How Far Left is Evangelical Left?

Last week I wrote from a politically conservative Christian point of view on the missing Evangelical concern for a common biblical concern: oppression and the oppressed.

Well, lo and behold, the next day Jim Wallis writes on the same subject but from his politically leftist Christian point of view. ("What is 'biblical politics'?" is on his God's Politics blog, Sept. 15, 2011.) I call his position "leftist" rather than "liberal" because it seems to go well beyond anything that a liberal Democrat in Congress would say, Christian or otherwise. Notice also that he calls it "biblical politics" in general. To Wallis, that's all that politics is about. Or so it seems.

If Wallis is left of the left-wing Democrats, where is he? As a starting point, compare these two statements.

Wallis:

I was talking the other day to a Christian leader who has given his life to working with the poor. His approach is very grassroots — he lives in a poor, virtually all-minority community and provides basic services for low-income people. He said, “If you work with and for the poor, you inevitably run into injustice.” In other words, poverty isn’t caused by accident. There are unjust systems and structures that create and perpetuate poverty and human suffering. And service alone is never enough; working to change both the attitudes and institutional arrangements that cause poverty is required.

Here is Marxist liberation theologian, Gutavo Gutierrez:

Charity is today a ‘political charity’ . . . it means the transformation of a society structured to benefit a few who appropriate to themselves the value of the work of others. This transformation ought to be directed toward a radical change in the foundation of society, that is, the private ownership of the means of production. (A Theology of Liberation [Orbis, 1973]; p.202)

Granted, Wallis also says some biblical things, but mixes them with the same radicalism:

This is what the Bible teaches us. The scriptures reveal a God of justice, not merely a God of charity. Words such as oppression and justice fill the Bible. The most common objects of the prophets’ judgments are kings, rulers, judges, employers — the rich and the powerful in charge of the world’s governments, courts, economies, systems, and structures. When those who are in charge mistreat the poor and vulnerable, say the scriptures, it is not just unkind but also wrong and unjust, and it makes God angry. The subjects of the scriptures’ concern are always the widow and the orphan, the poor and oppressed, the victims of courts or unscrupulous employers, debtors whose debts need to be forgiven, strangers in the land who need to be welcomed. And the topics of the prophets’ messages to the powerful are things like land, labor, capital, judicial decisions, employer practices, rulers’ dictates, and the decisions of the powerful — all the stuff of politics.

But then later he comes back to the radicalism:

But biblical politics is never just about the candidates either, and some have made that mistake in recent elections. Putting one’s hopes in political candidates and parties has only led to disappointment, frustration, and dangerous cynicism. There are systems and structures that undergird and shape the limits of the political agenda, and challenging those limits to get to root causes and real solutions is always the prophetic task.

He also pours scorn on private charity. It leaves the powerful accountable. It's hopelessly inadequate to the task and it does not address the root of the problem: structures and systems, and nasty capitalist swine.

So is Jim Wallis a Marxist? A secret Marxist? That may be going to far. But what I can tell from these passages, there is more Karl Marx mixed in with his view of politics than he is willing to admit. The same thing happens on the political right, of course. Many Christian conservatives espouse elements of Enlightenment liberalism that I think are incompatible with a Christian view of the world. From what he says about me in the foreword to my book, Left, Right, and Christ: Evangelical Faith in Politics (a foreword for which I am grateful), Jim Wallis sees me as part of that philosophically compromised group. "At times in this book, Innes sounds much more like Ayn Rand, the Russian atheist and apostle of the virtue of selfishness, than he does Jesus Christ" (p.11). You can read the book and decide for yourself.

To read up on Wallis's history with Marxism, read Ronald Nash, Why the Left is Not Right (Zondervan, 1996). To read Wallis's account of politics and of his turn to what he claims is a third way that is neither left nor right, read The Soul of Politics (Mariner Press, 1995).

Conservatives Against Oppression

"Oppression." It's a Marxist word and a left-wing myth, right? But if I spoke instead about "abuse of power" by government, or "intimidation" by union thugs, or "enslavement" of young runaways by urban pimps, I would have your attention. But it's the same thing.

The Bible condemns "oppression" and calls on governments and everyone to come to the defense of the oppressed. The Lord “gives justice to the oppressed” (Job 36:6 NKJV). He is a “refuge” for them (Psalm 9:9). Shouldn’t godly government have the same concern? To all His people in their various spheres of life He says, “Is this not the fast that I have chosen: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, and that you break every yoke” (Isaiah 58:6)?


This is the subject of my Worldmag.com column this week, "Conservatives for the Oppressed." I give a definition of oppression and indicate some of the variety of ways people can be oppressed.
 

Oppression is the inhuman use or cruel treatment of the weak and helpless by the stronger and more secure. It’s the little guy getting mugged in some way by the powerful and well-connected. The left associates oppression with capitalism and with corporations in particular. Evangelicals have become active in fighting the oppression that comes from drug traffickers and sex traffickers. Gary Haugen of International Justice Mission has mobilized a generation of young evangelicals against the beastly evil of human trafficking. But cruelty and injustice may also come from a local employer, a labor union, or a government agency.

Charles Colson has done good work in coming alongside the downcast and downtrodden through many of the works that Prison Fellowship has undertaken. Mind you, not everyone who is suffering and in need of Christian love is oppressed. Marvin Olasky has also done, encouraged, and highlighted Christian work on behalf of oppressed people here and around the world.

One Facebook friend found that this column brought to mind this speech from David Cameron rebuking the Labour Party for smugly thinking that only they, certainly not the Tories, could care for the poor, even though the poor were much worse as a result of Labour's stewardship of many years.



For a strikingly leftist view of oppression, see this post from Jim Wallis that he issued the very next day (no relation, I'm sure) at Sojourners, What is Biblical Politics?".

Anthony Bradley on Beck

Anthony Bradley, my colleague at The King's College, was on the Glenn Beck Show yesterday explaining black liberation theology.

Beck takes most of the almost 18 minutes to talk about Marxism, BLT, and the gospel (more or less). Well, it's his show, right? Dr. Bradley comes in via satellite at the end.

Anthony Bradley's book is Liberating Black Theology (Crossway, 2010).



This is not Dr. Bradley's first time on Beck. Here he is in March 2008 just after the Jeremiah Wright eruption.




Here is Marvin Olasky interviewing Anthony Bradley when he was a visiting professor at the college.






You should also read Bradley's column today in WORLDmag.com, "Why Black Liberation Theology Fails."

Too Cool For Rule

These annual economic meetings of international groups such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the G20 are now well established holidays for the world wide coalition of free lance protesters, thrashers for hire, soccer hooligans, the permanently unemployed, larking college students, Euro trash, and professional anarchists that have become a reliable part of the festivities. In prior centuries these same types would have been on pilgrimage to some holy site or on some crusade or other. True believers, in Eric Hoffer's taxonomy.

But actually, these people seem to be several intellectual and moral rungs lower than the people Hoffer analysed, or for that matter, most of the simple medieval souls hoping to cleanse themselves of guilt by trudging cross country to adore some relic or attempting to repulse the Turk. For what animates these latter day believers is actually anti-belief or nihilism. The activists among them, as opposed to those showing up mainly to show off on twitter, are self-acknowledged anarchists, who claim to deny all authority and structure of any kind. This is the very definition of "idiot", as its Greek root, idios, indicates. An idios is a person unable--to be unwilling would have been unthinkable to a Greek--to participate in the political order. Anarchy, as the alpha privitive, a, and arche, rule, indicate in the Greek, is "no rule."

For events limited in time, "anarchy" suits as a descriptor well enough. But masquerading as a political philosophy it is closer to a bad joke. Only for a pampered, self absorbed, narcissistic generation well enough off to travel the continent chasing these events could it pass for a political stance. These are people who have known very little of the suffering this world is capable of dispensing--they are naifs, despite their self image as sophisticates or cosmopolites.

Take for instance this example of a policy idea flowing from anarchism. Abolish money. I wonder how long the committee worked on that one. Oh, wait. There are no committees in anarchism--no structure or authority, remember? Must have been a lone wolf, working under his own authority. But the idea certainly caught on, as the crowd was heard chanting it as one of their main suggestions to the gathered dignitaries and functionaries of the world's top governments. (Bank of London employees were seen taunting them with 10 pound notes out the windows). It might be that the Pauline remonstrance on the love of money being the root of evil lingers on as a sort of race memory, the dying echo of a culturally Christian Europe; more likely it is what passes for thought among thoughtless people.

I will grant them this however: the notion of no money is consistent with anarchism. What these lunatics are actually demanding without knowing it is a return to the state of nature, that pre-political state of affairs where each man fends for himself because there is no organized political order. Thoughtful people, when they speculate about such a time, realize with Locke that there could have been no considerable amount time spent that way because of the danger from men unrestrained by law or force. Hobbes' famous description captures it best--the life of man in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Every man realizes that alone he is at his most vulnerable; association and cooperation is the only way to survive. Locke has the invention of money coming just prior to the invention of government in his rational reconstruction of pre-history because he knew the invention of money was a social necessity, and does not need government planning to implement. So, even if a non-political or apolitical state of affairs could be imagined, money in some form would still be necessary in order to prevent the solitary and poor scenario. Most of what is necessary to bare existence is of short duration and, unless you live on a tropical island paradise, is difficult to obtain. The idea of exchange, the division of labor, and some medium to facilitate exchange are the first ideas to raise men from the Hobbesian nightmare of the bellum omnium contra omnes--the war of all against all--and into primitive pre-political cooperatives of the sort these Euro slackers seem to have in mind. But even the Stonehenge builders, whom many of these revelers surely worship, knew anarchism of the sort contemplated here was out of the question, and most certainly had some concept of money equal to their astronomy and engineering prowess.

Maybe the lingering race memory guiding our little tantrum-throwers is not of St Paul but of St Marx, he of the withering away of the state, and of changed human nature that makes it possible

"to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming a hunter, a fisherman, shepherd, or critic." (from The German Ideology.)

Or without ever growing up either. This is the fantasy world where everyone produces according to his ability, and consumes according to his need. And all of it done without the greed and inhumanity of capitalists or money. John Maynard Keynes was right; every age is ruled by some long dead economist or philosopher.

Why couldn't ours be Adam Smith instead of Karl Marx?