Advocacy of Religious Left Is Out of Step

So now the other mainline churches are joining the U.S. Catholic bishops in a Washington lobby for “economic justice advocacy.” Interfaith Action for Economic Justice plans to oppose the Republicans and to radicalize the Democrats. The Rev. Arthur B. Keys Jr., executive director of the group, says: “I think the Democratic Party has as hard a time hearing us as anybody else.”

The national staffs of mainline churches, including the Roman Catholics, have now been captured by the Religious Left. They mean to lobby for their own vision of “biblical morality” to impose on the Republic. It will be interesting to see whether Norman Lear and the People for the American Way are as exercised by the extreme Religious Left as by the extreme Religious Right.

Since the U.S. political economy is rooted in biblical values, some of the assertions of the Religious Left are not nearly so novel as they seem to think. When they assert such claims as the following, they are stating basic American values:

--Human dignity is the basis of society and government.

--Economic decisions by government ultimately are moral decisions.

--There is a positive and affirmative role for government in promoting the general welfare.

--The church should not ally itself with a particular economic system but should be an advocate in forming moral public policy.

On the other hand, the Protestant mainline churches and now the Catholic bishops--through their staff members, at least--are also tugged toward the values and dreams of the far left. Among these are the dream of political control over income equality and a declaration of economic rights, in the form that the Socialist International has long supported. This is obvious in their further assertions:

--An increased disparity between rich and poor demands a restructuring of the economic system.

--Employment is a basic human right.

Much depends on the interpretation that is given to “basic human right” and to “restructuring of the economic system.” Concerning the former, if the right to employment is conceived of as parallel to the right to free speech, then neither the state nor other citizens could properly interfere with the one or with the other.

Much depends on the way the lobbyists of the Religious Left think about these things. If they try to be “politically ecumenical”--to represent their many fellow Christians who do not share their particular politics, as well as the few who do--they may be able to find interpretations that all can support.

For example, in considering the “disparity between the rich and the poor,” many Christians feel compassion for the poor, but no envy of the rich. They would like to lift up the poor. They think it both immoral and unproductive for government to set legal limits to incomes--say, about $100,000 (the top 1.8%). They also believe that tax rates set too high, as in Sweden, bring in lower revenues, limit invention and creativity and injure the common good. It is not “disparity” that worries them. It is the condition of the poor.

But if the express intention of the Religious Left is to be punitive toward the top 2% of income-earners, rather than to help lift up the poor, it is not compassion that moves them but Procrustean ideology.

Similarly, many Christians will agree that “full employment”--not the current level of 7% unemployment--is ideal. They believe that all Americans able to create new jobs, or to keep workers employed, ought to do so.

But if the Religious Left thinks government ought to be saddled with the task of paying salaries for the employment of 3 million to 4 million unemployed, many of their fellow Christians will object for moral and for practical reasons. This experiment has been often tried. It almost always fails.

Many Christians will agree that government has a “positive and affirmative role” to play in what the Constitution empowers government to do: “to promote the general welfare.” This includes the welfare of the poor and of the unemployed.

But how should government help? In diagnosis and in remedy, Christians of good will strenuously disagree. Such arguments should continue in a politically ecumenical spirit. Well-argued ideas have consequences for policy.

What many object to, however, is that the national staffs and social-action bodies of their churches do not take care to represent all factions of political economy within their ranks, but only the political inclinations of their staffs. They are not so much representatives as special advocates.

This is a scandal that must end soon. Political ecumenism would do the trick.