Early in my life, I think I was a Christian before I became a Republican, but that was so long ago I am not sure. Maybe they both happened simultaneously. You know, the glove in hand, chicken and egg thing. While I am not sure, there are some things I am certain about as far as events in my life.
I walked the isle at age seventeen in a North American Convention Baptist church where the pastor was supportive of Nixon.
I liked John F. Kennedy but maybe that was only because he was young, as four years later I ran for political office while still in college (Kansas 144th Representative district vs. LaVerne Spears) as a REPUBLICAN! How did I get from “liking Kennedy” to running as a Republican four years later? More PARADOXICAL still, how was it that I was an avid backer of Barry Goldwater as well?
Political skizophrenia?
Carl Jung liked to speak of the SHADOW part of humanity, of the individual. In the last decade we have talked more about a “shadow government”. But, what history has shown me is that ever since the church got in bed with Emperor Constantine way back in the early fourth century, the church has sided with “conservative government”.
Maintain the status quo- of years gone past!
Thus, the church, and especially the fundamentalist right wing of Christianity in America has been on the Republican side of the isle- especially in the last century. The ideal model was the evangelical backing of George W. Bush. The church backed his militarism, just wars, capital punishment, and of course ‘compassionate conservatism’, whatever that was.
The prophets of the Old Testament and the prophetic voice of the New Testament leaders who espoused non-violence were shoved off stage; however, a few men have broken through the “shadow government”. Can you say Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Desmond Tutu, and Nelson Mandela to name a few.
God is not a politician! God is certainly not a Republican, not a Democrat. Therefore it was easy for Jesus to simply say, ‘Render unto Caesar what belongs to him and unto God that which belongs to God”. Usher in the Kingdom of God which is neither a Blue state, nor a Red state, but a state of consciousness described as unconditional love.
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