FAITH AND VALUES

Dana Prom Smith

 

          As a Protestant with a conservative theology and liberal social and political inclinations, I fear politicians with a theocratic message.  They want to impose their religious ideas on me and everyone else, even though I may find their religious ideas abhorrent and repressive.

 

          When Paul Ryan used his Roman Catholicism as a justification for imposing his views on contraception and abortion on the rest of the country, I heard echoes of theocratic claims from the Middle Ages down to modern Islamist states, like Saudi Arabia. 

 

          When Willard Romney declared during a presidential debate that he believes in God, he implies that should be a reason to vote for him.  Just as patriotism has often been the refuge of scoundrels, so has a publicly proclaimed piety.  I’m not as interested in his faith as I am in his values.  Since the Republicans have redistributed income toward the rich, does he now believe in redistribution toward the middle class?  What does he think about advocating women’s dignity and freedom in the face of the oppressive powers who want to keep women in a subordinate status, that is, clear answers on contraception, abortion, and equal pay?   They’re the issues, not his faith.

 

          Since politicians lust for power, we should be wary of them, especially when they become publicly pious, their piety masking their lust.  It’s their values that count.  By the way, the word “evangelical” comes from the Greek word meaning the “good news” of freedom, not the bad news of theocratic repression.    

RAVENING WOLVES

Dana Prom Smith

 

          Willard Romney and his right-wing Fundamentalist supporters are unaware of the parable of the Good Samaritan where the chief virtue was helping those in distress (Luke 10:29-37).  According to Jesus Christ, acts of mercy to the down-trodden and despised, “the least of these my brethren” are acts of mercy to Him (Matt. 25:40.)

 

           They’ve rejected the moral code of reaching out to those in need, that is to say, mercy and grace, replacing mercy and grace with moral purity.  Their aim is to prove themselves morally superior to those in trouble as though their station in life was the result of their purity instead of their self-aggrandizement, commonly called greed.  The result is that their relationship to the world is one of condemnation and accusation of the so-called 47%.  They are self-righteous and censorious.

 

          Trying to cast the first stone, they try to pass themselves off as Christians all the while subverting and displacing the Gospel with an antagonist message of greed and sanctimoniousness.  Perhaps, it’s best illustrated by Paul Ryan who claims to be a Roman Catholic but espouses the sophomoric atheism and social Darwinism of Ayn Rand’s “get what you can and to hell with everyone else.”  They ought to get their message straight and admit they are not their brother’s keeper but rather are their brother’s antagonist.  They want a government which favors the one percent and everyone else takes the hindmost.  They bring to mind those false prophets in sheep's clothing who are inwardly ravening wolves.