Q & A: Religiolitics

QUESTION:

I'm confused as to how the Republicans have co-opted Christianity. Christ said help the poor; Republicans want to give tax breaks to the rich, put more burden on the poor and cut social programs. Christ cured the sick; Republicans vow to kill universal healthcare. Christ said, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"; Republicans want to deny equal rights to gays. So, an honest question to my Christian Republican friends -- what of Christ's teachings do you feel the Republican party is following/espousing?

ANSWER:

The biggest one you haven't mentioned is that Christ EXPLICITLY advocates the separation of religion and politics in Matthew 22:21.

At the time (30-ish AD) such an attitude stood out in sharp contrast to the Jewish expectation for a Messiah as a political figure (such as the allegorical Daniel or the actual Judas Maccabee), considering much of post-Alexander Jewish messianic lit was primarily concerned with the re-creation of an independent, autonomous Jewish-religious state as the best solution to oppressive Helenization policies.

While Matthew does attempt to imply the fulfillment of this expectation by tracing Joseph's lineage back to David, the synoptic authors all go out of their way to show Jesus getting effectively acquitted during his only significant interaction with the Roman state, and unlike the other great messianic heroes, Jesus not only fails to defend the Jewish religious establishment from the gentile conquerors, he attacks it constantly and ends up getting murdered by it.

All this becomes evident when you look exigetically at a passage like John 2:19, "Destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days." More than just a prophesy of the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD and/or his own resurrection, an exigetical reading reveals Jesus downplaying the importance of the Jewish theocracy as symbolized by the Temple and asserting himself as the new mediator of a personal encounter with God. (See also the bits about the Temple Veil being rent at the time of his death and the entire Epistle to the Hebrews).

Suffice it to say that "Christian" politicians, be they democrats, republicans, or otherwise, are "not true Scotsmen" because they obviously don't understand the intent of their own stated religion.

--Dan Colgate