Alright, calling out a personal
acquaintance here. Someone on my FB friends list, an old acquaintance from
college and current right-wing evangelical, recently posted the following:
The article that is referenced in
the image can be found here. It’s about people objecting to AG Sessions and the
Trump administration citing Biblical prescriptions that Christians should obey
the law to justify the separation of families at the southern border.
Specifically, it’s about those who raise Biblical passages commanding compassion
for strangers and the oppressed to refute that position.
Literally everything about that post
is an illustration of the poison of right-wing evangelicalism (and, to an
extent, religion itself) in life and politics.
Let’s start with the claim that Democrats
booed God. That is a lie. I normally try to give benefit of the doubt, but not
on this. It’s too easily debunked to believe that the author wrote it honestly.
Even if he believed it, it’s because he wanted to believe it so badly that he
ignored the easily discoverable truth. He. Lied.
If you follow the link to the
article, you’ll find that what the author is referencing is an incident at the
2012 Democratic National Convention where the chairman attempted to add to the
party platform, on a voice vote, statements affirming God as the source of moral
and political convictions. If you watch the videos (which the author
conveniently links, presumably on the assumption that anyone reading his
article would either not watch them or would be just as biased as he was), you
can see that the chairman clearly and obviously lied about the outcome of the
vote. That is what the boos were
about. They weren’t booing God, who was clearly not the person speaking on the
stage; they were booing a person standing in front to them and blatantly lying
to support his preferred outcome on a political procedure.
And, sad as I am to say it, even the
majority of Democrats are still Christians. So the idea that they were booing
God is clear nonsense.
Nor is it even remotely realistic to
interpret the volume of “no” votes as a “booing,” of God. Those delegates were
voting against a political statement that happened to reference God, for the
very good reason that it has no place in a document purporting to represent a
religiously diverse political organization. Furthermore, many Democrats
recognize the importance of the establishment clause, and take its defense
seriously enough to actually vote accordingly. Nobody voted against God (who,
it should be noted, did not put in an appearance to state his preferred outcome
on the vote), but against the inclusion of sectarian religious language in a
political document.
Plus, of course, there’s the fact
that there was still a substantial volume of “yes” votes. So it’s pretty damn
disingenuous to suggest that, because of this incident, no Democrat has a
position to speak on Biblical issues. The party is pretty clearly divided on
this topic.
So, lying about what happened and
what it means is the first way this is poison. The second is the framing of the
objections as summed up in the quote my acquaintance chose to accompany his
post: “The Devil knows the Bible better than almost anybody – certainly better
than you or I…” Basically, making the point that anyone who would use the Bible
to support a different political policy than the one the author wants you to
support, even (or especially) if that person seems to know the text better than
you do, is simply lying.
This is poisonous on multiple
levels. On the general level, it seems to be part and parcel of the general
right-wing push to undermine the value of expertise. It contains within it the
idea that someone who knows a subject better than you is, almost by definition,
someone who will use that knowledge to lie to you. That expertise is a tool to
mislead you, not one you can use to discern the truth. Note that the article
does not, in any way, encourage readers to improve their own understanding of
the Bible or any of the topics at hand. It doesn’t say that, if someone knows
the Bible better than you and reached different conclusions, you should try to
study how they reached those conclusions and see if they hold water. It tells
you to reject them because the author (and perhaps his faith tradition) says
to, and because experts lie.
On the more specific level, it
encourages the demonization of other
Christians. In the viewpoint presented by the author, Christians who
conclude that their god’s call to show compassion to the stranger supersedes
the injunction to obey the law aren’t merely believers who have interpreted
their god’s desires differently from you or your political leaders. They are
liars who are manipulating scripture to mislead you. They are, on some level, literally the Devil.
More subtly, this speaks to the
problematic nature of religious beliefs in political policy. Because, ultimately,
how does one decide which side is right (or whether either of them is)? It’s
not like God has issued, or is going to issue, a press release telling us which
policy to pursue. All any of us has ever seen, or is likely to ever see, is
just people arguing about how to interpret an opaque, ancient book to make
policy in the present. And occasionally calling each other evil for coming to
different conclusions. It’s a recipe for sowing rancor and division. And, in
case you’re wondering, I think that’s a bad thing.
By the way, what’s the difference
between the following two statements?
1)
I
don’t want to separate these children from their parents, but I will because
the Bible says I have to obey the law.
2)
I
don’t want to bake this cake for this gay couple, but I will because the Bible
says I have to obey the law.
Because
suddenly the religious right is very concerned about the Biblical injunction to
obey the law in the first case, and not so much in the second. The Big Book of
Multiple Choice seems, as usual, to be merely the thing you can draw on to
justify doing what you wanted to do in the first place. What you choose to
justify says much more about you than about the book or the desires of any celestial
being.
