11/21/11

Christian Conservativess Don't Need Sharia Law for Economic Reform

Moral issues rather than economic issues are at the core of the Republican political tactic to get mainstream conservative Christian voters to help concentrate wealth in the United States. There is a certain amount of historical logic in expecting some Christians used to hierarchical leadership in their churches to natural transition into being somewhat retro-feudalist in supporting elite business candidates calling themselves conservatives.

I doubt if many Christians would regard the help the rich get richer Republicans as conservatives at all if the moral agenda were removed. In fact the Republicans are nowadays-extreme globalists creating a vast planetary and oily oligarchy with candidates like newt Gingrich-the Genghis Khan of financial globalism speaking in one week from Harvard and on to topics in about the Chinese economy. Former Speaker Gingrich is a kind of retrograde capital gains tax guy who would probably prefer the middle class and poor pick up the tab of a retrograde minus 10% capital gains tax on the rich instead of the present ridiculously low 20%

http://uselectionnews.org/gop-candidates-court-conservative-christians-in-iowa/855647/

Christian fundamentalists have been given the completely wrong idea that politics isn't mostly about economics. When they just vote for candidates promising moral change to traditional values and trust in the corporate world acting through God to create employment for them, they get jobs outsourced to China, production shifting to Mexico and Mexican truck drivers delivering the manufacturing all over the U.S.A. Morality is important for individual Christians, and we can do well to be good moral examples ourselves, associate with other Christians and even create an egalitarian [priesthood of believers. Yet Christians should not be so simplistic as to ignore the reforming work of Jesus Christ in leaving the law and hierarchical temple priesthood to have a new relationship to God written in the hearts and minds of believers.

When Christians are duped into voting for candidates that care little about Christian affairs except so far as it helps get them elected and disregard economic issues they tend to help elect the economically corrupt and drive independent voters over to the side already fleeing the party with reproving Christian moralists within. Christians cannot elect a politician who can force decent moral law upon the electorate. -

God's effort to place a moral legal code upon the people of ancient Israel and Judah was never his first choice. Making a King of Saul was never the preferred alternative-the people demanded one and still seem to want to work against the moral laws of God. Jesus led people of faith away from the legalism and Pontius Pilate's and King Herod's of moral authority. Rendering unto Caesar what is Caesars certainly applies in economics and politics. Christians can move toward Christian morality for-themselves quite well. First Christians should reform their own ecclesiastical structure and take up a priesthood of believer’s egalitarianism.

When the ancient Byzantine Empire was driven out of North Africa by the Moslem expansion it was already rotten. Decadent and corrupt and previously displaced by Goth and Vandal invasions the Church was challenged to find its place in the new political world. Until the rise of Pope Gregory the First the Christian Church of Rome was not challenged to move its structure radically toward militarization and relationships nearly as peers with political leaders. In the Byzantine Empire the clergy was increasingly insular from the people as well. It was easy to develop a role as liturgical and monastic specialists when there was no middle class and when free enterprise and individual rights were rather minimal and subordinated to the autocratic powers of monarchs.

It isn't a surprise that Muhammad took for an example of a legal system the Jewish legalism in a new form that would eventually become Sharia. Before the destruction of the Temple in 70 a.d., and during periods when free from direct Greek or Roman rule the Jewish religious authorities were also virtually the legal and political authorities. That direction is one that fundamentalist Christians should not follow in the United States by seeking to elect candidates that simply promise Christians ethics while forsaking economic competence.

Christians have no reason to side with the rich against the poor in the United States, nor scriptural urgency to support ecospherically destructive industrial practices. Instead of using a dead-reckoning pragmatism guessing what candidates seem to have the most moral perfection and then vote for that-or for who promises to end abortion in our lifetimes Christians should recognize that real people care about real economics, security and standard of living while moral issues need to be decided by the heart.

Politics is not the right realm for religious authority. An activist, reformed Church is the best way to bring the electorate to salvation and good conduct. In times past there was a certain element of rubbing off of faith in the conduct of some politicians toward moral decency reflected in political virtue. Yet lets not go too far in expecting politicians today to be able to form a super-committee and balance a national budget given months, nor to find a way to transform the electorate into being saved and virtuous citizens whom will then create a perfect and just economy. Let’s just vote for Mitt Romney and call it good enough, and leave Shria to the Moslem world.

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