May 28, 2005

Evangelicals and economics?

Fred at Slacktivist has a great post on Ted Haggerty's definition of evangelicalism: "They're pro-free markets, they're pro-private property. ... That's what evangelical stands for."

Really? Hmm. That certainly corresponds with what we are seeing in terms of evangelical political action. Sure there are votes here and there on abortion, but most of the actual actions coming from this administration have been to strengthen the rich and undermine the poor.

Fred says:

"Clearly, Christian thinking on wealth and property has 'evolved' over the last 1,500 years. It is rather rare, these days, to hear a Christian assert or even defend the idea that 'superfluity is theft' -- yet that was the consistent and universal teaching of the church during the first four centuries of Christianity. This evolution or sophistication of Christian teaching is, likely, a concession -- the gradual, frog-in-a-kettle process of accommodation to this world. Yet despite that, again, I'm willing to entertain the idea that this evolution is also in some ways reasonable and justifiable. But it is hypocrisy and nonsense when contemporary Christians who have sold off and abandoned every vestige of the traditional Christian understanding of wealth turn around and insist that the Christian understanding of sexuality is fixed, immutable and eternal. These people strain at the gnat of same-sex love while swallowing the camel of credit card usury. They are so obsessed with their mistaken belief that they live in the most promiscuous society of all time that they have failed to notice they live in the most affluent, the haughtiest, proudest and least concerned with the poor."

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