How biblical is Tea Party message?

Movement’s advocates, critics debate if it’s what Jesus would do By Alfredo Garcia Washington—When conservative broadcaster Glenn Beck warned churchgoers to “run as fast as you can’’ if their pastors preach about “social justice,’’ was he also encouraging them to run from the Bible? That’s what some progressive Christian leaders are arguing as battle lines are drawn for the 2010 midterm elections. They say Beck and his Tea Party followers are, in a word, unbiblical. Not so fast, say Tea Party activists, who claim biblical grounds for a libertarian-minded Jesus. He didn’t like tax-based welfare programs, they claim, and encouraged His followers to donate from the heart.

WHAT WOULD JESUS DO? Dent Boykin (right) and Mike Sellers of Mobile, Ala., place their hands over their hearts as the National Anthem is played in Spanish Plaza in downtown Mobile, Ala., during a Tea Party rally. Many religious progressives have questioned whether the Tea Party’s anti-big-government philosophy is actually anti-biblical. (Photo by Bill Starling/Mobile (Ala.) Press-Register)

The insurgent Tea Party movement threatens to usurp the political prominence of religious conservatives, whose focus on hot-button social issues has been overshadowed by the Tea Party’s fight against big government.

“I think that the general ideology of the Tea Party is not a Christian one,” said David Gushee, professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University in Atlanta and co-founder of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, a faith-based nonprofit group.

Gushee described the Tea Party as “an uneasy marriage between the libertarian conservative strand and the Christian right strand” of American politics. In this “uneasy alliance,” however, he said the Christian side has taken a backseat to the movement’s libertarian impulses.

According to a recent Bloomberg poll, 44 percent of Tea Party activists are self-identified born-again Christians, a group that generally takes close to heart Jesus’ instructions to feed the hungry and clothe the naked.

Tea Party activists say the question is not whether to follow Jesus’ words, but how.

Lloyd Marcus of Deltona, Fla., a spokesman for the Tea Party Express, is a born-again, non-denominational Christian who says flatly that “Jesus was not for socialism.”

“Yes, the Bible advocates giving, but out of the goodness of our own hearts, not out of government confiscation of wealth or redistribution of wealth,” he explained.

Joseph Farah, founder and CEO of the website WorldNetDaily and author of the new “Tea Party Manifesto,” agreed.

“When Jesus talks about clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, He’s talking to us as individuals,” Farah said. The Bible does not “suggest that government is the institution that he designed to help the poor.”

Government social welfare programs are akin to “coercively taking money from people and redistributing to other people, which, at the end of the day, is legalized stealing,” he noted. “And the Bible is pretty firm on stealing.”

But the Bible, and particularly the Hebrew prophets, also are firm on the need to protect the vulnerable, which sometimes requires government action, said Simon Greer, president of Jewish Funds for Justice, which helped fuel the progressive backlash against Beck.

Greer said his New York-based group is founded on “the fundamental religious call to care for others,” which in turn is based “on the belief that we’re all made in the image of the Divine.”

“The only sensible conclusion is that we need mechanisms like effective government ... to solve the pressing problems that our country faces,” he said.

Gushee framed his vision of government as “the community acting collectively,” with religious groups playing a key role. Religious groups have been active supporters of government programs to fight disease, poverty and HIV/AIDS in the developing world—programs that would not exist without the resources of the federal government.

For his part, Farah said he puts his faith in the generosity of the American people and supports church-based welfare over government-run programs. The data, however, tell a different story.

According to Illinois-based empty tomb, inc., which tracks charitable giving, American church-goers gave only about 2.5 percent of disposable income to churches in 2007; of that, only about 0.37 percent—roughly $100 per member—went to charities beyond the church. Those figures are down by about half since 1968.

Michael Lindsay, a sociologist at Rice University and author of “Faith in the Halls of Power,” said he doesn’t have much hope for individual charity.

“I would like to think that Christians are generous,” he said in an interview, “but sadly the truth of the matter is that their rhetoric is much stronger than their action.” (RNS)

Western Recorder issue date: July 27, 2010