I have just spent two days in a cramped Vauxhall Astra chauffering my brother, his wife, her sister and her brother-in-law. It was an interesting experience. They are from the Bible Belt states of North Carolina and Georgia respectively and dyed-in-the-wool Republican Trump supporters. They regard me as a beyond redemption loony liberal.
The first day they were recovering from jet lag and weren’t up to political battle. But as we drove out to Oxford on the second day swords were crossed. The group’s champion was brother-in-law, Paul, a Christian missionary with a political science degree. We disagreed, but the disagreements were illuminating.
As expected, the discussion focused on Trump. Here are a couple of highlights:
Trump and the rule of law – I maintained that Trump is riding roughshod over the American constitution and the rule of law as evidenced by his refusal to allow White House staff to testify in the Senate Impeachment trial.
Paul’s response – The Democrats in the House of Representatives had their chance to call staff. They could have gone through the courts and forced the White House to respect the subpoenas. They chose not to, so they have lost the right to complain
Myself – If they had pursued the issue through the courts it would have taken months, perhaps even years.
Paul – That is the way the legal system works. You can’t complain that Trump is riding roughshod over the law and then deny him access to due process.
Myself – Hmm…
Trump’s unilateral decision-making – Trump does not consult either with his allies or his own officials before issuing life and death tweets.
Paul – How do you know that?
Myself – Because his officials and allies say they have not been consulted.
Paul – How do you know they are telling the truth? They could be lying. They are politicians as well and they have their own axes to grind.
It soon became abundantly clear that the gulf between us was a cross between the Grand Canyon and the Mariana Trench, and our discussion was only widening it. There was a root cause causing the divide and it needed to be discovered.
I found a hint of it while walking through the grounds of Blenheim Palace with my brother. It is a perceived difference of opinion over what should be the underlying values governing society. The conservative right, and especially the Christian right, see their values of church, family and libertarian principles under attack from liberals (aka Democrats, Social Democrats, Socialists and even Liberal Democrats) who have allied themselves with the LGBTQ community and the forces of political correctness.
To fend off the attack the conservatives (Republicans) have moved further to the right and dug in to defend what they see as a threat to their way of life. If that means playing a bit fast and loose with the law and supporting the most unpresidential of presidents, well, some things, they argue, are more important.
* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice. He also contributes to “The New World” magazine and lectures on world affairs. He is the author of “America Made in Britain,” two editions of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “The Falklands Crisis.”
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25 Comments
Christ said love your enemies. He also embraced social taboos ie prostitutes.One thing he did not like was using the church as a market.. Love others as you love yourself or treat people the same. It would seem Christs values have been cheapened by capitalist values. Human selfishness and greed coming to the fore !?
Love is our natural state; Our bodies however need sustenance and in today’s world in the uk, most comes from shops. We could grow more of our own food and become more self-sufficient. The Bible teaches compassion, practical assistance and spiritual guidance.
@Peter Hirst: The bible also teaches genocide, murder rape, slavery. It’s not really a book that we should base our society on.
“There was a root cause causing the divide and it needed to be discovered.”
Yes, exactly. It’s not that there is a simple disagreement about what the best policies are and what our political priorities should be. The disagreement is fundamental: about what human nature and purpose is and how our society and life should be.
The “culture war” is playing out differently in the US and in the UK (there is no real evangelical right in the UK, for example) and in other places with their own histories and contexts, but unless and until we can rediscover some basic consensus and re-create a new mainstream to which most people can belong, we’ll be dug in our trenches and lobbing grenades at each other, with no chance to move forward.
I believe more strongly than ever in the liberal heritage, of finding common ground in reason, tolerance and mutual respect which allows people to seek their own answers and destinies and so enriches all of us through diversity, but unless we can express that in ways that welcome everyone, even those who still believe that the world is the direct creation of God and that there is a divinely ordained way that people should live, we are going to be fighting a war we do not want and cannot win.
Graham, it’s all a question of what you focus on. Jesus lived in by our standards a barbaric age. It is all to his credit that he was able to see beyond this.
Why argue? They are dyed in the wool Trump supporting evangelical Christains and you aren’t; what possible use to either of you was ‘spending days in a car with swords drawn’? Did you think you’d convert them to agnostic democrats?
My brother-in-law, in the US is a staunch Trump supporting Christian…Last November/December we spent an enjoyable holiday there (sunny California). He knows my views, and I his. We didn’t get inviolved in pointless arguments; we just accept each other’s view and talk sport, weather, etc…Their bible accepts that ‘For everything there is a season’;a holiday isn’t the ‘season’ for politics and religion!
Their views are as strange to us as those of the people who held a placard saying “God sent Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees Mogg to lead Britain out of the EU” at the anti-Brexit marches in London. We just have to accept that some people will believe things which are patently wrong and will not change those views. It is not worth the argument. I attended an evangelical Sunday school as a child. I have also attended a few evangelical services as an adult. I can see why people might be indoctrinated although I prefer the Church in Wales/ Church of England approach. A colleague of mine at work accepted what was preached at his evangelical church; even warning me that the day of judgement was about to happen – that was over 25 years ago. He also mistrusted the United Nations as concealing a secret world government bent on undermining Christianity.
Whenever someone makes a social or political point with the phrase ‘…the Bible says so’ or ‘the Bible teaches…’ , they are almost always quoting isolated verses and interpreting the Bible wrongly. Most Christians from even New Testament times have been struggling with these issues and re-interpreted their scriptures; this started by saying (after much argument) that gentiles did not have to subscribe to many of the OT rules in order to become a Christian. Then they abandoned the flat earth idea, slaves and the secondary role of women; now many (including some Conservative Evangelicals) are embracing gay marriage. Unfortunately many are stuck in the recent tradition, and therefore using the Bible in a hugely inconsistent manner to justify their position.
About a month ago, a group of Christians in the USA produced a paper severely criticising Trump and he was furious. Unfortunately another group, led by Billy Graham’s son, supported Trump and they seem to get the greater share of media coverage.
Christian Evangelical Americans have put their trust in a man who shows no real evidence of genuine religious belief. Indeed Mr Trump’s only god seems to be himself.
They will eventually be bitterly disappointed, but it may take some time.
Yes. Trump uses Christian’s for his own political ends .Sad . Yes how log will it take till the penny drops?
One thing in the article puzzles me. It is mentioned that the Trump supporters support libertarian principles. Yet Trump supporters seem to be right authoritarians. Indeed on the right populist Trump (apparently) takes on libertarian plutocrats who fund job destroying policies. Trump makes a play of being self funding, claiming to be outside ‘the swamp’. So how do the right authoritarians relate to libertarianism?
@Chistopher Curtis
‘ the UK (there is no real evangelical right in the UK, for example) and in other places with their own histories and contexts, ‘
Not really true. You forget the late Ian Paisley’s Free Presbyterian church. Paisley had some of his theological education in the USA and maintained links there. Visiting Ulster (where I learnt my liberal christianity) in recent years has revealed that his attitudes have been influencing mainstream Presbyterian and Anglican christians there too.
@Ian Sanderson
I didn’t mean to suggest there were no right-wing evangelicals in the UK, just that they are not an organised and powerful constituency which wields effective political power. The evangelical right, at least in large parts of the US, is a force that can determine elections.
I meant to add that the unique situation of Northern Ireland has an evangelical Church aspect, of course, but that is bound up with a broader and deeper identity. It would be a mistake to simply see the DUP as reflecting evangelical concerns.
Defending their values is hard mental work that involves playing fast and loose with the law of the land and cherrypicking facts or dismissing inconvenient evidence as lies. Their brains do this to avoid the alternative – revisiting their ingrained world view hardened in their neural networks – which would be more painful and difficult for their brains to do. In the community they are from, this condition probably prevails. It seems completely insane to outsiders. Not much we can do about such cases. But we can keep challenging this world view among people whose ideas are not yet fixed. That helps to keep down the numbers afflicted by it.
“Defending their values is hard mental work that involves playing fast and loose with the law of the land and cherrypicking facts or dismissing inconvenient evidence as lies. Their brains do this to avoid the alternative – revisiting their ingrained world view hardened in their neural networks – which would be more painful and difficult for their brains to do. In the community they are from, this condition probably prevails. It seems completely insane to outsiders. Not much we can do about such cases. But we can keep challenging this world view among people whose ideas are not yet fixed. That helps to keep down the numbers afflicted by it.”
That’s it.
Joe Hayes has outlined the perfect post GE, campaign appraisal, explaining why despite failure after failure, Lib Dems are ‘neurally challenged’, unable to learn and adapt, and destined to repeat the same flawed strategy time and time again?
The way I see it, if you go around calling yourself a Christian then you should be following the example and teachings of Jesus.
If you want to place more emphasis on what went on in the Old Testament than what Jesus CHRIST (clue is in the name) taught, then don’t call yourself a Christian. Find another name to describe the way you live our life.
Jesus life, as recorded in the Bible was mainly about compassion, not being prejudiced towards those from other groups, and helping the poor and vulnerable.
There will always be different interpretations of all parts of the bible, and I’m not saying Christians should pretend the Old Testament and other non-Gospels exist. It’s easy enough for Christians to cite Jesus when he made clear that the old ‘eye for an eye’ was by then an outdated form of ‘justice’ that was overly pimitive, so there shouldn’t be much debate on that. How that then applies to other ‘rulings’ from the Old Testament is a bit trickier to say, but I’d argue that this sets a precedent that at least some of them can be deemed archaic without it being blasphemous.
But regardless of how there is room for debate on how the ‘case law’ of the New Testament, and specifically the Gospels update and replace some aspects of the Old Testament, I think there are many people who call themselves Christian have far more in common with the Pharasees than with Jesus.
“The way I see it, if you go around calling yourself a Christian then you should be following the example and teachings of Jesus.
If you want to place more emphasis on what went on in the Old Testament than what Jesus CHRIST (clue is in the name) taught, then don’t call yourself a Christian. Find another name to describe the way you live our life.”
Seconded – by an atheist
I’m fairly agnostic these days, but I did grow up in a Christian family and nothing Trump and his supporters has any alignment with what I learnt.
Sunday School was spent mainly discussing the parable of the Good Samaritan, or the woman at the well, do unto others, and let he who is without sin … and so on. Inbetween that we learnt about life in less well off parts of our own society and of the world, which was augmented with some fundraisers. There was also a very heavy emphasis on loving the sinner if not the sin.
I totally accept that you don’t need to be Christian to care, and with the benefit of hindsight I realise that my experience of church and Sunday School was not typical of all British Christians. Yet I am saddened and shocked when I see people who claim to be Christian behaving so thoughtlessly and awfully to their fellow human beings. And even though I am pretty agnostic these days, I find myself getting quite angry at these fake Christians for claiming to be something they aren’t.
Bernie Sanders having just won the Nevada caucus looks to be building up a head of stream as Super Tuesday approaches. 14 states – Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia will hold their presidential primaries on Tuesday 3 March.
These states account for about a third of the delegates needed for the presidential nomination. The largest of these are California and Texas. California is a foregone conclusion in the democrats ledger and while Texas is considered a safe republican state (it has not been won by a democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter in the 1970s) the democrats have been talking up the prospects of bringing this state back in the democrat fold, as it was for a century or so up until the 1970s.
While Texas is firmly in what is referred to as the bible belt it just 44 percent Anglo, and the majority of its citizens are age 34 or younger – demographics that favour the democrats if efforts to register and turnout younger voters are successful.
If the Democrats do take Texas it will take a lot more than the support of the other bible belt states to keep President Trump in office.
This thread should not really be about religion and different interpretations of Christianity. There is a social/cultural divide which has grown and is still growing across many (perhaps most) of the European/North American democracies (and further afield) which is basically between right-wing (narrow identity/tradition/nostalgia/resistance to “others”/angry/left behind/inward-looking/nationalist) and liberal/left (wider identity/enlightenment/looking to the future/tolerance and acceptance of others/content in the new global technological world/internationalist). In different countries it is often (but not always) bound up with religion – but in different ways (rednecks and tea party evangelicals in the USA, Catholic traditionalists in Poland). But fundamentally the divide is social and cultural in a broad sense – and specifically political. And it is, here, changing the political landscape, not as a result of Brexit – but Brexit has been the main catalyst in the short term.
Much as I enjoy trying to categorise political thinking, Tony, I don’t see many politicians in either the Tory or the Labour party actually fitting in either definition. Fortunately, the variety of stances taken by politicians in both parties give our own party scope for recruitment, as indeed could be seen in the recruits we had from both, and perhaps in other people cast out by their party leaders. I hope they may prove in their differences from us as well as their similarities a strength to us, providing fresh thinking, and that we can embrace some of that thinking in our deliberations this year.
I recommend Jonathan Haidt’s ‘The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Religion and Politics’.
Surely the divide is between those who want to see others free to do as they wish, and those who do not. The latter can call themselves what they like, but they are reactionary forces and afraid. As someone once said to an evangelical who was violently opposed to ‘gay marriage’ – “well fine, just don’t marry another man then”.
I have no difficulty with members of faith communities choosing to deny themselves aspects of a free society, I have some qualms when they impose their beliefs on their families, and will oppose their attempts to impose their beliefs on society in general always.
I recommend Bob Altemeyer’s The Authoritarians. He spent 40 years researching this.