On Sat, 12 Jul 2008 04:12:18 -0700 (PDT), Sound of Trumpet
<soundoftrumpet@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles8/Glazov-The-Bible-and-Conservatism.php
>
>
>http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles8/Glazov-The-Bible-and-Conservatism.php
>
>The Bible and Conservatism
>
>Jamie Glazov
>
>
>American Thinker's guest today is David Klinghoffer:, a senior fellow
>in the Discovery Institute's program in Religion, Liberty, and Public
>Life and a former senior editor of "National Review." He is the author
>of "The Lord Will Gather Me In, Why the Jews Rejected Jesus," and
>"Shattered Tablets." His new book is, "How Would God Vote?: Why the
>Bible Commands You to Be a Conservative."
>
>Glazov: David Klinghoffer, thanks for joining us.
>
>Klinghoffer: Thank you.
>
>Glazov: What inspired you to write this book?
>
>Klinghoffer: I was dismayed at the way conservatives have let
>ourselves be bullied by secular liberals into giving up any effort
>either to draw wisdom from the Bible in shaping our policy goals, or
>to speak the language of faith in political contests.
I wonder why he doesn't mention secular conservatives, who tell us that
they
would never dream of going to church becuse there are too many smelly
blacks
in church?
>In applying Biblical wisdom to the top 20 hot-button issues of our
>day, my purpose is to give the folks on our side the tools to recover
>religion as an essential guide to policymaking. We're so terrified
>that someone might call us a theocrat. I've got news for
>conservatives: They'll call us that no matter what we do. If we don't
>talk about faith, they'll just say we're crypto-theocrats. Meanwhile,
>Republicans have got a presumptive nominee in John McCain who refuses
>to acknowledge the need many voters have to be spiritually inspired, a
>need that Barack Obama seems poised to ride quite handily to the White
>House.
And secular conservatives spead anonymous letters alleging that we
Liberals
"throw dust in the eyes of people with Bible verses."
>Glazov: Why do you think secular liberals go into a fit of moral
>indignation if there is even a hint that the Bible is involved in
>something, but if the Koran enters the picture, they start bending
>over backwards to appease Muslim forces. If secular liberals are so
>serious about the separation of Church and State, where is their
>passion on the despotism of Sharia?
>
>Klinghoffer: Neither secular indignation at the Bible, nor this
>fawning reverence for Islam, should surprise a student of the Bible.
>Scripture's laws and narratives describe patterns in human behavior
>that are timeless. The evidence of this is as observable today as it
>was three thousand years ago. Again and again, Moses and the later
>Hebrew prophets warned against the temptation to look to false alien
>spiritual traditions for inspiration and truth. It is, in a word, the
>temptation to idolatry. While the Israelites were still on their 40-
>year sojourn in the desert, Moses foresaw that when they entered the
>promised land, they would stumble and ask each about the aboriginal
>Canaanites, "How did these nations wor****p their gods, and even I will
>do the same" (Deuteronomy 12:30).
Are secular conservatives any better?
>A culture like ours that was until recently guided by Scriptural
>wisdom will, by its nature, constantly have to face down demands from
>within that we turn to alien sources of moral authority. Whether those
>sources are secular or Islamic, it's the same dynamic at work. The
>irony is that some of the concessions we've seen in the West to Sharia
>law are not negative, in themselves, at all. Like Harvard's move to
>block out certain periods at the gym when women, of any religion or
>none, can exercise without being ogled at by men. That's something
>that should have been done because our own Western religious tradition
>values modesty. It's a shame that the reform was instituted only when
>Muslims demanded it.
>
>Glazov: Does looking to the Bible for political guidance in any way
>imply an inclination to trample on the First Amendment or, as some
>critics would argue, institute some kind of theocracy?
>
>Klinghoffer: Only if you think that America before about 1972 was a
>theocracy where freedom of religion was disregarded. Which is nonsense
>of course. It's true that, read in a simple-minded literal way, the
>Bible (especially the Hebrew Bible) appears to describe the functions
>of a theocratic state, with religious courts puni****ng Sabbath-
>breakers, homo***uals, and others with the death penalty. But only the
>simple-minded read the Bible as if it always says what it means in
>plain terms, like a newspaper.
The bible also says uncomfortable things to conservatives, secular and
religious:
Evil men do not understand justice, but those who seek the LORD understand
it
completely. Better is a poor man who walks in integrity than a rich man
who is
perverse in his ways (Proverbs 28:3-4).
Whebn the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice, but when the
wicked
rule, the people groan (Proverbs 29:3).
To conservatives, of course, these are the dust that is thrown in people's
eyes.
>What I bring out in my book is that the Bible, a deeply cryptic text,
>really can't be understood without reference to the ancient oral
>interpretive tradition that Moses received from God at Mt. Sinai. That
>tradition, preserved for generations and written down in the Talmud
>and Midrash, makes clear that the Bible very often, in fact typically,
>does not mean what it appears to mean from a superficial reading. So
>we find, for example, that in actual jurisprudence, those scary
>Biblical penalties were completely unenforceable. What was their point
>then? To teach us values, a comprehensive worldview that speaks to our
>private and our public lives. To say that the Bible offers a picture
>of reality that, in turn, has political implications is a long way
>from saying we should have religious tribunals chasing down Sabbath-
>breakers. The idea that spiritual values have a legitimate role to
>play in shaping political values is a basic American assumption, not a
>theocratic one.
>
>Glazov: So you mean that the Biblical penalties were meant to be
>metaphors?
>
>Klinghoffer: I would say, instead, they are given to us as objects of
>carefully study, for contemplation, meditation, and edification.
None of which actually tells us that we should be political conservatives.
>Glazov: The Bible was written or revealed (depending on one's
>perspective) thousands of years ago. Tell us how, in this context, its
>teachings are still relevant to our politics in 2008.
>
>Klinghoffer: Well, on some issues the relevance is quite apparent,
>even at the surface level. The Bible, for example, seeks to inculcate
>us with a prejudice against high taxes. That comes across in texts
>like Genesis 47:23-25 and 1 Samuel 8:15-18 which, respectively, equate
>a tax burden of 20 percent with the condition of being a "serf" and a
>tax rate of 10 percent with being a "slave." Keep in mind that the
>average American today shoulders a tax burden of 30.8 percent. On
>other issues - like drug legalization, gun control, or universal
>health care -- the Bible's position has to be carefully and
>sensitively teased out.
>
>Glazov: If our society deems religion a private matter, why bring the
>Bible into politics at all?
>
>Klinghoffer: Jews and Christians alike tend to undersell or dumb down
>our faiths. We're content to think the Bible is just a book of
>stories, ethical rules for personal observance, or abstract
>theological dogma. On its own terms, however, Scripture is much more
>than that. Something I found incredibly exciting about Judaism, my own
>inherited religion, when I was getting to know it as an adult, is that
>it addresses every conceivable kind of question a person or a society
>could have. Based on Proverbs 8:30, Biblical tradition depicts
>Scripture as nothing less than a blueprint of moral reality. I can't
>think of any reason a wise person would not want to know what the
>Bible can teach us about immigration, climate change, war, Islamic
>terror, or any of the other issues I cover.
This also has nothing to do with the heading.
>Glazov: Does a Biblical worldview match up exactly with a conservative
>political outlook, and if not, why?
>
>Klinghoffer: Notice that the book isn't subtitled "Why God Commands
>You to Be a Republican." Even "conservative" may not be exactly the
>right word. There are points where Biblical wisdom parts ways with
>standard right-wing Republican orthodoxy. On immigration, I show from
>a reading of the Book of Ruth and other texts the nuanced approach,
>being both demanding of and welcoming toward immigrants, that
>Scripture would have us adopt. Based on the spiritual significance
>that the Bible attaches to race and nation - the 3 primordial races
>and the 70 primordial nations - I don't think the mantra of "color-
>blindness" and "letting race go" can be fully sustained.
But Christians are the third race.
Or is Klingoffer saying that "blood is thicker than water" - ie that even
all
the power of God in holy baptism cannot vill in the chasms caused by
difference in DNA?
>Glazov: What do you mean exactly that the mantra of "color-blindness"
>and "letting race go" cannot be fully sustained?
>
>Klinghoffer: There's an understandable tendency among conservatives to
>wish that race would just go away as something that people have to be
>aware of or think about. But that tendency may not be Biblically
>correct. Take affirmative action. From a secular perspective, it has
>two possible justifications: as 1) racial spoils or payback, and 2) as
>a way to insure that a university or workplace should not lack persons
>representing the unique perspective of the African-American, the
>Hispanic-American, or what have you. Now, the Bible is not unfamiliar
>with racial spoils, and gives some approval to it. The Jews when they
>left Egyptian slavery are said to have emptied the country of its
>riches (Exodus 12:36), which they then took with them into the
>wilderness and used to construct the implements of the Tabernacle.
>Biblical tradition also links the institution of pidyon ha'ben, the
>redemption of the first born by paying a certain token amount to a
>priest, with "payback" for the sin Joseph's brothers committed in
>selling him as a slave. As for the unique perspective offered by a
>member of a racial minority, there are Biblical grounds for thinking
>that, say, an African-American can indeed contribute something,
>spiritually, that a European-American can't, and vice versa.
>
>The Bible sees apparently material phenomena, like race, as being
>ultimately spiritual in nature. That's in contrast with secularism,
>which sees material stuff as the only reality. So a person's race has
>spiritual significance. God created races and nations because each has
>something unique to contribute, a goal or mission different from that
>of any other group. So to want, let's say, your university to include
>a fair representation of African-Americans, even if that means having
>different admission criteria, seems at least defensible.
>Glazov: Can there be a coherent political conservatism without God?
>
>Klinghoffer: Not really. Russell Kirk lays this out in The
>Conservative Mind, where he identifies the very first principle of a
>conservative worldview as "Belief in a transcendent order, or body of
>natural law, which rules society as well as conscience. Political
>problems, at bottom, are religious and moral problems." Whittaker
>Chambers wrote in Witness that, "Political freedom, as the Western
>world has known it, is only a political reading of the Bible." So
>maybe there's an alternative secular path to constructing a political
>philosophy of ordered liberty? The problem is that the kind of freedom
>Chambers came to embrace, at the same time he was undergoing a
>spiritual awakening, is founded on a respect for personal
>responsibility, the idea that the government should clear a space for
>us to live our lives and make our own mistakes. That's perfectly
>compatible with the Bible. The most im****tant word in a discussion of
>Scripture is "commandment." Our being commanded by God assumes our
>personal responsibility, free moral agency. Secular materialism, by
>contrast, tends to see people as captives of Nature, like
>sophisticated animals, neither morally free nor morally responsible. A
>secular worldview is ripe for the temptation on the part of lawmakers
>to coerce us - for "own good," of course.
Then why are theie so many secular conaservatives out there?
>Glazov: What philosophical question, if any, underlies the range of
>differences between conservatives and liberals on the hottest
>political issues of the day?
>
>Klinghoffer: Precisely this question of moral responsibility. On issue
>after issue, conservatism follows the Bible in assuming that people
>can be held responsible for their actions. A pro-life position (which
>the Talmud traces to Genesis 9:6) is simply the view that a woman is
>responsible for the life growing in her womb. She can't just evade
>that responsibility through surgery. The death penalty? It's
>appropriate for our government to assume the awesome responsibility of
>executing the worst criminals, even if that means - one hopes very
>rarely - that a jury or a judge may err. The Bible's institution of
>witness falsification (Deuteronomy 19:16-21) demonstrates that
>Scriptural wisdom is realistic about human fallibility, yet it gives
>us the responsibility anyway.
That really is nonsense. Simply claiming that your own political position
is
morally responsible, while that of those you disagree with is morally
irresponsible does nothing to show the truth for the claim.
>Glazov: If the Bible can't be reconciled with liberalism, what about
>libertarianism?
>
>Klinghoffer: Well, this point about responsibility can cut both ways,
>can't it. The Bible doesn't value liberty for its own sake. It favors
>freedom because freedom clears a space for our making free moral
>choices.
Where does the Bible say that?
>Where such a choice would be at the expense of someone else's
>life (abortion), the Bible would most definitely counsel against
>radical liberty.
The radical liberty of "spoiling the Egyptians" was a form of affirmative
shopping. But political liberalism in principle is based, at least in
part, on
the idea that the weak should be protected from the depredations of the
strong, raht than "might is right" -- and THAT is why the unborn should be
protected.
> So too on the issue of drug legalization. The Bible
>speaks warmly of the value of wine in life (Psalm 104:15), but harder
>drugs have the effect of undercutting our power to make free choices.
>There too the Bible would draw a line.
>
>Glazov: What do you hope your book will help achieve?
>
>Klinghoffer: I hope readers will be empowered to look to the Bible for
>wisdom on specific practical political issues, and that conservatives
>will then feel freer to argue for the right policies not just on
>anemic, unconvincing secular grounds but because we have access to a
>source of timeless truth that Americans have revered for generations,
>going back to the Revolution.
>
>Glazov: David Klinghoffer:, thank you for joining FrontPage Interview.
>
>Klinghoffer: Thank you, it's been a pleasure.
Is Klinghoffer an Orthodox Christian?
--
Steve Hayes
Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/litmain.htm
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/hayesstw
http://www.bookcrossing.com/mybookshelf/Methodius
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