Christianity is Great, and the Constitution Progressive
Oct 24th, 2007 by Micah Tillman | 11 Comments |
The Huffington Post has two opinion pieces today which are worth reading:
What’s So Great About Christianity by Dinesh D’Souza
Prescription for Progressive Politics: I am a “PreAmbler”, Will you Join? by Paul Abrams
D’Souza lays out a case for how being a Christian actually makes a difference in a person’s life. Which is nice. I think most of the Christian world has come to interpret “the Gospel” as “You get to go to heaven when you die.”
But I also think D’Souza’s arguments need a little something more, which perhaps his book provides. How much of what he says in this article, for instance, might switch out “Christianity” for some other religion’s name and remain accurate? That said, I especially appreciate his points on how “Christianity also offers a solution to the cosmic loneliness that we all feel” and “enables us to become the better persons we want to be.”
I’ll have more to say about at least the loneliness point later (but for now, I’ve touched on its basis here).
Abrams, on the other hand, is concerned with giving progressives a set of principles. I didn’t know they were lacking one, but he says they are. And he claims that the Preamble to the Constitution does just what he wants.
What I find particularly surprising is that he seems to have no problem with the line, “provide for the common defense.” Perhaps it’s just my own experience, but I have always gotten the impression that progressives are isolationist pacifists.
It’s nice to have one’s views corrected now and again.
| Stumble It! 
| Digg This!
| Add to del.icio.us! 
| Reddit? 
|
See, that’s your problem Tillman. You’ve been confusing isolationism with pacifism. You can be an isolationist and still believe in defense.
anger? really? i don’t quite understand anger being a response to fear…
but you pose a great question, to which i have to say i must ponder. i think i have an answer, but i will ponder.
and yes, 1 John is glorious.
Uh-huh. “Fight or Flight” Response. Anger is part of the “Fight” side.
Oh, and thanks! :-)
I appreciate your points here Micah. I would qualify your point about the Christian world’s view of the gospel with it being the way most of the western Christian world views the gospel. We westerners tend to think we’ve got it pretty good, with or without Christ, so people often don’t spend much time focusing on what faith does for us in the here and now.
But anytime I’ve stepped out of the western context (and I think that’s 3 times in 3 very different locales now), I’ve been impressed by the very profound understanding that Christians in those contexts have about what their faith means to them in their everyday lives.
That’s awesome. I like this kind of “qualification.” :-)
And now that I’ve made a serious contribution, I pose a question:
Isn’t making the first comment about your own post akin to laughing at your own joke?
No. No it isn’t.
It is nothing like that. At all.
Ipse dixit.
Darn, you win.
I’ll just shuffle off and pay my sewage bill now.
:-) That’s what I would do.
[...] I thought I should write a post I’d promised to write a while back. So I went back to find the post where I made the promise, and found the very phrase I thought was so [...]