Evangelical Leader Criticizes the Tea Party’s Radical Individualism
by: Claire Snyder-Hall on November 11th, 2011 | 3 Comments »
Members of the Tikkun Community might be interested the Rev. Richard Cizik’s piece in this morning’s Washington Post.
In short, Cizik criticizes the emerging alliance of Christian Right leaders with the Tea Party.
Whether the Christian duty to love our neighbors is compatible with a political movement that embraces radical individualism and rejects the ethic of collective responsibility is a central question as the GOP attempts to cement the Tea Party and the religious right into a cohesive base.
Cizik goes on to explain the obvious contradiction between the two right-wing camps.
Tea Party activists and Republican leaders have consistently targeted for cutbacks vital government programs that protect the poor, the elderly, children and other vulnerable Americans. Yet calls for shared sacrifice and proposals to modestly raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans in order to fund investments and protections that promote the common good are derided as “class warfare.” This is what passes for family values?
Cizik condemns conservative leaders for “shrewdly” repackaging policies that serve the material interests of the elite in “moral” terms,” saying that it “takes a lot of nerve” to suggest that “the priorities of corporations and the GOP fight snugly with the teachings of Jesus.”
This might be good politics, but it is bad theology. Most “values voters” with even a minimal degree of biblical literacy recognize that the Hebrew prophets and Jesus warned the powerful not to afflict the poor and comfort the rich. These bedrock Judeo-Christian principles are flouted by conservatives who demand cuts to nutrition programs that help low-income women feed their children even as they defend tax loopholes for some of the world’s wealthiest people.
Cizik is president of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good. He was vice president for governmental affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals from 1998-2008 but was fired because of his increasingly progressive views on environmentalism, whichCizik calls “creation care.”
I have been waiting for some time for someone to address this issue of what indeed “christian morality” means. Republicans it seems like to claim christian values are their own ideology while at the same time acting very “unchristian”. The hypocrisy of this has always amazed me and that no one has really ever spoken out and made me question the entire movement. I will say Jim Wallis has been writing about this for some time but receives very little backing from republicans.
I was just saying that the shift in moral values of the ruling class is an issue I never see discussed. Jesus was thrown under the bus and Ayn Rand is the new missah.
I can’t help but wonder how many “Evangelical Christians” will drop their church membership on that note. “What, Christianity is not about me? forget it!”