Saturday, November 06, 2004

Is the Christian Right Christian


Jimmy Carter doesn't think so

This is actually an old article written nearly six months ago. I posted it on my first blog but it seems to be relevant now that the "Christian Right" is in the news. The article says:
Republicans have been extremely successful at connecting religion and values to issues like the fight against terrorism, abortion, and gay rights. Democrats have been far less adept at infusing our issues -- compassion, help for the poor, social justice -- with any sense of religious commitment or moral imperative. Why do you think that is?


It's all here

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

There you have it.

President Carter says
"When I was younger, almost all Baptists were strongly committed on a theological basis to the separation of church and state.

I have to disagree as this is not biblical.
There is no such thing for a Christian as sacred and secular, all is sacred every minute, 24/7/365.
It influences everything you do and think or at least it should.

What he says in the rest of the article, there isn't enough space to comment for everything.

The Democratic party of His time isn't the party today, it's been highjacked by a group who are as extreme to the left as the far right are in the so called Christian right.

I've got to go to bed.
I'll post tomorrow.
best
Mike

Anonymous said...

I'd have to agree with Carter. Moreover, I think evangelical lefties like Sojourners, the Other Side and possibly Ron Sider's Evangelicals for Social
Action might well agree with him.

However, consider the failure of the Christian Right outside the United States. According to one of my morning newssites, a seventh Canadian province has just legitimised same-sex marriage after a Charter of Rights and Freedoms court challenge. Three to go.

I'd say it's probably more due to lax broadcasting regulation and the absence of any meaningful large social democratic party or trade union movement in that country compared to the rest of the Western world. Resultantly, fundamentalist Christianity has
more supporters there due to what might well be
considered backwardness. In the United Kingdom, there's a stronger tradition of evangelical social
responsibility that moderates and broadens evangelical
social activism.

Craig

Anonymous said...

No Craig, the reason the Canadian law came in is because that country also has a sexual orientation provision in its discrimination laws but it also has a charter that is being reinterprested by the courts.

Anonymous said...

Actually, what happened was this. First, the Canadian Supreme Court read the existence of LG antidiscrimination rights into the Charter of Rights and Freedom's equality clause in Haig v Canada [1992].

For several years, it didn't apply it to Canadian spousal and parenting legislation, until it ruled to overturn Alberta's exclusion of LG individuals from its
(anti-discrimination) Individual Rights Act in the late nineties, whereupon it began to read in a more
elastic interpretation of antidiscrimination coverage
into its Charter of Rights and Freedoms interpretations. After a series of incremental Canadian
relationship equality decisions, British Columbia and the Canadian federal govt passed their version of relationship recognition laws, while Quebec and Nova Scotia passed civil union bills. More recently, all but four jurisdictions (Alberta, Nunavit, Newfoundland
and Prince Edward Island) have decided for same-sex marriage.

Usually, the courts interpretation of the Charter has led to Canadian provincial and federal action in the context of relationship equality.

Craig

Anonymous said...

Actually, Canadian same sex couples have had many of the legal rights as married couples since the Modernisation of Benefits and Obligations Act 2000, but unmarried couples had to be together for a year to access these benefits.

After the Supreme Court of Canada held that sexual orientation was an additional ground of discrimination under the charter, it was held that failure to prohibit discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation in the Canadian Human Rights Act 1985 (similarly structured to our Human Rights Act) and the Individuals Rights Protection Act 1980 denied homosexuals protection from discrimination. The exclusion of same sex couples from the definition of "spouse" was seen to be discriminatory in M v H (1998).

In 2003, seven same sex couples successfully defended a decision of the Canadian Divisional Court ( a case siilar to Quilter v Attorney Gewneral) holding that opposite sex marriage infringed eight same-sex couples rights’ to equality under S 15(1) thus redefining marriage The Federal Government decided not to appeal that decision.The other couple split up.

Canadian judges considered maintaining marriage as an exclusive heterosexual institution is no longer rationally connected to the objectives of marriage, whereas the NZ Quilter case gave the opposite decision. Human Rights legislation can not be reinterpreted as easily as a constitution, which is why Canada is seen by people like you as more progressive.