American Theology
Daniel Larison writes at The American Conservative:
The Christian equivalent of [the Hindu concept of Karma] is not a work ethic, but rather the conviction that the righteous will receive their reward in the kingdom of heaven and that the wicked will suffer damnation. … To put it a bit crudely, it is the Santellis of the world who make people want to believe that there is some higher moral law or some divinely-instituted justice that holds everyone accountable, because in this world it is so very clear that there are two sets of rules: one for the powerful and wealthy, and another for the rest.
Unfortunately too many Christians believe there are no truly powerful or wealthy in this country or mistakenly place themselves on par with this group, if not within this group. For a people that maintain that we are in a shining city on the hill, denial of this is of course denial of a precept. We are after all the creators of the health and wellness gospel. We are people that treat solidarity with the poor as a corrupting ideal. We are a people that join Facebook groups titled “If you can afford beer and cigarettes, you shouldn’t be on food stamps.” We are a people when prompted to envision a person on welfare see an overweight black woman in the ghetto driving a Cadillac. We are a people that envision a national health care scheme as a means to waste our national wealth on people that eat too many french fries or enjoy a libertine sex life. We then complain that the people we perceive as parasites on society aren’t gracious for what they receive from the government or from charity.
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“Unfortunately too many Christians believe there are no truly powerful or wealthy in this country or mistakenly place themselves on par with this group, if not within this group.”
True. I’ve written about this before:
http://renegadetrad.blogspot.com/2010/03/they-need-to-learn-some-math.html
The fact is, in almost any wealth redistribution scheme…MOST people would be on the RECEIVING end of the benefits. And yet some of these same people complain about such a plan “stealing their money” because they, apparently, imagine they are above mean income. They are delusional. And the rich just use them.
We are after all the creators of the health and wellness gospel
I think you do America too much credit here.
Mr. Denton, you’re absolutely right; it was the Puritans and Calvinists of Europe, but it was they who most strongly influenced American Protestant religious culture. And I think thay indirectly exerted some very significant influence on American CATHOLIC religious culture. I’ve lived all over the world during my life, and I think that American Catholicism is sui generis.
The original article at the WSJ was good, although I don’t agree with it completely. It argued that the tea partiers are focused more on fairness (“karma”) than on liberty. Larison’s comment about the article raises the argument tea partiers don’t mind that the rich are protected from the consequences of their actions. That’s flat-out wrong, and I was glad to see that Rick Santelli challenged it. This VN article takes up the precise point that Larison was called out on, and adds a few stereotypes about the author’s opponents (basically, that they stereotype their opponents).
It seems as if each generation of writing has taken only the worst points of its predecessor and added errors to them.
I didn’t even notice the “if you disagree with me you’re probably a racist” angle the first time through. But it’s there. We – and by “we”, the author clearly means “people other than us” – hear the word “welfare” and think of a black person.