the public Christian image of economic justice
Posted by craftlessculture on 2 March 2008
It is no surprise that any appointee of President George W. Bush would have pro-business leanings. This, of course, includes Supreme Court Justices. What is upsetting is that the justice, John Roberts, who recently displayed extraordinary bias for a judge in a court of law by asking how the court can protect corporations from losing 3 weeks of profits for causing a massive environmental disaster, has such ties to the church. He is an appointee of our president and a practicing Roman Catholic. During his endorsement proceedings, he was championed by two prominent political Christian organizations, the American Center for Law and Justice (the response of Pat Robertson to the ACLU’s actions regarding separation of Church and State) and the Family Resource Council (founded by James Dobson). He has been endorsed by Rev. Dr. William J. Carl, (go to page 11 on the link) current President of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary (a school I attended from 2002-2004) as a fine public servant along with Samuel J. Alito.
This is not to say that an endorsement equates to collusion anymore than my endorsement of the music of the Indigo Girls means that I have met them or know them. But the point here is image. So long as unrestricted free market economic policy is endorsed as wholly Christian, people of faith who care about economic justice and who are critical of current economic policies will be ignored. Christians, who claim to care about the poor and about the outcast, about the stewardship of creation as entrusted to us in Genesis 2, and in the case of the Exxon Valdez, look like hypocrites. Our narrative and our faith will have no authority. We will continue to feel like outcasts in our own culture and thereby continue to grow the delusion that Christians are persecuted in the West (persecuted by liberals and feminists who want “to take away our rights”).
When we vote and when we participate in the public sphere as we live “in” the world, Christians have to understand how our alliances affect the integrity of our faith. and our witness (which is really our image to non-Christians). Personally, we need to proactively look to how we use our money not just as individuals but as a society to bring about God’s justice on earth. Otherwise, we will look like Eli Sunday.
