Joe Carter talks to the Religious Right

Looks like, from reading the comments to his thoughtful words, that the posters on his blog have themselves quite a strong and worldly addiction to those two pillars of Western Christian civilization - Ann Coulter and waterboarding.

"Well done, good and faithful servant--you have faithfully fought to keep the Ten Commandments in the courthouse."More likely we'll all be asked why we didn't spend more time concerned about our neighbors in Darfur or fighting the pandemic of AIDS.

The answer to that is simple: because they're just as much fruitless, onanistic pursuits as the former. The only difference is that they have more cache with the bien pensants.

Erin,

I do not disagree with your point about torture, but can you point me to scriptures that address torture?

Thanks.

Augustine never said that. See James O'Donnell, _Augustine: A New Biography_

ditto m_david,
from the POV of the developing life in-utero/congenital invalid/comatose bedridden, I see no distinction: our ideological opponents also take American lives with gay abandon.

The least we can grant our enemies is that their violence does not insult our intelligence: they're quite candid in their reasons for their animosity.

Our opponents on the other hand feign fond tolerance, until their cutthroat regime determines our marginal utility has passed its expiry date, and not even the charity of our loved ones is permitted to intervene in their tyrannical homicidal project (Terri Schiavo is a case in point)

Particularly those sentimentalists who seek to impose "biblical" truth... Whose bible are we talking about? The Assyrians who read their collects from an Arabic version of the Peshitta may disagree with you. A number of the Eastern rite churches did not include the book of Revelation in their Canon until shortly before Mohammed pillaged across their dioceses ... their biblical faith has no place for the dispensationalism of American evangelicals... "been there, done that" so to speak!!!

"As a matter of political liberty I believe it is important that we support such issues as prayer in schools and public displays of religious symbols."

Hmmm, ya mean like the Q'uran? The Torah? Pentangles? Little Buddha statues?

Why do I get the feeling he means public displays of CHRISTIAN symbols to the exclusion of all others?

Keith, we are not a theocracy. We have a secular - perhaps even shall we say, unreligious - government. Do you remember that even Israel had spies while en route to the Promised Land? If we fail to defend the safety of our neighbor, we're not 'fulfilling Christ's demands", we're failing to honor the first and great commandment to care for our neighbors.

Every now and then, someone makes a speech like the above quotes, which always comes out as some large surprise or even seemingly "out of the ordinary", but they're not, really. They are how mundane, ordinary, even ordinary politically involved people, live their lives. I found no new or strange concepts to any of it. It's how I think - even as a "right wing" Christian. Now, maybe Rod, who's somehow lost his mind or something, and rambled off into the far left, might find some kind of surprise there, but I sort of doubt it. Even though the poor soul has lost his way politically, he still seems to have the rest of his mind intact.

Many comments to this point have revolved around the "our ideological opponents consider us the enemy". Truth, that very much is, sadly. Even some of our political allies have too. But these people have lost their judgement. They have substituted politics for morality, their judgements no longer allow room for disagreement, and thus, they find themselves hemmed into corners from which they cannot escape, and retreat into radicalism. That's why and how a father can kill his daughter for having done nothing other than to marry a man not of his choosing. Can you see where we're going with this?

If some deranged lunatic, terrorist(s), madman, or God-knows-who, is holding my neighbor with a gun to his head, reciting the reasons for which he should die, my Christian obligation means I put a bullet in HIS head to save the life of my neighbor(s). For those who have lost their capacity to reason and to understand judgement and wisdom, they resort to the kind of radicalism that says they'll only vote to send him to jail for the rest of his life AFTER he murders. I don't have to hate him or want to kill out of anger or vengeance (definition of murder in the Ten Commandments), I only need to care for my neighbor to understand what to do.

This capacity for judgement is what is at issue, not whether we're in perfect agreement on political, or even theological, issues. As is rightly pointed out, LOTS of people have either given up, or else have never obtained, that capacity for judgement. Judgement is not prejudice, nor "judgementalism", nor radicalism. Nor is it a failure of conscience... it is instead, the application of the God-given sanctified standards of righteousness, along with a conscience and an intellectual grasp of our moral obligations, and then making decisions about how to apply all these to an imperfect world and imperfect situations.

It is not relativism, nor is it "everyone for himself", for the message to the Christian is exact opposite - love your neighbor and your enemy. Do good for both. But understand that sometimes you have to take a life to save more. We cannot be like a little child who clings to a shiny penny and refuses to trade it for a wrinkled 100 dollar bill - displaying no judgement or ability to value the greater for what it actually is. No, we must learn judgement and reason. After all, our God is intelligent and reasoned, and those two are among His greatest gifts to us.