department store chain in the UK is John Lewis (which owns Waitrose) - it is a cooperative where the workers share the profits. The key point is that the production side is socialised not the consumption side as with Communism.

Denmark ranks above the US in "economic freedom" - yet Denmark is socialist in some ways.
Index of Economic Freedom - Wikipedia "basic institutions that protect the liberty of individuals to pursue their own economic interests result in greater prosperity for the larger society"

 

[GodLovesCats]

But, if by a "Liberal," they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people - their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights . . .

Bingo! These are issues that Jesus would write on a political agenda if he had one.

 

[GodLovesCats]

So let's start to break it down. What specific Bible verses do you know that address the issues liberals are so passionate about?

 

[PloverWing]

So let's start to break it down. What specific Bible verses do you know that address the issues liberals are so passionate about?

Here are a few to start with:

Matthew 25:31-46 (the sheep and the goats)

Luke 6:20-26 (Luke's version of the beatitudes. It's not the whole of what the Bible has to say about wealth and poverty, but it does suggest whose side God is on when the rich and the poor collide.)

Luke 6:27-28 and Matthew 5:38-48 (love your enemies)

Luke 1:46-55 (the Magnificat, which speaks of God siding with the hungry and the lowly)

Amos (The whole book is a condemnation of those who oppress the poor, though much of the book is listing the various disasters that are coming as punishment. See 2:6-8, 4:1, 5:11, and 8:4-6 for what the prophet is so mad about; most of it is about mistreating the poor.)