How your view of God affects your politics: 2-28-18
February 28, 2018
It turns out, if a newly released Baylor University study is accurate, that your view of God often affects the political positions you support in a variety of ways.
“Republicans with a deeply engaged God," said one of the study leaders, "are consistently liberal on issues of social justice. And Democrats with a highly judgmental God are consistently conservative on issues of retributive justice.”
In other words, one's view of God can turn someone affiliated with a traditionally conservative party more liberal and someone affiliated with a traditionally liberal party more conservative.
All of this assumes, of course, that we all agree on what the terms "conservative" and "liberal" mean, and my guess is we're nowhere close to a societal agreement about that.
Still, it's an intriguing study that tells us a bit about what our theology leads us to think and do.
As the Baylor press release to which I've linked you in the first paragraph notes, "The study — 'God, Party and the Poor: How Politics and Religion Interact to Affect Economic Justice Attitudes' — is published in the journal Sociological Forum."
The link in the previous paragraph will get you just to an abstract of the study. Looks as if you have to subscribe to that journal to read the whole thing.
I thought this quote from one of the researchers was especially interesting: “Liberals with a ‘strict father’ image of God are more inclined to support harsher criminal punishments and military solutions to foreign conflicts because they adhere to a theology of retribution and just deserts. It appears that Americans who see God as wrathful are quicker to support policies which seek an eye-for-an-eye outcome.”
As I understand Christianity (to say nothing of some other faiths), God is more interested in restorative justice than retributive justice. Theologies that focus deeply on God's wrath and vengeance as opposed to divine mercy, compassion and love seem to be at the root of all kinds of trouble. Among other things, that view leads to Christian theories of the atonement that seem to get it all upside down, suggesting that God loves us because Christ died for us, whereas it's the other way around: Christ died for us because God loves us.
(By the way, the photo here today is part of a series of photos of clouds I've taken from airplanes. I've been trying to capture the image of God up here, but God seems too bashful ever to show up in my photos. Why is that?)
* * *
MORE HATRED OF JEWS
Antisemitic incidents in the U.S. increased by 57 percent last year, a new report from the Anti-Defamation League says. Somehow this ancient, indefensible hatred just never seems to die. The books to read are Resurgent Antisemitism, by Alvin H. Rosenfeld, and Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition, by David Nirenberg.
Comments