Health Care, Faith, and Kengor's column

In the wake of the Healthcare Reform victory (hurrah), I found a curious response from conservative Christianity, an opinion piece by Paul Kengor, a political science professor at Grove City College. It's reprinted here on Warren Throckmorton's blog.

Kengor bemoans the fact that so many on the partisan left have invoked Christian themes in their pro-Reform Bill rhetoric, asserting in his view that this bill was God's own bill, affirmed by Christ himself. Kengor contrasts that embrace of Christian rhetoric with the "eight years of outrageous, baseless charges against President George W. Bush on matters of faith" leveled by those same liberals. The left's mobilization of Christian "social justice" rhetoric is all the more galling, continues Kengor, in that it includes provisions for abortion coverage, which Kengor sees as a disqualification for the bill's having anything at all to do with achieving Christlike goals. His piece concludes thus:

It’s a quite radical departure from eight years of scourging George W. Bush every time he confessed he prayed. At long last, there is room for Jesus in the inn, so long as the Savior “supports” a certain agenda. Who says conversions don’t happen?

I want to make several quick observations here.

First, as a left-leaning Christian, I've not been shy about citing my faith as the grounds for my support for the health care reform (i.e., steps toward socialization of health care--and I reemphasize that the bill that just passed is nothing like the full-scale socialization I think ought to happen). I think it's unconscionable that our society makes health care--even and especially life-saving (or quality-of-live-saving) health care--contingent upon a patient's ability to pay for it. My convictions regarding love for the neighbor over love for oneself, the proper ethical treatment of the poor and the sick, the skeptical attitude toward worldly wealth accumulation expressed in the gospels--all of these move me to resist a society where profit for a very few outweighs the good for a great many.

To affirm that my faith inspires me to support this bill, however, is something utterly different than asserting that God personally supports this particular piece of US legislation. I understand God as imposing upon Christians certain ethical guidelines to be applied (in the rich sense of checking in with, thinking deeply about, wrestling with) to life in general. I do not see God or Christ as writing (via verbal inspiration or by proxy) specific laws to be passed. Nor have I ever heard any health care supporter assert anything of the sort. Nor does Kengor cite a single politician, theologian, or social group who asserts anything of the sort.

Kengor charges the liberal left with unfairly castigating George W. Bush with religious fanaticism every time he so much as mentioned his prayer life, even though practically every president before him and Obama after him invoked Christian-religious themes in a variety of circumstances. Now, I believe one can study how and to what extent Bush II mobilized Christian rhetoric (and the kind of Christian rhetoric so mobilized) versus how and to what extent Obama mobilized it and conclude fairly that some stark contrasts separate how each used Christianity and to what ends.

But, insofar as critics decry Bush's (or any politician's) mention of his religious faith in the public sphere as inappropriate, I can agree. I've argued before against the idea that faith is purely private and must remain segregated from public stances. Rather, one's faith (in the broad sense, not just a religious sense) inevitably plays a role in the dynamics of one's positions and arguments. Banning faith from public sphere discourse only drives complicates the democratic process of exchanging ideas and fighting for/against/about different ideals. We need to become more adept at discussing faith-based stances, not less.

Problems arise, however, when faith gets played not as one factor in a decision-making process but as the only factor, a debate-stopper. The battle over abortion provisions in the health care bill,and the related struggles by many faith-based opponents of abortion over whether or not to support the bill illustrates this distinction. For Christians undergoing this struggle, their faith moves them to consider prenatal life as invested with personhood, generally from conception onward (not at all my own conviction, for the record). A bill that refuses to ban abortions in the strongest, most stringent terms, then, is from this perspective, a bill that tolerates medical murder. Yet so much of the rest of the bill moves in directions that do good--that provide coverage for the uninsured, that prevent companies from denying coverage for specious reasons, etc. And proponents of the bill strove mightily to craft policies that limited abortion provisions. The result? Some pro-life advocates ended up supporting the bill; others did not.

This was, I offer, a political struggle in which dynamic conversations about a faith-based conviction played a large role. At the fracture point were people--some people, at least--on both sides who understood and respected the faith convictions of their opponents, even if they disagreed with them.

I detect none of that respect in Kengor's column. For him, the abortion issue in the context of the health care bill isn't a difficult ethical issue that people of good faith--people within the overall Christian pro-life community--can disagree on. Rather, in Kengor's argument Christian faith emerges as a black-and-white stance against abortions (apparently, all abortion, anywhere, at any time, in any conceivable circumstance). Faith doesn't foster debate or conversation; it's instead an end to conversation, a shutting of the books that brooks no nuance or disagreement. Moreover, it wipes away any possible consideration of other things the bill in question might accomplish.

This stance of Kengor's I submit, is as contradictory as the stance he attributes to the liberal left. Faith can and should be part of the public debate, he argues, but apparently only when that faith matches his own exactly. Bush II's faith was fine, for Kengor, and any disagreement with it was just liberal grousing. But Obama's faith, Pelosi's faith, and the faith of other bill supporters (Christian and otherwise, pro-choice and pro-life)--this faith is a fraud. It's illegitimate. Why? Because it isn't his own.

But if you argue, as Kengor does, that faith can and should play a part in the public sphere and in political debates, then you must accept that faith itself--what it is, what it's not; what it enjoins, what it prohibits--becomes an object for debate, a thing contested rather than simply and homogenously affirmed. I suspect that Kengor and other religious right pundits who call for faith in the public sphere don't actually want to talk about faith; rather, they want their own specific faith to end all talk. Because once you start talking about faith, then you have to acknowledge a plurality of faiths, even and especially within your own faith community. This, I submit, has never been a strength of organized Christianity, especially not in its Protestant evangelical iterations.

More later,

JF

Health Care Reform Day

Ugh. I'm so nervous about the health care reform vote today, but I can't stand to look at/listen to any news about it. I'm for the reform vote, just in case that was unclear. Like most everyone else, I can't claim to have a comprehensive knowledge of its every provision. Nor am I 100% pleased with those provisions with which I'm familiar.

But the key features that attract me are its move away from profit-based health care insurance to a more socialized care. I just don't think that someone's ability to receive necessary medical care should be contingent upon their ability to pay. Health care ought to be a right to be enjoyed by all, not a privilege to be bought by a few. I should think that was implicit in the spirit of "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" (yes, yes--that's from the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution, but we're talking spirit of laws, not the letter, right?).

Will this plan cost money? Well, the Congressional Budget Office's report suggests it will cut the deficit, but frankly I don't think there's much of a way around the fact that a less-for-profit system will inevitably impose more social cost in the short term than a for-profit one.

And I'm OK with that. I hear so much now from folk like the Tea Partiers about how angry they are that government is daring to suggest that they pay for this or that social service. For them--I should say, for some of the people identified as their spokespeople ('cause there's really no leaders, right? It's an authentic grassroots movement that's somehow unified but not responsible for maintaining its unity, right? Thus, Tea Partiers can claim at once that they represent the true, authentic will of the people and still get to act wounded when media organizations call them on the racist/xenophobic sloganeering at some Tea Party functions. It's rhetorical having your cake and eating it, too: "You'd better listen to us! Except when we say embarrassing things!")--

Sorry. Parenthetical rant. For those Tea Party officials I've heard who have cogent quotes, the anti-health care bill bias seems to stem from at least two sources: 1) Health care reform is necessary, but not right now (i.e., not in a time of financial crisis); and 2) Health care simply isn't a right, and to try to make it so (a.k.a. "health care for all") is un-American.

Now, while I disagree with both arguments, the first seems at least more sensible to me. It would take a great deal of argument, for instance, to suggest that the current system is working as-is and that reform of some sort isn't eventually necessary. The question for the first line of thinking seems to be "when is best to institute reform?" They suggest "later." By way of disagreement, I note that throughout most of the last two decades (i.e., between the early nineties recession and the Great Recession now), the US enjoyed a fairly prosperous economy as well as mainly Republican-controlled congressional houses. How much health care reform happened then? Zip. Nada. [Edit: Well, that isn't quite true. Republicans did pass some reforms, such as expansions to Medicare's prescription drug benefit, which as many point out indicates how popular government-run health care programs are once adopted] To my mind, Republicans have signaled as clearly as they can that they are simply uninterested in comprehensive reform. Ever. [Edit: This statement, however, seems to remain true...]

The second argument, though, worries me, as it bespeaks a much deeper divide regarding the purpose of government in general. For some of the Tea Partiers I've heard on TV and radio, the US government exists primarily to protect individual rights, especially when those rights come into conflict with governmental or general-social interests. This isn't wrong so much as it is incomplete. It neglects the complementary purpose of government "to secure the common defence" and to "promote the General Welfare" (from the Constitution's Preamble). In other words--yes, defending the rights of the individual is important, but those rights and that defense must exist in concert with provisions for the General Welfare of society at large.

Perhaps the quotes from and interviews with Tea Party members and other anti-health-care-reform advocates I've heard are incomplete, but too often I hear the "protect individuals from tyrannical government" argument without any mention of the fact that government exists for the good of individuals. For all its limitations on government, the Constitution is not purely a check on government's power but also an imperative that directs that power toward positive ends. Democratic governments work of, by, and for the people.

Sometimes the work for the people in general trumps the will of the individual. I may dislike paying taxes when part of those taxes go to fund roads I never use or civic services I may never need. But taxes aren't about me as an individual any more than roads or fire departments or coast guards are dedicated to only my needs. Similarly, I may never have need of catastrophic health care insurance myself (lord willing). But I still fully support the notion that part of my tax burden needs to be making sure that such insurance is available for those who need it regardless of their ability to pay. Why? Because making sure people don't suffer an die just because they're poor is foundational to the mission of a government charged with promoting the General Welfare.

And, to speak more specifically to the Christian p.o.v., I have trouble seeing the Christ-like rationale behind making health care a commodity rather than a human right. I'm sorrowful that the Christian church in its various forms--particularly its Protestant forms--hasn't been more vocal in supporting health care. I in no way support the Catholic Church's extreme (I do think the word is appropriate) stance against abortion, but at least the various factions within the Church--pro- and anti-health care reform--have been part of the conversation. Moreover, the articulated stances--both the "we can't support it because of the abortion provisions" of the Council of Bishops and the "it does too much good not to support" of the group of 59,000 nuns--both of these exemplified how faith and theology can inform and animate a debate.

Where is the Protestant church? Where is the evangelical church? Within these sectors of Christianity I detect terrible discourse of silence or, worse, a call to resist initiatives for making society more just if those initiatives dare impinge upon the individual's profit margin. I'm hearing more and more references to the very few verses in the Bible that seem resigned to poverty (e.g., "the poor will always be with you"), as if these trump the overwhelming number of verses calling on Christians and Jews to fight poverty, to resist the lures of material wealth, and to put the needs of the neighbor above the profit of the self.

And the hair-splitting rebuttals I hear from some evangelicals--"Yes, but there's a difference between individual charity and governmental thievery"--cuts no mustard with me. Evangelicals more than anyone else have been arguing persuasively for the place of faith as motivator for political stances. More conservative evangelicals are hardly shy about citing faith as a reason for opposing abortion, reproductive rights, and gay rights. That so many of them now seem distanced from or utterly opposed to the expansion of health care for people otherwise unable to afford it reeks of selling out. One can oppose gay marriage without cost. But ask someone to pay more in taxes so everyone can get life-saving treatments (not just "emergency room" care--how sickening that argument is!)--then you ask for an actual sacrifice, an actual cross to take up, an actual delay on one's journey to dirty yourself to help a neighbor in need.

To be clear: I think health care reform (expanding benefits to more and more people regardless of profit motive) makes sense even from a non-faith-based perspective. But my personal support of health care stems from my faith, from the imperative from Lord Jesus to help those in need, to love neighbors as ourselves, to lay down our lives for others.

I hope it passes. [Edit: It did! Hurrah!]

More later,

JF

The What About Me Ethos: Tea Parties, Health Care, Haiti, and Avatar

Odd, isn't it, how seemingly unrelated bits of information, when juxtaposed, often resonate?

This last week I've written about three almost completely unrelated news items: 1) the Haitian disaster and Christians' response to it; 2) the Tea Party movement; and 3) some evangelical leaders' queasiness at the James Cameron movie Avatar. I had really no notion that these would link to a common theme at all until today, when I read news reports about the Massachusetts election on Tuesday to replace Sen. Ted Kennedy.

In a traditionally true-blue state, a Republican candidate, Scott Brown, now seems neck-and-neck with the Democratic candidate, Martha Coakley. At stake in this election is the Democrats' tenuous hold on capitol hill power. Should the Democrats lose this seat, the upset will widely be interpreted as a watershed moment in politics, where President Obama's ambitious domestic agenda is put in check by a more-conservative-than-he-bargained-for public.

Worse, for the Democrats at least, is the fact that the health care reform bill so painstakingly advanced to House/Senate negotiations phase will almost certainly tank, as Brown vocally opposes the administration's reform efforts.

While I've been less than pleased with some of the deals (I think that's a generous word) cut with various Democratic senators to garner their support, I support the health care bill as mainly a good and necessary step. The thought that the months of anxious work on the bill could be undone by a narrow state election bothers me.

How does this all link back to the Tea Party/Avatar/Haiti intersection? It all came together for me with this quote from Mary Beth Cahill, John Kerry's former campaign manager who was queried by the Washington Post about the impact of a possible Republican victory. Like most of the other experts the paper asked, Cahill doubted that Brown would end up winning. If he does, however, Cahill predicts that Democrats will have a round of finger-pointing followed by some grim soul-searching, trying to figure out what things need doing before the midterm elections. Cahill offers one pressing reform: "We will have to provide an answer to voters who think, 'What about me?"

Cahill means that Democrats will have to be better about articulating how and why various administration policies will benefit Americans in the short term.

What about me? This, it seems, is the question roiling about in the many Tea Party protests, most of which identify and vilify any number of Big Red Devils (government, illegal immigrants, other countries, elites, liberals, the poor) portrayed as snatching away the benefits and rights and privileges that should be, well, mine. Enough with entitlement programs! Enough with taxes for foreign aid, universal health care, or welfare! What about me? That question serves as the beating heart of populist libertarianism today, the driving force of free market capitalism.

It is also the antithesis of what I understand to be the agape spirit of Christ. I am depressed beyond measure that an angry, petulant what about me? characterizes so much of the US spirit today. I'm frustrated that the answer to high-level greed of CEOs seems to be an argument that appeals to the lower-level greed of the middle classes: it's my turn for a piece of the pie. I'm upset, as well, that the Democrats--and frankly President Obama--have largely capitulated to these baser instincts in the health care reform process. All through the debates, I hear arguments about how health care reform will or will not lower my personal cost or quality of care. Absent entirely is the deeper question about the kind of society we want to create: one that cares for its members or one that does not. I hear no calls to sacrifice, no appeal to the ideal of a society in which those with care for those without.

Part of the popularity of Avatar, I'm gathering, involves Cameron's presentation of a sci-fi world in which all lifeforms are literally, biologically connected. All animals and many plants have biological "plugs" (a cluster of neuron tendrils) that allow any two of them to connect and share feelings, thoughts, etc. I found the plot device a bit silly, to be honest (the blue-skinned alien heroes have their tendril-things emerging from the ends of their ponytails, so there's a lot of hair-plugs--ha!). But apparently this notion of mutual co-existence and its ethical ramifications have caught many people's attention and passion.

Cameron has created a (for many people) compelling world in which the individual cannot be the prime unit of political or social consideration. In his world, What about me? becomes impossible to answer apart from What about everyone? By contrast, the villains of the film are overtly (one might say one-dimensionally) painted as selfish capitalists: they work for "The Corporation," they destroy nature in order to mine "unobtainium," they worry about profits and personal motives above all. (I should note here there are other aspects of Avatar that I feel undermine such a reading, but I'll deal with these later).

Only rarely do we see something like that trans-individual, others-first ethos in action. And this brings me to the Haiti disaster, which--comments by Pat Robertson et al. aside--appears to be an example of most of the world dropping everything and sending money/supplies/people to help a country in trouble. It's the What about everyone overtaking What about me, and no giant blue CGI figures are needed.

But of course Haiti is an exception, not the rule, and the world's attention to it is certain to be short-lived. It's only a matter of time until someone here begins wondering how and why we spent X millions of dollars to help a perpetually impoverished country (I mean, can't they just pull themselves up by their own bootstraps?) when Y US segment of the population is suffering from Z trouble. Governmental assistance means taxes. And while I've heard many a conservative Christian spokesperson wax lyrical about the virtues of private charity (a check to the Red Cross or something), heaven help anyone who suggests that perhaps a tax could be levied or increased to make sure that no one goes without adequate medical care.

"Rescue the perishing" transforms to "Don't tread on me" faster than a lightning strike. How is this logic change possible? How can Christians consider them selves other-directed in all things except in civil society? I hear constantly from the Christian right how one's faith should dictate one's political orientation in terms of culture-war issues. Why then is it so hard for me to see how Christian faith directs the economic policies the right supports?

I am not, I have to say, a fan of Avatar for a number of reasons. But to the extent that it taps into and cultivates an ethos that disrupts what about me?, I think there's some hope there.

More tomorrow,

JF

Back On Line and Some Updates

Back at my parents' house for the holidays and thus (re)connected.

What have I missed in my time away? Let's see... there's a lot, so today I'll give a quick rundown/update on three issues I've been concerned with over the past few months.

* the Ugandan anti-homosexuality bill: Last I wrote, as I recall, I reported that Rick Warren had finally relented and released a pastoral encyclical urging Ugandan Christians to resist this bill. Warren Throckmorton's website (one of the best go-to sources of info on this) reported on a letter written by Ugandan pastor Martin Ssempa (co-signed by a number of other Ugandan Christian groups) ardently defending this bill. Versions of the letter appear here (from Christianity Today) and here (on Ssempa's website). Seempa protests that the main concern involves--well, the letter claims a number of claims: the abuse of minors by homosexual predators, the spread of AIDS/HIV, the creeping influence of homosexual lobbies internationally and in Uganda specifically.

Throckmorton notes that the letter completely ignores Warren's (and others') theological arguments against the bill. He also takes apart much of the evidence the letter links to in order to support its reasoning--not that his arguments (or those of the commentators to his blog posting) seem to matter much. If anything, the pastors' letter suggests to me a level of leave-us-alone intransigence on the part of the pro-bill Ugandan Christians. The relationship of Ugandan evangelicals to their western counterparts is in many ways growing more strained, and this situation is evidence of it. For a detailed overview of the relationship between Ugandan Christianity and US Christianity, see this article by Kapya Kaoma, which itself may deserve a post from me.

* The War on Christmas. Basically, the only new info here is more arguments pro- and anti- War. For example, Matt Barber, pundit-attorney for the Liberty Council, warns us that "the next time you hear someone say 'Happy Holidays,' remember that what they're actually saying – perhaps innocently enough – is 'Happy Holidays, Comrade.' They're playing right into the secularist agenda that seeks to replace the God of the universe with the god of government." His proof? Apparently the Soviet Union at one time discouraged recognition of Christmas. So obviously people's saying "happy holidays" in 2009 US and the USSR's anti-Christmas actions from the past only seem utterly incomparable.

Other Christian writers express impatience at the idea of a Christmas War (declared, it seems, by those who ostensibly want to defend Christmas). See Edward Grinnan's guest stint on the Washington Post's "On Faith" blog. See also this guest post on Michael Spencer's Internet Monk site. Both point out that fighting a Christmas War defeats the ethos of the season. Christmas Warriors are keen on making dire predictions about the awful world that will doubtless come should Christians lose the war. But what exactly would "winning" this War on Christmas look like? What or who would be defeated? Would Christians be happier if the government were to ban other holidays that occur around the end of the year?

* Health Care. This whole subject gets covered so extensively on other areas of the interwebs that I leave it up to you to investigate. Suffice it to say that it looks like a version of the health care plan will indeed be passed in the Senate before Christmas. I am personally for many of the provisions in the bill (i.e., eradicating lifetime caps on coverage, extending coverage to the uninsured, removing pre-existing conditions as a bar to coverage, etc.) though I would have been more pleased with some form of public option.

I continue to be depressed by the widespread resistance to this bill--well, not just this bill but to any health care reform whatsoever. Republican intransigence (there's that word again) to seemingly any kind of legislation whatsoever puts the lie to their insistence that they have the best interests of people at heart.

More distressing, however, is the fact that this resistance has come to be a signal issue for many on the religious right. I find utterly lacking any recognition that, in fact, many people are suffering due to lack of health care in this country, and that fixing this problem is worth the investment of some tax dollars. I get frustrated that the debate thus far seems primarily about money: support the bill to reduce deficits and cut costs or resist the bill because it will increase taxes. Both of these broad arguments pass over the deeper question of what the right thing to do is. Is it right for people to suffer and die because they can't afford adequate care? Is health care a right or a privilege?

I would think that the Christian answer to these questions is obvious. But religious right arguments against health care reform either ignore the questions altogether or--worse--suggest that the poor and/or underprivileged deserve their fate and that the better-off have to watch out for their own stuff.

Anyway--that's all for now. More tomorrow,

JF

Health Care Ranting

Apologies, but there's a health care rant ahead.

I'm angry that the Christian church has not taken a more prominent role in advocating for health care as a human right. I'm shocked at the number of comments I've read or arguments I've heard from evangelical Christians who see universal health care as the worst thing since people sacrificed droves of children to Moloch. More--I'm baffled. I can see that there are reasonable cases to be made for arguing that the free market rather than federal control provides better health care (I have not heard such arguments, and it strikes me that the free market has had more than enough time to prove whether it's good at health care).

But often I don't hear reasoned arguments but rather xenophobic screeds against the "illegals" who will somehow find their way to free health care. Or I hear the entire health care reform idea as some oh-so-clever ruse to smuggle in government-funded abortion. Or it's just "socialism." And more often than not, these anti-health care folk will wax Biblical about how much on God's side they are (or vice versa), urging all good Bible-believing Christians to up and follow them.

Let me take the three allegations in reverse. First, I'm unclear just what they mean by socialism. I note that it's really only in the US that "socialism" equates to "Stalinist communism" or some such totalitarian system. Most other industrialized nations see socialism as the perfectly sensible idea that some services should not be subject to control by the profit motives of capitalists. Insurance companies do not exist to make sure people have access to health care; they exist to make money. When those two ideals (care, profit) conflict, guess which one wins? As many others have pointed out, it's profit-driven insurance companies that ration care or sponsor "death panels." Insofar as some rationing is necessary--and some is--I'd prefer that the rationing agency be transparent, accountable, and relatively free from profit motive: i.e., the government.

I'm hesitant to argue that the Bible directly endorses any modern economic system. Were I to have to venture a guess on that, however, I'd have to say that references to the early church's members sharing all they had with each other sure doesn't resemble capitalism...

The abortion issue. Setting aside the larger pro-life/pro-choice debate, and setting aside the fact that federal guidelines already make it difficult to see how abortion could be overtly funded under reform bills--setting these questions aside, suppose right-wing critics are correct, and current bills under consideration do have loopholes that could allow someone's abortion to be covered. Frankly, though I don't doubt the sincerity of abortion foes' feelings about abortion, I think this government-sponsored-abortion issue is a ruse, a convenient excuse for opposing the bill. After all, if the abortion loophole were closed, would critics then drop their opposition to the reform effort? I doubt it. Would they, having won the abortion battle, be equally willing to pay for contraceptive/sex ed drives to prevent unwanted pregnancy? Would they be for government-funded prenatal and post-natal care? For adoption and early childhood education? I desist, as I'm repeating well-worn arguments about the paradox of caring more about the unborn than the born.

Finally, though--the "illegal immigrant" issue. I'm sorry, but I just don't see how any halfway inerrantist Christian can have anything but the most liberal attitude regarding immigration. The scripture is utterly straightforward: "The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the LORD your God" (Lev 19:34, NIV). Certainly loving the alien as yourself means wanting her to have necessary health care. I mean, what's the alternative?

Indeed, that question should be at the forefront of the debate on health care in general: What's the alternative? If you insist on excluding certain groups from universal access to health care (e.g., illegal immigrants, the unemployed, the uninsurable, the poor, others ), then have the honesty to recognize the implications of that stance. To whit: you endorse the death penalty for the sin of poverty, pre-existing conditions, and/or undocumented status. The poor deserve to die of preventable or treatable conditions, such a stance suggests. Ditto illegal immigrants. Ditto people with pre-existing conditions or bad credit. Ditto the unemployed. They deserve un-health.

I don't see any wiggle room here for people who claim to be Christ-followers, especially those who claim "pro-life" as a label. How can such people support anyone's exclusion from life-saving procedures? Or rather, support whatever exclusions you wish. Be OK with the poor or the stranger in our midst suffering and dying. But don't then say that you do so from a Bible-based or Christian ethic. The Bible is simply more radical than that.

One rebuttal to this argument that I've heard insists that the Bible urges charity, voluntary giving, not taxation (which they define as the government's taking money by force). I read one editorial (in a student newspaper) along those lines, suggesting that the best system from a faith point of view would be not "socialism" (which the writer did not bother to define) but rather a largish charity run by the good-willed people of multiple (Christian) faiths to provide necessary services to those who cannot afford them otherwise.

Hogwash.

Organized Christianity has had over two hundred years in this country to erect anything resembling such a charity organization with anything like the scope and reach the writer describes. It hasn't happened yet. I do not think it likely to happen at all.

Now, I do not view the Bible as a handbook to how to structure modern societies (what does the Bible say about interstate commerce regulation? Space exploration funding? Nuclear waste disposal?). But nowhere do I find Jesus, the apostles, the prophets, or other writers saying anything like "Give to the poor--but only if it's via a charity" or "Resist any systemic effort to improve the lives of the poor and needy unless it takes the form of a strictly volunteer organization." Indeed, Christ says that if someone sues you and demands your shirt as payment, you are to give them your cloak as well. Christian love and generosity is that which exceeds any system of giving, not that which substitutes for it.

More tomorrow,

JF

WWJD about Health Care and an Odd Reading of the Good Samaritan

Today I interrupt my ongoing examination of evangelical outreach (particularly the afterlife-focused, hell-first outreach techniques). I saw a link today on one of my usual conservative news websites that boiled my blood. The theme is "WWJD [What Would Jesus Do]--about health care?"

Now, I've been interested in the health care reform movement for some time, believing as I do that health care ought to be considered a right protected by our government rather than a privilege for those who can afford it. As a student of conservative popular culture in general, I've watched with growing alarm the recent outbursts by various people at congressional "town hall" meetings. Like the "TEA Party" demonstrations of a few months back, these youtubed meetings provide frustrated conservatives of a certain stripe with a national stage on which to perform their political beliefs, to make their political cases.

Typically, I'm all for political performances of this sort (I use the word performance not as a synonym for fake but in the active sense of performing a task). Indeed, my whole dissertation focused on instances of "democratic performance activism," where groups and individuals embody and display for a large audience their notions of what it means to live in a liberal democracy.

That said, I've been depressed at the degree to which the performers getting the most attention in the health care debate--the spokespeople at these town hall meetings who capture the sound byte on the evening news--these people seem to offer little more than incoherent, belligerent rage peppered with outright fabrications. Take, for example, the "death panel" myth--that Obama's plan secretly (or not-so-secretly, since apparently a host of right-wing pundits have "discovered' it) calls for the creation of soulless panels that will withhold care from elderly or terminally ill patients, mandate euthanasia, etc. Of course, none of this is so. For a sample rebuttal, see here.

I could go on, but my focus here isn't on the health care debate per se but on evangelical/Christian reactions to it. I've been curious to see how evangelicals would position themselves in relation to a drive to cover the uninsured, to make insurance companies actually pay for care they promised to cover, to prevent insurance companies from turning people down for preexisting conditions, etc. I have to say the whole thing seems open-and-shut to me. Who Would Jesus Insure? Everyone. It's even a liberal bumper sticker my father once used in a sermon. The Great Physician never refused to cure someone. Not ever. And, whatever one's views on inerrancy, it's just hard to read the plain words of the Gospels as saying anything but that Christians are to care for the sick and needy.

Nevertheless, the blog I read today did just that. Posing the WWJD question in terms of health care reform, the blogger (a pundit for the Cato institute) cited his "theologian father," who cited the parable of the good Samaritan. Now, on its face, this parable would seem to demand that Christians do what they can for anyone in need. That is: if the question is "who is the neighbor toward whom I am to show love?" Jesus' answer is "anyone and everyone in need."

Yet this blogger (or his father) renders the story thusly: The Levite and the Priest--the ones who hypocritically pass by the man in need of medical attention--represent the Government. The Samaritan represents the Christian. Thus, argues the blogger, Jesus is saying that individual Christians--and not the government--should be in charge of medical care. Government can't or won't help, so Christians should. Thus health care reform is evil.

Oy.

Conservative evangelicals will often shake their heads in wonder at the ways that liberal Christians can "warp" verses of scripture prohibiting, say, homosexual behavior or female preachers, re-reading the verses to mean the opposite of what they seem to say on the surface. I typically find myself on the side of the re-readers since I 1) do not view the Bible as inerrant, and 2) do no believe in a "plain sense" interpretation of scripture that ignores variations of culture, language, and history. Thanks to this blogger's innovative interpretation of the Good Samaritan parable, though, I have a sense of what this surreal sense of disbelief feels like--really? You're serious? That's how you interpret this?

Battling past my shock, though, let me sketch out a few problems with this interpretation.

Objection 1: Even if the Priest and the Levite represent "the government"--Jesus is condemning their inaction, not validating it. They are hypocrites because they should be helping the wounded man but do not do so. Surely, then, Jesus' condemnation of "government" would mean that we should A) see caring for the sick as government's job; and B) criticize the government as acting hypocritically when it fails to do this job. Far from supporting a notion that the government has no business in health care, Jesus (in this interpretation) seems to argue that it's absolutely government's job to ensure that people receive health care. Christians step in when the government fails to do its proper job, but by no means does this mean that governments ought to be let off the hook (Jesus didn't imply that the Priest and the Levite were somehow exempt from the duties they failed to perform).

Objection 2: The fact that the Samaritan helps the man personally doesn't mean that the only aid Christians are allowed to give is one-on-one. Jesus advocates expanding the scope of our concern, reaching out to more and more people. Never does Jesus suggest that one-on-one ministry is the only legitimate ministerial mode. Else, how would churches justify denominational or ecumenical ministries?

On a related note, this is a bizarre conclusion for a conservative evangelical to draw, this notion that Christians must restrict their moral duties to the private sphere. Certainly conservative evangelicals have been arguing for some time that Christian convictions ought to have a place in government and politics. They (and I'm generalizing here) do not back down from insisting that government respect and enforce their faith-based views on homosexuality, abortion, gambling, pornography, and a host of other such church/state issues.

Objection 3: This is more political than theological, but here's a point the parable interpretation misses: unlike the Roman Empire of Jesus' time, ours is a representative democracy. We are the government, so it does no good to pretend that there's a separation between Christian citizens and the government-of-the-people they support through their taxes and votes. Christians therefore have greater mechanisms at their disposal than merely individual charity. Surely it's at least as Christian to advocate that the government protect people's health it is to advocate that the government protect, say, the unborn or heterosexual marriage.

Whew.

Had to get that off my chest.

Back to evangelical outreach tomorrow,

JF