Tuesday, November 17, 2009

The Politics of Jesus

What do you think of the when someone says the name Jesus? Ok, that is a trick question.
What do you think of a person's political party when someone ask you about Jesus? With no other information, I have a strong feeling that everyone that reads this blog with say the Republican Party (or Conservative). I do not think that is a wild stretch of the imagination to think that. With images of Christians, the Bible Belt, and possibly Conservativepedia.
Now how about this question: which political party would Jesus would be affiliated with? I am not sure about you, but I can imagine Jesus being criticized on CNN or Fox News being yelling at the topics that Jesus talks about. The article that this blog post is on talks about tries to give a fairly good guess on which party that Jesus would be a part of, "Conservative" or "Liberal."
According to Conservativepedia, Conservatives believe or support:
• Classroom prayer
• Prohibition of abortion
• Abstinence education
• Traditional marriage, not same-sex marriage
• Respect for differences between men and women, boys and girls
• Laws against pornography
• The Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms
• Economic allocative efficiency (as opposed to popular equity)
• The death penalty
• Parental control of education
• Private medical care and retirement plans
• Canceling failed social support programs
• No world government
• Enforcement of current laws regarding immigration
• Respect for our military ... past and present
• Rejection of junk science such as evolutionism and global warming
• Low taxes, especially for families
• Federalism (less power for the federal government and more for local and state governments)
• A strong national defense
I am not going to list what Liberals believe or support. Partly Conservativepedia has a terrible list for it and I there is no such thing as Liberalpedia.com. Although, for argument sake let's say it the exact opposite.
Here is a little game for you: Make a mark for you think Jesus, Buddha, Moses, Muhammad and other religions figureheads would support. I got about 50-50 split for each figure that I could think of.
Something that I found interesting is that many of these are an issue that is preventive or keeping something around. (i.e., The Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms). Instead of dealing the issues at hand. Not dealing with the issues that happen as they occur (i.e. Illegal Immigrants). Personally, I would like to think that all religious figureheads would try to deal with problems at the root of the cause and not purely reliant on preventive measures. Both political parties are guilty on purely reliant on preventive measures.
Enter back CNN and Fox News, this is what the two television stations argue on, the regulation of preventive measures. This is why they treat the other political spectrum terribly. In the last points of the article, Hendricks talks about how each party is defined by opposing the other party. This is not how Jesus would define himself as a conservative or a liberal. Jesus (and other religious figureheads) are trailblazers, they would be outcasts in a modern setting.
So is Jesus a conservative or liberal? I hope he was centrist.

No comments:

Post a Comment