IIRC, you’re opposed to abortion and same sex marriage. Those are pretty much the litmus test issues for the right/left dichotomy, at least in social terms.
To expand on what I said a little bit, I would say there’s this much of a connection between religious and political views. I was raised by parents who were both anti-religious and very left-wing. We subscribed to The Nation and my views were shaped by that, and other things of that sort. I accepted it all as being true because I had never seriously been exposed to anything alternative way of thinking. Of course it’s not true that all left-wingers are atheists or vice versa, but among the reading material I was raised with there was considerable overlap.
When I got to college, I went to Harvey Mudd in Claremont, a very liberal environment. There I saw a lot of liberals behaving badly and thus my dogmatic beliefs started having a few cracks. Thanks to the internet and libraries, I was able to encounter books that challenged some of my beliefs. After leaving college and being exposed to the wider world, I also met a much wider range of people, and thus my beliefs that left-wingers and atheists were vastly superior to everyone else disintegrated further. Since the religious and political viewpoints had generally traveled together, perhaps it’s not coincidental that I began questioning them and opening my mind at about the same time.
I like to joke that becoming a Christian made me a commie. I was a moderate Republican back when I was an atheist and converted to Christianity a few years back, through a fundamentalist Pentecostal church (there are progressive Pentecostals as well, but not as many) - in the process of reading the Bible and hungrily devouring information on the early Church and Christian history, I started moving more and more to the left, feeling very strongly called that God wanted His people to take care of the poor and needy (and yes, using governmental apparatus if necessarily - a la the requirements put on Israel to take care of the poor).
I have since joined an ECLA congregation (I fell in love with liturgy), but I still consider myself born-again (as well as Charismatic).
I’m personally opposed to abortion but have never advocated that it be banned, that I can recall. I want there to be as few abortions as possible, but I believe that Democrats generally say the same thing when asked. As for gay marriage I’m basically ‘meh’ about the topic. There may be times when people have asked what are the reasons for opposing it and I’ve tried to clarify by linking to articles that opposed gay marriage, without endorsing those articles.
Fair enough, and thank you.
Both of these. For the second part, being vocal is key. The jerks are always loudest, but Christians really are not all like that
And who can forget all the passages in various Letters, instructing the congregations to stop sharing things in common and helping each other?
I think the combination of what puddleglum and Stormcrow said is probably the closest approximation to the real reasons.
Good OP, excellent question, but it would read more appropriately if “born again” were replaced with “fundamentalist”. The “born again” concept is as old as Christianity itself while fundamentalism is a fairly recent invention - generally within the last 150 years although certain elements of fundamentalism have been around much longer. (It is pointless to make a distinction between fundamentalism and evangelicalism; the differences are mostly superficial. In America, at least, most fundamentalists are evangelical to some degree and nearly all evangelicals hold a fundamentalist doctrine). The so-called christian right is not just a religious entity, it is fundamentalist on all levels - religious, economic and social/political. Fundamentalism is a belief system which takes a large and complex idea and attempts to distill it down to a handful of simplistic rules and axioms that can be learned by rote and and applied instinctively without the need for thinking or reasoning.
Fundamentalism is regressive, repressive, paranoid and patriarchal. As a belief system it appeals to those (if not only those) with narcissistic, compulsive, antisocial and otherwise disordered personalities. I would say that born-again Christianity does not necessarily equate to being right-wing politically, but that someone with a predisposition to right-wing thought or fascist mindset would likely be drawn to laissez-faire libertarianism, hyper-christianity or other fundamentalist forms of thought.
Those of us with an interest in fighting ignorance would do well to remember that Christianity, even the born-again variety is not necessarily the enemy…fundamentalists, fundamentalism and fundamentalist thinking is. Ignorance is the absence of knowledge. Fundamentalism is the absence of reason. This, then is our true and actual adversary.
SS
This is not always the case. For example the Protestants in France backed the French Revolution precisely because it resulted in the disestablishment of the Catholic Church and full legal rights for Protestants and have voted left-wing ever since. The same trend manifested itself in Britain and rest of Europe, where noncomformist evangelicals similarly supported the liberals, supporting secularism (including secularized public education) against the Established Church. BTW, I’m curious what you mean by “ACLU’s crusade against religion”. After all I find it hard to justify on either religious or political grounds that mandating prayer on children is either just or reasonable.
What about me? I’d vote straight ticket Democrat in most cases but I am opposed to abortion and indifferent to gay marriage (for similar reasons to the legalization of no-fault divorce). Nor does this mean I’m socially conservative on all issues-I’d support an end to the Drug Wars as an example.
I watch The 700 Club out of idle curiosity during Daily Show commercial breaks (yes, quite a combo) and Pat Robertson just last night was saying how awful it was that young healthy people would be forced to pay for treatment for the very sick and their pre-existing conditions. Sounds like socialism, he said.
I thought the point of Christianity was to take what you have and give to those who need it, but whatever.
(I know, it may not be government’s role, etc., but you wouldn’t think that socialism in general would be such a repugnant idea. Of course these people believe that you should donate to them in order to prosper in this life – that whole idea of if you have your heaven on earth you won’t have it later seems to have fallen by the wayside. :rolleyes:)
Roman Catholic here, and I am opposed to abortion and don’t care what happens with marriage secularly. But I too would vote Democratic because the chance of abortion becoming illegal under Republicans is infinitely lower than the chances that Republicans will cut social programs, build the war machine, and do plenty of other things to destroy lives.
As I said above, the correlation between being (supposedly) a “born-again Christian” and being right-wing is only true for white Americans in the past one hundred years. Let me give one example to show this which should correct a common perception of a famous event in American history. I presume that you know about the Scopes trial and about William Jennings Bryan’s role in it. If not, read the Wikipedia entries below on those subjects and on social Darwinism and fundamentalism. A superficial discussion of the trial would seem to indicate that the people involved with this case who were in favor of banning the teaching of evolution were conservative and those in favor of allowing the teaching of evolution were liberal, using a modern definition of these terms.
To the contrary, on many subjects, and particularly on economic issues, William Jennings Bryan was clearly a liberal in the modern sense of the term. Furthermore, many of the people who advocated teaching evolution were “social Darwinists” who believed that any aid to the poor was wrong because the poor were the losers in the economy and should be allowed to disappear naturally. So does that mean that in the modern sense of the terms that people at that time in favor of teaching evolution
were really conservatives and those at that time against teaching evolution were really liberals?
No, what it means is that you can’t apply your own definition of those terms to people of the past, not even to people in the same country less than one hundred years ago. People sometimes have the idea that if political/religious/philosophical positions X and Y are strongly correlated today in a particular place, then they must also strongly correlated in the past in some other place. I think this is generally wrong. Even terms which seem to be as clear as “liberal” and “conservative” are dependent on our assumptions about how the world works. I would contend that even the modern notion of fundamentalism only arrived with the American Christian fundamentalist movement of the early twentieth century and shouldn’t be applied to any earlier society or any other place. It was only slowly after that point that fundamentalism and right-wing politics began to converge, and it wasn’t a necessary convergence at all.
No we won’t.
I remember a line in the old TV series Maud. After arguing with her husband, Walter, that there is no god, he makes some snarky remark to her.
She replies, “God won’t get you for that, Walter.”
I know so many born again Christians who do not seem to follow the teachings of Jesus recorded in the NT. That being: " love one another Love your enemies, return good for evil, don’t look for the speck in your neighbor’s eye when you can’t see the plank in your own, don’t judge".
Some don’t even believe that RC are Christian, but seem to forget (or don’t know) It was the Roman and Orthodox bishops who declared what writings were of God and what was inspired, so they are in reality using a book and believing in the RC and Orthodox bishops!
As far as I can tell, it’s a combination of being against abortion and homosexuality, being very much for the status quo (since it largely favors Christians) and being easily led into “us” vs. “them” thinking to the point that having an open mind is unlikely.
I even remember a guy in college who argued that the abortion thing has to be the main issue, because, (to paraphrase based on what I remember) as long as you allow murder, you have no foundation for social justice. You’re already unforgiven by God, so you literally are incapable of doing what is right. Only those who don’t allow for abortion can constantly be led by God, and thus do what is right.
It is for this reason that I have went out of my way to explain how the abortion issue is not as big as you’d think, and that you can be left-wing and still think abortion is something we should be trying to reduce.
I also note that a lot of people seem to see politics as an excuse to be able to gossip, spreading false information about political opponents. This mostly seems to be a right wing thing right now (possibly only because a Democrat is president.) I had a pastors wife who chastised me for trying to make peace with the people who hated Obamacare, saying that I would oppose if it did turn out to hurt more than help. (Turns out the reason was that her husband thinks he’s never going to get sick and thus doesn’t get health insurance. She even personally wants health insurance, but felt insulted on her husband’s behalf when I mentioned that people need to realize that insurance is for other people, not just themselves.)
Libertarianism is a largely right-wing political view. Sure, you can say you are left-wing on social issues, but I don’t think you really are. You’re more neutral on the subject, thus letting your conservative financial position control.
You’re not in the extreme of the right-wing, like most fundies, but you are definitely to the right of me, and I’m mostly a moderate liberal.
I don’t believe that placing people on a spectrum from “left” to “right” means anything much these days, and it serves mostly to confuse and oversimplify. But as far as whether libertarians are closer to liberals or conservatives, I’d say this. Firstly, as I’m sure you know, libertarians don’t support no government, nor the smallest possible government. We support government with a well-defined role. Or as John Adams put it, “a government of laws and not men”. So “we the people”, who supposedly hold the power, don’t choose politicians to do whatever the politicians choose, but rather to do a certain list of things. Where the federal government is concerned, the list in the Constitution would do fine.
So as it stands now, liberals want the federal government to intrude into private lives, private business, and local government far more than conservatives, broadly speaking. Liberals can point to abortion and gay marriage as the two issues where they truly want less government intrusion, but even within the realm of “social issues”, we’ve got affirmative action, the Catholic Church forced to buy insurance that covers birth control, towns banned from putting religious displays on public land, &c… &c… And then among “economic issues” we’ve got the government regulating everything from when farmers can put manure in their fields to what goes into gasoline to what restaurants must list on their menus. So if we oppose intrusive government, we end up opposing liberal policies far more than conservative ones.
That is because we have separation of Church and State and they are religious issues, one religion can’t be favored over the other. It protects the minorities over the Majority. If Islam was ever the majority they should ask how they would feel if they had to follow those teachings.
Simple ideas preoccupy simple minds.
The amount of manure that a farmer puts on his field is a religious issue? Affirmative action is because of separation of Church and State? I’d love to hear you explain the thinking behind what you just posted.