This OP is mainly directed at ITR Champion, who has been very vocal about his conversion experience, but is not meant to be exclusively focused on him at all. But now he’s been veryvocalabouthispoliticalleanings here, too, and IIRC he did not originally start out as being politically right (might be mistaken on that). And his profile says that he is a math and science teacher, to boot.
Not in The Pit because I am genuinely curious as to the connection here. NOT looking for any snark, either. I too have a friend who underwent a similar spiritual experience, chalked it all up to the Christian God (no issue there since I had one of a sort as well)-and immediately junked his leftish political views for hard right ones, and I haven’t been able to get a straight answer out of him, either. When I had my spiritual experience I remained right where I was before politically (if anything I have drifted more leftward over the years).
It boils down to intentional actions by Republicans in the 1980s to coopt the Church for political gain and two key wedge issues (abortion / gay marriage ) as the foundation for keeping the social ‘christians’ (notice not Christians) in line. The pastor at my prior church had no problem politicing from the pulpit and they are provided actual coaching materials (key words, phrases, etc) to use to push the flock in the desired direction without having to name names.
Any Christian who takes the time to study the Bible would not be caught dead supporting the modern day “Right-Wing” or most Republicans. They all make a mockery of the Bible and of Christianity. But, then again, in this day of Name-It and Claim-It Mega Church christianity, there are many who are treating God like a slot machine and cherry picking the Bible to support what ever they want to do in their own will.
Eventually, we’ll all be held accountable for our deeds.
I suspect that is because right wing conservatives tend to have a strong sense of conformity to institutions and authority. They seem to get a sense of purpose and comfort from being part of a well defined structure where they can readily identify (or be identified as) “normal”.
If you watch Fox News or read some of comments by really far right-leaning poster they never seem to argue why a particular progressive policy won’t work or is “wrong”. They always seem to try and score points by pointing out how “not right-leaning” it is. i.e. Obamacare is a bad idea not because it won’t work as expected. It’s a bad idea because it’s “socialism”, ergo “not consistent with right ideology”.
(I fondly remember the “Reagan - God political action committee.” Okay, it was in Doonesbury, but I remember it.)
It’s more or less the same way that conservatives grabbed a close association with flag lapel pins. They simply got out in front of the flag, and loudly declared, “This is ours,” drowning out the voices of anyone who believes that the flag belongs to us all.
(And all the same while complaining that the mass media is biased against them! Christ, I wish the media were as biased against my viewpoints as that! “Conservative” would be a curse word!)
It wasn’t always this way. You go back to the sixties and seventies and you’ll see Christians like Martin Luther King and Jimmy Carter on the left.
But in the early eighties some Conservative religious leaders like Jerry Falwell and Ralph Reed got organized and started linking their political views with their religious beliefs. They basically began claiming they represented Christianity and the media bought it.
It’s my experience that denominations with more progressive leanings (like, say, Methodists or Episcopalians) don’t play up the whole “born-again” thing the same way that evangelical churches do. And evangelicals tend to be more conservative, for some reason.
I guess it makes SOME sense. Evangelicals tend to cleave more to the bible (“The Word”) and have a more emotional/gut approach to their faith than cerebral. If you try to avoid thinking on your own, you’re more likely to put a lot of importance on adhering to authority and conformity.
Evangelicals are also more likely to see problems as not resulting from human error, but rather the manifestation of Satan, wickedness, and/or evil. So this means that any idea or plan that challenges the status quo is automatically viewed suspiciously. Satan is always full of crazy ideas and plans, right?
He’s a good example. I can’t count how many “pastors” I know who have started (mostly) Evangelical “churches” as a way to suck money out of people. That was Jim Jone’s original plan. It had nothing to do with saving people.
Well, at least in my family, there is no correlation. We are all “born again Christians.” About half are left-leaning and half are right-leaning. We agree on many issues, if not most. What we disagree about is which issues are most important and which solutions are the most practical.
Not for me. I’m a conservative Presbyterian and I’m a National Progressive/left-wing Christian Democrat. Basically a mixture of the politics of Teddy Roosevelt, Hubert Humphrey, and Ludwig Erhard.
Jim Jones explicitly rejected most elements of traditional Christianity and basically incorporated some Christian rhetoric into advocacy of Marxist-Leninism.
I think it’s the abortion issue. If you don’t believe that life begins at conception, you don’t feel a religious obligation to save the embryos. Left-of-center bible-thumpers (the Liberation Theology movement for example) don’t feel the urgency, and are not as vocal.
How is that possible? A born-again Christian is one that was either not raised in a church, or left it, and then had a significant conversion experience. Born-again means you were lost and then saved; you can’t be raised in it. Having been born-again, you can raise your children to be devout.
As far as “fundamentalist” goes, which is what I suspect the OP means, a great many seem to stay out of politics all together, and the more fundamentalist you are, the more that is the case.
There’s a pretty big racial component. Black born-again Christians are seen as left-wing, to the extent that Republicans often complain about voter turnout activities that take place in black churches.
The New Testament is pretty clear about sex only within heterosexual marriage, to the extent that it deals with pre-born life, it’s an easy extrapolation that every life begins by the will of God & shouldn’t just be ended for any but the most dire reasons, and if Revelation 13 isn’t a warning about Big Gov’t & Economic Control, I don’t know what is. While the New Testament’s teachings on peacefulness & generosity may lead some towards pacifism & redistributional economics, there is enough emphasis on the need for law & order & personal responsibility to justify a need for some levels of force & greater economic freedom.
This is not how born-again Christians view it, and not how it is described in the Bible. Everyone who is saved undergoes a rebirth; it is the point at which one makes a decision to follow Jesus, or the point at which one’s faith solidifies to the point of assuring salvation.
[QUOTE=John 3:3]
Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again,[a] you cannot see the Kingdom of God.”
[/QUOTE]
Read actual accounts of those involved. In the last few years, there was little to nothing about God, Jesus, & the Bible, and all about him & The Revolution.
NOT looking for any snark, either. I too have a friend who underwent a similar spiritual experience, chalked it all up to the Christian God (no issue there since I had one of a sort as well)-and immediately junked his leftish political views for hard right ones, and I haven’t been able to get a straight answer out of him, either. When I had my spiritual experience I remained right where I was before politically (if anything I have drifted more leftward over the years).