THOSE PEOPLE

from Midwest Conservative Journal by The Editor

Nobody and I mean nobody does religious bigotry anywhere near as well as the Christian left. Alleged ChristianDiana Butler Bass has a hissy fit over the fact that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker refuses to listen to his spiritual betters:

As the stand off between workers and Governor Scott Walker continues in Wisconsin, religious leaders have weighed in on the dispute. Roman Catholic bishops came out on the side of the unions, urging the governor to protect worker’s rights. Many mainline pastors, including Lutherans, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Congregationalists, and American Baptists have written letters, issued statements, and preached sermons supporting labor, unions, and collective bargaining. In Madison, interfaith prayers and proclamations have upheld and encouraged the teachers, police, firefighters, and other public employees in their resistance to the governor’s plan to break their union.

And that stupid idiot Walker stubbornly insists on ignoring all this wisdom.

Yet none of these prayers or sermons has swayed Scott Walker. He has steadfastly stayed on his original course, unfazed by the full weight of Roman Catholic authority or the mainline social justice tradition pressing upon him and urging him toward compromise and change. Scott Walker is neither Roman Catholic nor a mainline churchgoer. The son of a Baptist pastor, born in Colorado Springs, the heartland of the Religious Right, Walker is a member of Meadowbrook Church in Wauwatosa, a non-denominational evangelical church. Meadowbrook’s statement of faith, a fairly typical boilerplate of conservative evangelical theology, includes beliefs in biblical inerrancy, sin, exclusive salvation through Christ, and eternal damnation.

Good heavens. One wonders how the Episcopalian Bass made it out alive after being exposed to such outdated and barbaric concepts as sin and salvation in Christ alone.

In other words, Scott Walker does not give a rip about pronouncements by the Roman Catholic Church, any Lutheran, Episcopal, or Methodist bishop, or the Protestant social justice pastors. These religious authorities, steeped in centuries of theology and Christian ethics mean absolutely nothing in Scott Walker’s world. His spiritual universe is that of 20th century fundamentalism, in its softer evangelical form, a vision that emphasizes “me and Jesus” and personal salvation.

Enjoy for a moment the REALLY rich irony of a liberal Episcopalian lecturing anybody at all about listening to the counsel of “religious authorities, steeped in centuries of theology and Christian ethics.” You remember 2003, don’t you, Diana?

That was the year that your “church” officially plowed under 2,000 years of the teachings of “religious authorities, steeped in centuries of theology and Christian ethics” and revealed the mainline’s “spiritual universe” to be 20th century universalism, a vision in which theology is correct only when it says whatever I want it to say.

In other words, the Catholic bishops and mainline pastors–as well as the Quakers, Jews, Buddhists, and others–who have been trying to convince the governor to shift course are pretty well preaching in the wind. Other than David Koch (fake or otherwise), Walker is listening to One Person and One Person only: Jesus speaking directly to him. God, evidently, has directed him on his current path. Scott’s just trusting and obeying. He bears no responsibility other than that.

Diana? I suspect that Catholics don’t have much influence on you when the topics of abortion or the sinfulness of homosexuality come up so please stop projecting all over everything. You’re making an awful mess.

Unlike the Roman Catholics and traditional Protestants who have spoken on behalf of the laborers, Walker has no spiritual “check” on him, no authority other than the ones he hears in his own head, and no moral culpability in this situation. He’s the good Christian soldier, just following God’s lead.

Actually he’s the governor of an American state that is almost bankrupt. And for the last time, Diana, people like you don’t get to comment on the “spiritual check” or “authority” of any other Christian seeing as how your “church” is accountable to no one at all. Motes, beams and all that, kitten

And this is why Scott Walker’s religion is actually dangerous in the public square. Because it lacks the ability to compromise, it is profoundly anti-democratic. Many faith traditions actually possess deep spiritual resources that allow them to participate in pluralistic, democratic, and creative political change. But those sort of traditions tend emphasize the love of God and neighbor over strict obedience to an unyielding Father God.

Too bad Scott Walker’s not a conservative Roman Catholic or Bass could have brought back that old chestnut about taking orders from the Vatican. To Bass, religion is only acceptable as long as you don’t seriously believe much of anything at all. And that last sentence of hers seems slightly at odds with Matthew 7:21-23:

Not everyone who says to Me, “Lord, Lord,” shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, “Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?” And then I will declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!”

But I’m not a theologian or anything.