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Sunday, October 14, 2007

Obama and Fundamentalist Liberalism

Democratic Presidential hopeful Barack Obama issued a package of proposals last week which he described as 'the attempt to usher in the Kingdom of God in America.'

Many observers were caught off-guard by the statement. Yet the concept is nothing new.

Obama belongs to a tradition within Christianity that has been around since the latter part of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century which maintains that the concept of the 'Kingdom of God' as mentioned in the Bible is a mandate for political and social structures.

Thus, 'Christian liberalism' was born and encompassed a vast segment of the Church in a variety of old, mainline denominations in Europe and the U.S. The adherents to Christian liberalism believed that the Kingdom of God could be ushered in by the activities of man. This could be accomplished by changing social and political structures to reflect what adherents believed was the 'teachings of Jesus' regarding the poor.

The ultimate objective was to wipe out poverty and war by implementing governmental policies that supposedly made society more just and fair. Humanitarian pursuit was the order of the day with the goal of not only alleviating human suffering but preempting that suffering in the first place by making sure that society was structured in such a way as to minimize the risk of poverty, disease, and war.

This, of course, meant that capitalism had to go. Human freedom and personal choice had to be minimized in such a way as to insure that wealth was spread as evenly as possible throughout society.

The remnants of Christian liberalism are still alive in Europe today. The only change is that the masses generally do not recognize that the secular Socialism that governs their nations had its roots in a segment of Christianity.

The main reason that Europe and the rest of Western society in general have forgotten that fact is the rampant disillusionment that occurred in the wake of two World Wars and the Great Depression. Man's best attempts to 'usher in the Kingdom of God' resulted in disaster.

In short, you may be able to change social and political structures externally, but you cannot change the internal darkness that leads to such horrors as the Holocaust.

Further, under the influence of liberal theologians such as Rudolf Bultmann, who sought to 'demythologize' Christianity, there arose in Europe a securalized version of Christian liberalism. The mass suffering that occurred on the continent during the first half of the 20th century led to a growing distrust of church structures, which of course, fed the securalized version of Christian liberalism.

Yet the basic premise of Socialism is just as bound for failure as its religious equivalent.

Much of Europe seems to have failed to learn that lesson.

Despite the obvious failures of Christian liberalism and its secular equivalent, Socialism, that segment of Christianity that embraces such a point of view is alive and well. Barack Hussein Obama belongs to that segment of Christianity.

Obama would mandate certain key tenets of Socialism in the name of 'ushering in the Kingdom of God' just as his spiritual forebears did in Europe in the early 20th century. The problem, of course, is that Christian Liberalism as it stands today is just as unwilling to allow any deviation from its prescriptions as the Fundamentalists on the extreme Right.

This is why I do not hesitate to refer to Christian Liberals as 'fundamentalists.' They have a dogma that must be strictly followed just as surely as the rightwing fundamentalists.

For example, a speaker before the annual meeting of the National Council of Churches, which represents those Christian denominations that adhere to liberalism, stated that 'government should have a monopoly on the use firearms.' Period, end.

This, in a nutshell, is the mindset. Government, in their view, truly IS the means by which to usher in the Kingdom of God. And to them, that means government must have ultimate power to confiscate wealth in order to distribute it to others, confiscate firearms in order to insure a 'peaceful society,' withdraw U.S. troops from every region of the world to show in good faith that we 'mean no harm,' and to exhibit a literal reading of Jesus' words to 'turn the other cheek' by allowing our enemies to strike us without any response that uses force.

Those who dissent from this liberal dogma are vilified every bit as thoroughly as the most rabid rightwing Fundamentalist preacher you can imagine. In fact, in many ways the leftwing fundamentalists are worse.

Various and sundry organizations that are dominated by the leftwing mainline denominations, such as Barack Obama's United Church of Christ and others, are known for their intolerance of dissenting points of view. Talk to many of our military Chaplains, for example, and you will discover that organizations such as the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education, the Association of Professional Chaplains, and others, are notorious for making it difficult if not impossible for a conservative Christian to be recognized professionally by those groups.

One of these organizations in particular, the ACPE, demands that its members adhere to standards that many conservative Christians find to be against Biblical teaching.

This is not to say that these organizations do not have the right to set their own standards. For certainly they do. Further, this is not to say that their standards are necessarily wrong. That is not the point at all. The point is that there is within Christian liberalism a fundamentalist mindset that is every bit as exclusionary and dogmatic as rightwing fundamentalists.

And this is the problem with Barack Obama. In the name of Christianity he would unleash on the Republic a plethora of tyranny that flies in the face of every single principle of liberty for which our Founding Fathers fought and died.

7 comments:

Joel_ said...

hey, thanks for the comment on my blog... you should really check back to follow this AWESOME economic conversation I am having with Priscilla, that poster who totally hates you...

Welshman said...

Wow, so this has gone from being a person she disagrees with to someone she totally hates? Mmmm. Should I be, like, very...very...afraid?

pmesquivel333@yahoo.com said...

hey!! you guys really need to stop that!! stop putting words in my mouth, or typos in my posts? hmmm, whatever. I don't hate you Martyn, you just have a lot of bad ideas. But thats okay, so does Joel and I don't hate him. How could I hate a pretty boy like Joel?

Run along now you two, go formulate some more silly ideas for me to mock:)

Welshman said...

Listen here, Chic, I was formulating brilliant ideas about 20 years before you were but a gleam in your mother's eye.

Be that as it may, I am not brilliant or brazen enough to insert typos into your posts...besides, I have enough problems with my own typos.

And I didn't put words in your mouth, you simply opened it, and out poured enough fodder for me to toy with.

As for your mocking my ideas, I am totally immune from your degrading words. I learned a long time ago to ignore most of the rhetoric of lawyers. :)

pmesquivel333@yahoo.com said...

lol:) I like you already:)

yeah, lawyers suck anyway...

Welshman said...

Yeah, they do, but they sure come in handy when you need one.

Well, Chic, you are not as bad as I thought. Come back anytime, and let's debate issues. It might be fun.

Anonymous said...

Okay:)