An Evangelical church in Oregon The Sunday before Christmas was a good time to reflect about the value of church -specifically- to American politics. This refers to a flourishing Evangelical church I sometimes attend. . . A few points of clarification: . * There are any number of theological stands that this church takes that I do not accept at all. I'm anything but a Biblical traditionalist, for instance, and have endless questions about the historicity of many passages in scripture, take careful note of errors of fact scattered throughout its pages, am aware of instances in the classical era past when entire parts of the Bible were edited (redacted) almost out of all recognition to their origins, and so forth. . * For me, religion, whatever else it is and should be, must include a pronounced educational dimension. There are many passages in the Bible that stress the importance to faith of being well-informed and having cultivated intelligence -including the skill set necessary to defend one's beliefs against the worst that religious detractors can throw against it. A church that does not emphasize this aspect of "religion", as far as I am concerned, is off the mark. . * The Great Commission applies to more than individuals seeking to win others to Christ. Being as ecumenical as I am, this also means that people of other faiths ought to have a similar outlook from the perspective of their religions in seeking to change the world for the better. In market terms, I completely favor a strong competitive marketplace of ideas, each religion doing its best in seeking not only to do its best in terms of inner values but vis-a-vis in competition with other religions. The point is that a church ought to have a public ministry, it has to be far more than a collection of individuals seeking to speak to other individuals. . On each of these points -there are a few others that might be discussed but that aren't as important and can be set aside- there are issues with the Evangelical church. . And it should be added that I am aware that my own shortcomings are anything but inconsequential. If there are criticisms about this church there certainly are criticisms that people in that church could legitimately make about me and the ideals that I don't live up to, or, at most, only live up to now and then, part time. . All of these things said, other facts stand out in high relief. . There should be little need to emphasize the war against religion that emanates from the Left. Cultural Marxism is predicated on the view that religion is the enemy of rationality and intelligence and should be eradicated -or, if that is excessive, it should be neutralized -or neutered. . Most garden variety Democrats don't go this far but the driver behind official party programs is exactly this even if never called "cultural Marxism" directly. But there are a welter of values that the party espouses which all line up in this direction. The Left is secular to a fault, to the extent that it completely falsifies its historical heroes, turning sometimes profoundly religious men (or women) into de facto / post-mortem Atheists, everyone from Alexander Hamilton to Teddy Roosevelt to FDR to Martin Luther King. . The Left seeks to transform the entire culture into some form of quasi-Marxist system of ideas and values that will eventually destroy religious faith and institutions, and the process of this development is far along -which is really obvious to anyone who remembers the 1950s or, to a lesser extent, the 1980s. . However, the political Right includes within it the equivalent driver of ideas and it is no secret that this refers to libertarianism. About which Noam Chomsky seems to me is very right: Logically, libertarianism belongs on the Left, that is its genesis and essence even if for a variety of reasons having to do with US politics of the 1930s and 1960s, American libertarianism has drifted into the Right -unlike Europe where, absent these circumstances, it remains a phenomenon of the political Left. . The Evangelical church in Eugene, Oregon, did not intend to make all this clear to me on December 21, 2014, but that nonetheless was the effect. . The church may have its limitations but I could not help but think about what its members get from their membership: . The church is a refuge from nihilistic values that are now everywhere in the ascendant in society. It serves to protect families, to promote the kinds of values that nourish families, for that matter also nourish individual lives, and to offer an example of a functional community of men and women of good will who can work together for common purpose in a spirit of helpfulness and compassion. . The church also seeks to be as expansionist as it has any possibility of being. Not that its new branch in Junction City is much by way of changing the world, but it is real, it exists, and now there is a new congregation that is furthering the message of Christ as this church understands it. . To me, this is one example of actual Christian faith, all limitations far less important than living faith and how it helps people in many different ways. . What this kind of faith decidedly is not, is a tradition that says : . We have our turf and if you just leave us alone we have no interest in your corner of the world and we will leave you alone. . The exact opposite is the case because as all actual Christians know and understand, the ideal is far more than individual salvation, it is also community regeneration. I mean, isn't the Book of Acts in your Bible? That is an account of the earliest Church in action and think of what it was: Believers living in communities where they shared property and goods, for example. . Granted, I have serious reservations about how far that sort of thing can go without running into serious problems, and for this reason it seems obvious to me that there is only so far it should go, but the conclusion seems unavoidable that there must be a communal dimension to real Christian faith in which, if sharing in an absolute sense goes too far, nonetheless something of the "spirit of Acts" is essential or what you have is not authentic Christianity. . I think that the Quivira Coalition gets this idea very well even if that group is not overtly Christian (or Jewish). Quivira has no use for "I've got mine, screw you" libertarian philosophy. Quite the opposite: Its motto might be something like: "We're all in this together and let's do our best to find ways to make everything work for everyone's common interests" or "we are a community and we need to treasure all values that bring us together." . This outlook is antithetical to libertarianism. And, to repeat the point, this is approximately just as true if we were discussing Buddhism or most other religions, all of which have a strong community-centric emphasis, all of which understand that if you deconstruct the culture and regard culture as a jungle where there is no right and wrong what you get is anarchy -viz in our case American anarcho-capitalism where values are created and sold for a profit by Hollywood, the TV networks, the entertainment industry, Madison Avenue and Silicon Valley, and forget about what we once had, a Christian culture, or Judeo-Christian culture, even an ecumenical and Judeo-Christian culture, where important shared values were the glue that held us all together and gave us a common identity as Americans. . About which, as one blogger has put it, there is a palpable "passion [and] hatred for organized religion that...inspires so many libertarians." The reason is obvious: Religious faith is diametrically opposed to core libertarian values. . As Kevin Vallier put it in an article published by CATO on October 6, 2014, while he did not have my points in mind, the idea that "private property alone" can answer all important questions of governance is about as weak of a position to take about social issues as you can find. Any "principled form of property-rights reductionism, where all that matters is whether property rights are being respected or violated" is a poor substitute for religious faith. Except that it not only is a poor substitute it is the enemy of faith. . Libertarians, said Vallier, "need a theory of the public sphere." The reason they don't have one is that this is the domain of religion, which it abhors precisely because of the communalism at the core of faith. What is at the core of libertarianism is nihilism, or a close approximation to nihilism, "every man for himself, I have my values and leave me alone." Somehow I can't think of a single Bible verse that supports any such view. . I kind of like the Evangelical church here in town. I can never join because the differences are too large, and I have plans of my own, but I certainly appreciate what the church is doing and if I can be helpful to it, I hope to be helpful in the future. . The church has an unwritten motto that is at the core of all good faiths: "We care about you, you are far more than an isolated individual, join us in a community that cares about each member and about what is happening in our country." . They would also add: "We feel this way because this is how Jesus was, and who Jesus was, and we will follow him unto death." . Billy . .
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