The Ambiguities of a Christian President

Although I've been planning to write up a fairly critical review of Darryl Hart's A Secular Faith, that would perhaps not be the most politic thing to do when he is busy trying to critique me (on my review of VanDrunen) over at his blog right now.  So, in a spirit of camaraderie, let me voice an odd point of sympathy with Hart's book.  

In it, he is chiefly concerned to argue (among other things) that we should not be voting for our political candidates on the basis of their Christian faith or values, and in fact should be very leery of them trying to bring those convictions into office with them.  Their Christianity simply does not have anything relevant to contribute to rightly governing our country, and we should vote simply based upon political considerations.  While I dramatically disagree with him on the larger issues, being convinced of the relevance of Christianity to public life, the importance of governing a country in submission to Christ, etc., I find myself oddly in sympathy with him when it comes down to practical questions like, "Who do you want to win in 2012?"

Click to read more ...

My Bleeding Country

As most everyone now knows, last Saturday a deranged youth in Arizona gunned down a Democrat congresswoman, together with a crowd of staffers and citizens.  6 were killed, another 18 wounded; congressman Gifford miraculously survived a point-blank shot to the head.  But the spray of literal bullets unleashed was scarcely sadder than the rhetorical firefight that soon filled the country’s political media--which in this day and age, seems to be all its media.  Some wondered aloud whether a shooting like this wasn’t the logical result of years of violent political rhetoric and demonizing of the opposition, and names like Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh surfaced, as indeed they were sure to do in any discussion about polarizing politics.  Some went further, singling out Sarah Palin’s gun crosshairs map of politicians to take down.  Rather than having the restraint to leave the more pointed and overstated accusations unanswered, and looking beyond them to the very important discussion about political rhetoric, both Palin and Limbaugh took the opportunity to step back into the limelight, climb on their soapboxes, and fire a heated counterblast to legions of imagined opponents.  The irony is as sad as it is unsurprising--in the midst of expressing concern about polarized politics on the one hand, and denying its existence on the other hand, the two “sides” have managed to give us Exhibit A in a showcase of polarized, slanderous politics.  

Let’s try to step back, sort through this mess, and make space for confession.

Click to read more ...

The Problem in a Nutshell

The contents of this post are probably nothing new if you've this blog for awhile, but as people back home sometimes get baffled and think I'm a left-wing loony, I've been thinking of a way to encapsulate where I'm coming from politico-economically in a nice, neat (though none too eloquent) nutshell.  So here's a try:

I'm for a free market, or more importantly, a free society, which includes a free market.  Freedom requires the removal of oppressive constraints.  But oppressive constraints are precisely what are put in place by large and powerful entities determined to retain and advance their power.  We live in a world full of massive, extremely wealthy and powerful entities.  Our government is one, to be sure.  But when there's ten bullies on the block jockeying for position, you don't get freedom just by taking out the current top bully--rather, by doing this you invite the nine others to come in and take his place, and woe to you if they turn out to be less benign than the first.  If we're going to live in an age of massive, centralized multinational corporations, then unfortunately we're going to need massive, centralized governments to keep them in line (though unfortunately, these will often collude with the corporations, rather than restraining them).  You focus just on removing the governments and you don't get freedom, you just get regime change--indeed, from a constitutional regime to an unrestricted one.  Conservatives talk as if freedom will be attained simply by removing one bully from the equation--the government--and leaving all the others untouched.  But if they get their wish, they may find that the government was, for all its foibles, the only thing maintaining some semblance of freedom from all the other bullies on the block.  So if we're going to talk about freedom, let's start talking about how to shrink all the bullies down to size, something that will require laws and constraints--things which, believe it or not, can be aids to freedom, rather than chains.

Now, I realize now that that's really only half of what needs to be said, so I suppose I'll try to work up a Pt. 2: The Solution in a Nutshell.  Heh, that should be fun...