St Mark's Centre for Radical Christianity is another theological institution in Sheffield. I'll post about it at a later date. A few years ago they invited Madison Shockley to lecture on Ascension Day and most of the following is something of what I remember of his lecture.
The first born again Christian to be President of the United States was Jimmy Carter (Democrat). Evangelical Christians voted for him and were disappointed by his liberal approach.
During his Presidency the Christian right started to talk seriously with the Republicans. It is not known what was said but perhaps if any of the Christians raised the question of whether it is ethical to withdraw benefits from the poor, they were told that it was not ethical for people to be dependent upon the state. The Republicans in any event entered into a pact with the fundamentalist Christians and probably many other Christians followed on in the belief that rhetoric about issues such as abortion outweighed questions of justice for the poor.
The next President was the Republican Ronald Reagan who was not a Christian.
The next was George Bush Senior and a Republican, an Episcopalian and not born again.
The next time they struck lucky with the born again Bill Clinton (Democrat).
In fact it was only with George W Bush that they got their born again Republican President and look what a success he was.
The point of this is to show that American politics has been dominated by an alliance between fundamentalist Christians and libertarian conservatives for several decades. Whilst their grip may have been slightly loosened in the last elections they are still a force to be reckoned with.
What do they want? I suspect the fundamentalist Christians want their moral agenda enforced. It is interesting that even after Bush, abortion is still legal and now there is an alliance around abortion reduction.
For the conservatives though there is no ethical agenda. Their goal is deregulation. They want to destroy the liberal state so that the liberal agenda will never again be a possibility. The current financial crisis is a direct result of this conservatism in the States and its analogues around the world.
We all, Christians and non-Christians, need to recognise that deregulation is a deliberate political strategy to conceal what is going on in the economy. Governments are unable to do anything about climate change whilst they are beholden to these powerful elites. Unmasking the truth should be a priority for the churches; why are they so slow to act?
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