Unite Left Wing Evangelicals!

[sailaway21]

Well.
The article obviously had an impact on you, Smacky. I credit you with the effort to read and understand it as it's hardly light reading. Unfortunately your response here would have been better placed within that thread as it addresses issues raised there and not here.

The points that you highlight above involve a certain amount of cognitive dissonance on the author's part which I'll address further along. For purposes of this thread there is nothing above that reflects in any way on the notion of leftist evangelicals. The author acknowledges that we already have Big Government but hardly advocates a further expansion, particularly in the social arena, that is part and parcel of the left's vision of the proper role of government. The evangelical is compelled to make his faith a central part of his daily life and it is what animates all of that life, including his perspective on political matters. To reconcile those two, in terms of this thread, involves another degree of cognitive dissonance with which the author would be unfamiliar. In short, the religion of the left is the supremacy of the State. The politics of the right is the extension of personal morality within the holder and the supremacy of the individual to other interests, namely the State.

The right is not attempting to legislate morality although, strictly speaking, all legislation is moral in nature. When you and I go hammer and tong over your BFS stuff, what keeps me from murdering you is not the law. The law just happens to reflect and mirror what my personal morality dictates to me is correct. That a majority within our society share that aspect of my morality is what makes it the law in fact. Perhaps what you might be referring to in your allusions to the right's legislating of morality is an unwillingness of those on the right to pronounce certain, now legal, actions as moral or amoral that were previously illegal. And therein you become embroiled in a matter of culture versus morality which are not at all the same kettle of fish.

My referring you to the article was directing you to the historic aspects of it wherein the Founders operated under a philosophy that, absent a personal morality based upon the spiritual nature of man, there could be no system of governance created that could long stand. The evangelical, and the Founders, believed that morality, out of spirituality, predates government. the leftist is content to believe that morality flows out of government and is whatever government says it is.

The left is just as moralistic as the right. The left just opts out of the spiritual basis for their vision of morality assigning the internal morality to such things as education and culture versus a spiritual relationship with a Higher Power. A cursory examination of the environmental movement will reveal the intensely moral way in which they present their cause. In that context though, the morality is manufactured out of whole cloth. It does not even meet the old Greek philosophers test for natural law in being right for all men, at all times, in all places.

As to the Beatitudes, the commandments are personal and not cultural. They are culturally adopted only to the extent that they reflect the will of the people stemming from their personal morality. Thus you'll see that the right has largely taken a position in favor of civil unions among homosexuals while fighting for the continued definition of marriage remaining the traditional one. The religious right is where you'll find that marriage is viewed as primarily a matter between two people and their God. I think that this is what the author of the article was referring to in his prescriptions for them.

Perhaps I can illustrate it in a way that uses a circumstance so common today that we rarely even comment on it any longer. From a cultural standpoint, that is to say, the State, we look hardly askance at a Moslem marrying a Christian. But those within the Moslem and Christian community do. Their problem with that event is that each community believes that marriage is a spiritual matter ordained by their respective God's. They come up hard against the bulkhead when confronted by two individuals who profess to worship different God's aspire to marry. They quite correctly question the devotion of the individuals to their God over their desire for each other.

In a previous post you said the following:

"But within the conversation of this thread, the point is that SINCE the Beatitudes are essentially a reframing/expansion/clarification of the Old Testament law (i.e. - the big 10), and since these undergird so much of the political discussion surrounding religion (and even the founding principles/language of our own government) - they ARE applicable to how any "evangelical" lives, judges behavior, and engages in politics even today. This because the evangelical's mission in politics is often to try to either maintain or create as much of the "world" outlined in these teachings as possible through government. And that's where things get slippery in my opinion. That's all I'm saying. "

I won't quibble over whether an Old or New Testament sense of spirituality animated the Founders, although I have a pretty strong opinion on it, because you are so wholly mistaken on the rest of your statements. The evangelical demonstrably does not see his mission to be the realization of those principles by government. He sees those principles as being strictly the provenance of the individual's relationship with the Creator. He sees murder as wrong regardless of what government may say. To the extent that government agrees with that principle for all men, at all times, in all places he finds himself on the side of government. But the battle for morality is conducted one person at a time between that person and the Creator. Government is meant to be a reflection of that morality, not it's root cause. The evangelical lives in two worlds. He is commanded to live in the temporal world but to not be part of it. Thus you see certain sects completely removed from the political and even government itself as best they can do. That evangelicals have become active in politics is merely a reflection of their personal creed and that certain actions of government demand that they cry foul. It would be wrong for them to stand silent while I murdered you under the philosophical basis that morality must be right for all men, at all times, in all places. Make no mistake, this is not an area where they are at all comfortable in...the political realm. Most evangelical churches are intensely apolitical even when most of their individual members all share the same political beliefs! The church as the body of Christ has bigger fish to fry than mere politics. It commands to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's while focusing on your own immortal soul and the salvation thereof.

There are conundrums within the faith. Certainly the conflict between murder and war is one of them. Each evangelical must work those out his won self as best he can. They have some experience in that area from early on, in trying to reconcile the concept of the Trinity.

[smackdaddy]

The article obviously had an impact on you, Smacky. I credit you with the effort to read and understand it as it's hardly light reading. Unfortunately your response here would have been better placed within that thread as it addresses issues raised there and not here.

For purposes of this thread there is nothing above that reflects in any way on the notion of leftist evangelicals.

I wouldn't say "impact", per se. It was dense and, honestly, kind of boring, but definitely shone a light on the reasons conservatism appears to be losing its sway (no pun intended).

And I disagree on the locale of my post. First, this is definitely the right place for it in that moral capitulation is the precise, though somewhat sarcastic, point of this particular thread. And, in reality, that was the concluding directive of that article (which was pleasantly surprising). Second, no one else is really going to read that thing, so the other thread is doomed to failure anyway.

Now, you seem to have a pretty cut-and-dried view of the left versus right, and you also seem to look at religion through the lens of politics (not vice versa) - and this view can allow far more "moderation" in morality than what you see in PB's post above. However, I personally think PB has it right when considering religion itself (hence the dilemma of religion in politics). Furthermore, this thread is also about "moderation" in regards to the right's view of left in terms of moral virtue. Although the right claims the evangelical label, it does not solely hold the moral high ground.

So, through the political lens (as illustrated by that article) moderation on religion-informed morals is a necessary and good thing. Yet, through the religious lens, moderation on the same morals for political expediency is a very bad thing.

This is conservatism's achilles heel...(from the article):

"Because choice was essential to admirable deeds, to dignity, and to happiness, virtue presupposed liberty. Conversely, liberty presupposed virtue, because maintaining the institutions of a free society was hard work that required citizens to exercise a range of excellences of character. And because religion -- or more precisely in America: Protestant Christianity -- was an indispensable teacher of virtue, liberty also presupposed faith. However, neither virtue nor religion could be the aim of politics because authorizing government to promote them would invite abuses of power and infringement of rights. Contrary to the canard, popularized by academic critics, that the classical-liberal tradition limits government's responsibility for virtue because of skeptical doubts or relativist certainties, the Constitution limits government to safeguard the sources of virtue, protecting the prerogatives not only of religious communities but also of families and citizens' association to instill it."

The problem with the conservative stance, especially the evangelical conservative stance, is that you've lost the moral underpinning upon which conservatism has always relied. That is, society doesn't care so much about religious-based morals or virtues anymore. They're creating their own "morality" by what will be tolerated politically/legally. "Virtue" and "faith" are no longer presupposed by any stretch of the imagination. And all you're left with at that point is the "canard" of moral capitulation.

So where does evangelical conservatism fit in this new directive?

When you and I go hammer and tong over your BFS stuff, what keeps me from murdering you is not the law.

A couple of clarifications here: first, let's agree that I usually have the hammer, and you usually have the tong. Heh-heh. Second, we typically don't go at it over BFS, but over AFOC. But that's neither here nor there.

What concerns me is your obvious murderous desires on my person. Dude, relax, it's just a forum where everyone can toss around ideas and opinions. It's all in good fun.

The law just happens to reflect and mirror what my personal morality dictates to me is correct. That a majority within our society share that aspect of my morality is what makes it the law in fact. Perhaps what you might be referring to in your allusions to the right's legislating of morality is an unwillingness of those on the right to pronounce certain, now legal, actions as moral or amoral that were previously illegal. And therein you become embroiled in a matter of culture versus morality which are not at all the same kettle of fish.

This doesn't really hold water, Sway. Even according to the article's premise of conservative history itself, they very much SHOULD BE the same kettle of fish. Again, I think this is due to your view of religion/morals through the political lens. But even this view runs counter to the roots of conservatism as laid out in that article where morality, faith and virtue are presupposed. However, it does point to the other part of the article that very much allows this incongruity - which is "moderation". But that is the slippery slope that, one could argue, is doing conservatism in (the point of the article) and serving as a cloak for moral capitulation.

As to the Beatitudes, the commandments are personal and not cultural. They are culturally adopted only to the extent that they reflect the will of the people stemming from their personal morality. Thus you'll see that the right has largely taken a position in favor of civil unions among homosexuals while fighting for the continued definition of marriage remaining the traditional one. The religious right is where you'll find that marriage is viewed as primarily a matter between two people and their God. I think that this is what the author of the article was referring to in his prescriptions for them.

If so, then, again, my point is made regarding the evangelical's place in the right wing. How does the evangelical feel about this moral readjustment?

I won't quibble over whether an Old or New Testament sense of spirituality animated the Founders, although I have a pretty strong opinion on it, because you are so wholly mistaken on the rest of your statements. The evangelical demonstrably does not see his mission to be the realization of those principles by government. He sees those principles as being strictly the provenance of the individual's relationship with the Creator.

Well, first, I'm not "wholly mistaken" - and neither are you. Remember the "moderation" a conservative is supposed to employ? There are valid points on both sides...always are. That's my point in this thread - moderation.

Second, your squared-away view of the evangelical's purpose and goal is, I would offer, far from reality. On the one hand, from a religious perspective, you're right - it's individual, and only collective as regards the church. On the other, why has the "right wing evangelical" movement become such a mainstay of the conservative political landscape? Because they fight politically to maintain/create laws, through the government, that are based on religious morals. Again, I think your political lens is distorting your view here.

As previously stated, the bottom line in this argument is that:

1. As illustrated by the Beatitudes, the evangelical right does not hold the moral high ground in the political debate. They are no more "right" than the left is "wrong". If you're going to fight to enact laws based on religious morals - do it, and do it completely - on either side. Don't cherry pick. Otherwise, actualize the religious apart from government/politics (which apparently was the original intention of conservatism anyway).

2. Conservatism has essentially lost 1 of it's 2 founding principles. The presupposed virtue and morality inherent in/maintained by society (apart from government) is no longer aligned with religious virtue and morality. And in this loss, conservatism is apparently ready to capitulate to this "new reality" in order to remain relevant...claiming "moderation" and moving instead to "Constitutional" principles.

In closing, I'll leave you with a couple more quotes from the article that I think pretty much nails it - he says it better than I can anyway...

"Indeed, true conservatism recognized that man "is a spiritual creature with spiritual needs and spiritual desires" and held that these "reflect the superior side of man's nature, and thus take precedence over his economic wants." But what takes precedence morally and spiritually must not take precedence for government."

"And conservatives worthy of the name, he contended, brought to their task a common set of convictions: belief in a transcendent order; appreciation of the variety of human types and ways of life; respect for social order and hierarchies; an understanding of the close link between individual freedom and the protection of private property; on the one hand, distrust of moralists and social scientists seeking to reconstruct society on the basis of grand theories, and, on the other hand, confidence in custom and convention as repositories of wisdom; and recognition that while change is necessary and salutary, hasty innovation tends to be more popular in liberal democracies than prudent reform."

So where does that leave the right wing evangelical in the new conservative order built on the new social reality of big government and the wildly successful sexual revolution?

[xort]

Originally Posted by sailaway21

I hope I do it no disservice by saying that, if one lacks any moral basis to deny murder there is little that any system of governance is going to do to prevent homicide running rampant.

You mean like abortion? it started with first term stuff, but then advanced to late term abortion and then to the brutal practice of sawing open the skull of an infant and sucking it's brain out. Now our supreme leader advocates the ability to let a living, born healthy baby be left in a box to die if the mother/doctor so choose. At the sme time, we see a continuing lack of respect for human life by many other sectors of society. Coincidence? Maybe, maybe not. The liberal left has locked onto the NEED to protect the right of abortion at all costs. The ripple effect should not be ignored. They continue to attack those who want to err on the side of caution while luring those who are in a tough situation into an irriversable mistake.
Those who parade off to church while supporting this are the worst sort of hypocrites.

[sailaway21]

Smacky,
You persist in reading the article in an upside-down fashion, which comes as little surprise to me, but I'll venture froth into the breach once again, albeit more briefly.

"...what takes precedence morally and spiritually must not take precedence for government" means that the moral and the spiritual inhabit a world that knows no government. And that government cannot usurp their role or claim their virtue. Government has no virtue to bestow. Just because government declares something to be virtuous does not make it so. Virtue is in the eyes of the Creator.

"....the distrust of moralists and social scientists" is not a distrust of those morally bound by spirituality but those in government, individually, or politically fashioning a secular morality.

An example of this might be the pop morality phrase, "as along as it doesn't hurt anyone else". Leaving aside the question of whether any actions can truly be known to not hurt anyone else, this is a false morality because it is not rooted in spirituality. It leaves aside the quite possible damage done, not to someone else, but the practitioner himself. Damage to that individual's soul. And the soul is a matter strictly between the man and his Higher Power, the repository of his spiritual relationship.

Thus again we return to the oxymoron that is left wing evangelicalism. The evangelicalism is a canard in that it has no reference to the spiritual but only to the left wing fad morality of the moment. It is only evangelical in that it is zealous in it's propagation of itself.

Your confusion is obvious in your proclamation of the wildly successful sexual revolution. In what respect successful? In that, most people practice sex out of wedlock? A simple examination of the fruits of that revolution might cause one to question what your definition of success might be. That the country is awash with unmarried mothers with fatherless children might strain even a leftist's definition of success.

Morality and it's fount, spirituality, are not at all about what men do. they are about what men ought to do. If you perused mankind as if in an ant farm under glass you would have absolutely no idea that most men are animated by a sense of morality and have a spiritual relationship with something greater than themselves. You would see them lie, cheat, and steal but you would have no idea about what they thought about those actions. And all of science could do nothing to help you because nothing in science could observe what caused them to feel that they ought to behave in a certain manner.

If you're truly interested in the nature of spirituality and man's innate sense of morality you might chase down some of the writings of the late CS Lewis. I'd recommend Mere Christianity and The Abolition of Man. G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy is good on the matter as well. A more contemporary writer, the late Swiss theologian Francis Schaeffer's there is a God and He is Not Silent is quite good as well.

Your placement of conservatism's Achilles Heel on the below passage is not only wildly misguided, it overlooks the fact that the words below make up the entire rational within the Founder's minds for the notion of republican democracy and it's basis. The entire concept of the American experiment in the governance of men falls apart absent virtue derived from a spiritual relationship with something greater than man himself.

"Because choice was essential to admirable deeds, to dignity, and to happiness, virtue presupposed liberty. Conversely, liberty presupposed virtue, because maintaining the institutions of a free society was hard work that required citizens to exercise a range of excellences of character. And because religion -- or more precisely in America: Protestant Christianity -- was an indispensable teacher of virtue, liberty also presupposed faith. However, neither virtue nor religion could be the aim of politics because authorizing government to promote them would invite abuses of power and infringement of rights. Contrary to the canard, popularized by academic critics, that the classical-liberal tradition limits government's responsibility for virtue because of skeptical doubts or relativist certainties, the Constitution limits government to safeguard the sources of virtue, protecting the prerogatives not only of religious communities but also of families and citizens' association to instill it."

I'll leave you to it. I am impressed with the way though that you transformed this thread into a response to a thread you had no interest in addressing. That this thread lost it's way and became a vehicle for that is not as lamented as might be thought. The title alone reflects the potential hoped for in the age old practice of making matters right by the pounding of square pegs into round holes. One must choose one's master. And leftist dogma can have no other master before it. Thus we pity the confusion of those whom pronounce themselves left-wing evangelicals. They are evangelical but only to the Left, not the Creator.

[wind_magic]

Originally Posted by smackdaddy

Actually, I think it's an interesting question. The typical presentation of religion/politics (even as you see above) is that the "right" has the evangelicals and the "left" has the environmental whack-jobs. This would lead one to the inference that the "right" essentially "owns" the religion issue. So, I'm just asking whether there are actually religious folk out there that consider their politics "left-leaning" and are able to justify the two just like a "right-leaning" religious person does (beyond the single issue of abortion).

The "left" definitely has it's evangelicals depending on your definition.

Evangelical - 6. Characterized by ardent or crusading enthusiasm; zealous: an evangelical liberal.

Their church is the modern outdoor camping supply store, honest, I've seen them there.

[smackdaddy]

Now see, Sway? That's what I mean. I don't see it upside down. It's exactly the same article - and it can easily be viewed either way I suppose. The points I'm making are derived from the article itself, along with your posts. What you call upside down, I call tomato/envelope.

Anyway, had I tried to read it upside down as you say, I would have been as old as you by the time I finished it!

Seriously, I think we seem to winding this one down to something along the lines of MAD. So, I'll keep it "brief" as well.

You keep defining the spiritual/religious/moral as something individual and between that person and God - not something that really fits within the purview of Government. See, I agree with you completely on this! The problem is that right wing evangelicals and many conservatives don't. And if you really don't see this - then you don't get out much.

I also offer that, according to the article, early conservatives didn't exactly agree with you either. Again, they PRESUPPOSED the presence of religious-based morality, virtue and faith in order to counter the "dark natures of man" inherent in governmental and economic enterprise. This was the basis of correctly applied "conservative moderation". It's precisely what allowed the conservative position to stand.

Now that presupposed moral foundation has virtually eroded away - and traditional conservatism has been rejected. Hence the article. Not really upside down yet.

That you can state that the left is utterly devoid of the spiritual is honestly just silly. I would use Buckley's quote here - but there are plenty of sigs around Sailnet where you can see it. Sure the left has "lost its way" on many, many things spiritual, but talk with a right wing evangelical a while about the the state of the right's union and I think you'll hear the same lament. All I'm saying is that BOTH sides are just as guilty of this straying.

Which brings us to...the wildly successful sexual revolution.

Sway, when I call it "successful" I mean it only in terms of your article. Basically, the article says that the sexual revolution has won out over all those issues hard fought over the years by social conservatives (traditional marriage, homosexuality, abstinence, etc.). The social conservatives "lost" the battle because society-at-large doesn't really care about religion-based morals, faith or virtues.

But, it's telling that you immediately took it the other way. That is, that I think the success of the sexual revolution is a "good thing". But then, perhaps counter to your argument that spirituality is between an individual and God, you go on to lay out the obvious moral ills wrought by it - judging it a social failure (not something just between an individual and God). Personally, I too think it has been a spiritual disaster - individually and collectively - as evidenced by everything you list.

BUT, the question to the social conservative or evangelical is - what do you do about it now? What does the article say to do? Capitulate. See, it's a 0 sum game.

The REAL question in all of this is: Why has religion done such a poor job of inspiring people to faith, virtue and morals on its own? And why does anyone think that government/politics are an effective means of doing that job? That's what I don't get.

Left wing evangelicals and right wing evangelicals could probably learn a lot from each other if politics got out of the way.

[smackdaddy]

Originally Posted by wind_magic

The "left" definitely has it's evangelicals depending on your definition.

Their church is the modern outdoor camping supply store, honest, I've seen them there.

Hey Wind,

Painting the entire left with the naturalist brush is really no different than a tree-hugging hippie preaching that the ONLY objective of the Republicans is to destroy the earth for profit and spread the booty among the top 1 percent.

Is that sermon as true as yours?

[PBzeer]

The difference though smacky, is while windy uses it in jest, the Left takes it as a matter of belief.

[sailaway21]

Ah, I get you now...a much better post, that one.

I think that you mis-read the evangelical right in assuming that they want government to aid in the proselytizing of their beliefs. What this movement wants, and you have to remember that the movement did not exist until the seventies, is for government to get out of the morality business or, as they see it, the anti-morality business. They are pushing back against the tide of the sixties and government decisions that seem to reflect the idea that the Constitution exists to protect us from the free exercise of religion. It's government prevention of free exercise and an understanding of the Constitution's actual purpose, in protecting religion from government, that has aroused their ire.

When you couple that with an unconstitutionally based Supreme Court ruling such as Roe v Wade that legalizes what many consider murder you've just galvanized a potentially powerful political force. These people did not exist as a political force prior to the seventies and voted in numbers only on par with the national average. It took what they regard as a moral outrage, accomplished not through state and local legislatures, but by judicial fiat, to get them out of their pews and into the polls. Once aroused they then turned a gimlet eye towards the other predations of the left as well. You'll note the rise of the home schooling movement within the same era.

The question is surely not why religion inspires so poorly. Church pews are filled throughout a nation with millions of churches with more being formed every year. The vast majority of Americans attend church on some basis. The vast majority also claim a spiritual relationship with a power greater than themselves that they call God. You must turn your eyes to Europe to find empty pews, empty churches, and the triumph of state secularism for your government imposition of virtue and morality. Euro socialism is the triumph of the evangelical leftists, the end result of the State as Higher Power here on earth.

Right wing and left wing evangelicals have little or nothing to learn from each other absent politics or anything else. Evangelicals are by nature apolitical left to their own devices; the right-wing tag was appended to them after Roe when they became politically active in response to the left. The left didn't have a clue as to what the term evangelical even meant until some wag undiplomatically noted that they approached their statist causes with an evangelical fervor.

If the left wants to see the evangelicals out of the polls and back quietly sitting in the pews they might consider supporting a return of the abortion debate to the arena it rightly belongs; the states. Because until that matter is hammered out community by community across the land the "right-wing evangelicals" will persist in regarding it as an abomination worse than slavery. And I doubt that their faith engenders much in the way of compromise on these matters.

Your last question posited will have to be answered by a leftist. We on the right, and the religious right, view government not as a solution but as the bulk of the problem.

[smackdaddy]

Hey - at this point, you just helped me in the Seamanship thread with some righteous info needed for my next BFS. So, in appreciation of your help...

You're right! I'm wrong!






(Okay - that was just a ploy. I think you're partly right about the apolitical nature of the typical evangelical. And I also think you're right about the genesis of the politicization of evangelicals. BUT, I think your view that they don't want to use the government to proselytize their beliefs is not accurate. Now, I don't hold they want to overtly spread Christianity through the government - per se. That's not what I'm saying. But I think there's little doubt that they want to ACTIVELY FIGHT against the further erosion of the social values and morals that have been traditionally based on religion and to take this banner up far more stringently than a libertarian conservative, etc. Again, this was a main point in the article.

The problem with this - as illustrated in the article - is that it quickly becomes capitulation when society-at-large wants to continually discard those traditional values and morals - and the right can't seem to stop it. And that's where the right is now.

Also - you should take a look at the numbers regarding church growth. What you've said above is counter to everything I've ever heard religious leaders say. That is - general church attendance and membership in the US is in steep and accelerating decline (much like Europe just not yet to that point). For kicks, I just Googled this and came up with this link. Though it shows mixed numbers in overall membership over 40 years, it shows a drastic decline in membership-per-thousand over the same period. So, the numbers don't really hold you out here.

Finally, your view of the left as wholly atheistic seems pretty engrained. So I won't try to beat you on that anymore - other than to say in light of some of your other perceptions that are not supported by the actual data - there may be some room to re-think a few things in this regard.

Rest assured, just as there are conservatives that may not buy into the whole religion thing yet still consider themselves proper conservatives - I think it is perfectly safe to say that there are liberals that don't buy into the whole naturism/atheism thing, but instead are perfectly content with the alignment of their religious-based faith, virtues and morals with their liberalism. Based on the Beatitudes - it's really not much of a stretch.

In any case, the article seems to be saying that, politically, it's all being diluted down to the lowest common denominator anyway as regards the moral argument. And to remain relevant - you just need to play along. And this from the right! So maybe the moral justification that one side or the other claims is, at the end of the day, moot anyway.

Man - what a tangled web.)