How can Christians vote for right leaning parties?
As a follower of Jesus I cannot see how right leaning people can do so and still follow Jesus. To me the Left more typifies what Jesus taught and his actions. I know several Christians who vote Conservative here in the UK but cannot see how that lines up with Jesus’ teaching.
Comments
Some Christians have conservative views. Others don't.
Time was when the Church of England was 'The Tory Party at prayer,' and the non-conformist 'free churches' tended to be Liberal and later Liberal or Labour.
Things don't map across so neatly as that these days.
When I was growing up in South Wales Catholics tended to be Labour voters, Anglicans Conservative and 'chapel' people a mixture.
Again, it doesn't map across as neatly as that any more.
I was always seen as a lefty in my evangelical days but I doubt I'm considered particularly radical here. It's all down to context.
I know Christians involved in all the main political parties. I know Christians involved with Reform. I might not like that but they are.
There's an analysis of political values that suggests that morality can be divided in several factors, including compassion, fairness, purity, and belonging. Left-wingers (and libertarians in so far as libertarians care) tend to prioritise compassion and fairness and treat belonging as an afterthought and purity as if anything an obstacle to compassion and fairness. Right-wingers, at least non-libertarian right-wingers, are much more concerned with belonging and purity. My impression is that right-wing Christians generally think that belonging and purity are important Christian values that sometimes can trump or at leas modify compassion and fairness.
Of course, my reading of the Gospels and of Paul is that compassion should always override belonging and purity. (There's a few cases where Paul prioritises purity, but he doesn't lay out any general principles to govern those cases, whereas he does frequently assert a general principle that love trumps everything.)
How do you love your neighbour? Do you love them by making choices for them in their own best interest, or do you love them by allowing them to make mistakes? If you have a choice between more equality or more growth and development, is it obvious which is the Christian choice?
I find it difficult to square some aspects of current right-wing politics with Christianity. The hate, demonization, and otherization shown by the Trump administration towards people of foreign birth, for example, is particularly hard to square with the Gospel. The current UK Labour government are hardly covering themselves in plaudits with the love that they show towards the more marginalized members of our community (there are plenty of threads on that here already), and I would hardly describe Labour's attempt to court the nasty populist vote as Christian either.
But on an economic front, if I think that an unfettered free market will, whilst increasing inequality, result in more improvement in the lot of the poor than a socialist alternative, then I don't see how it could possibly be unChristian to vote for that. It might be wrong, but that would be an error in logic and understanding rather than an error in faith.
Libertarians don't think that the government should put into place compassionate policies, except, I suppose, insofar as they they think the mere fact of being deprived of property rights is unpleasant, and hence protecting those rights is an act of compassion.
I've mentioned this before, but the Objectivist Club at my university in the 1980s campaigned against a local anti-panhandling bylaw on the grounds that it infringed upon the right to conduct economic transactions. I suspect most of those libertarians would not personally have given money to panhandlers, and they would DEFINITELY have supported the right of private businesses to kick out panhandlers, or anyone else the owner doesn't like for whatever reason.
Around the same time as that libertatian campaign, there was another one called "IF YOU WANT CHANGE, DON'T GIVE CHANGE", ie. using left-wing language to suggest that giving money to panhandlers actually hinders the kinda social improvement left-wingers want. In fairness, that campaign wasn't explicitly calling for a ban, though I suspect most people who saw the posters woulda lumped them in with the prohibitionists.
Yeah, I'm not quite convinced of that scheme, ISTM that left wingers have their own measures of purity and belonging (aka https://crookedtimber.org/2017/01/22/protestandpolarization/ ) and right wingers have their own measures of fairness.
The Conservatives since their Austerity years have actively sent people to early graves, and the Brexiteers and their fellow travellers are worse and Labour are too close for comfort.
I have increasing difficulty seeing how any are in line with any form of Christianity.
Wasn't what we now know as "neoliberalism" the dominant ideology of British politics prior to, I think, Lloyd George's kickstarting the welfare state circa 1909?
That seems like a series of pretty verbose blog entries. Can you summarize the point being made about left-wing purity tests?
• Lever
• Button
• Written ballot
• Mail-in…
Jokes aside, @Gamma Gamaliel sums it up pretty well.
The different notions/theories of what the purpose of government play a part, too.
I would say that the current far right (Trump, etc.) is not based on those theories or principles, though, which is why a lot of “old-school” conservative thinkers, writers and such practically begged people to vote for Kamala Harris in 2024. I recommend The Dispatch, The Bulwark, The Lincoln Project, and David French as conservative sources to look at for good-willed and in various cases Christian (French, definitely) people who are anti-Trump and actually principled, with whom one could have robust debate but come away still respecting each other.
This can be argued as well—people of good will and rationality can believe in the free market like that.
And/or they’ve fled.
Lloyd George's Liberal government introduced old age pensions. The 'Welfare State' as we understand it now was a feature of the post-WW2 Atlee government.
My fiery countryman Nye Bevan was one of its architects.
'These are my truths. Show me yours!'
Back in my youth I'd suggest that most UK evangelicals were small c conservatives but there was a sizeable left or liberal leaning tendency to some extent.
My sense now is that many evangelicals and conservatively theological Christians of other traditions are a bit further to the right than they were back then.
But that's gut-feel more than anything else. Thatcher always had her champions among conservative evangelicals, although not monolithically so.
See, this is why I tend to extend "there are no good, intelligent, Nazis" to the political right in general. To vote for right wing parties requires either a desire for evil outcomes or a failure to understand that they will inevitably follow from the policies proposed. If one is both of good intent and able to look at evidence you cannot end up voting for the political right.
There's a certain arbitrariness in picking four particular moral axes out of a scheme that originally had five (and later six).
Basically this. I would also add to this that we've all encountered professed Christians who couldn't give less of a shit about the poor and needy - being a Christian is all about being part of the in-group with God, but only insofar as that brings (for them) the right to judge others. An aunt and uncle of mine attended a church where they gave an older parishoner a lift on a Sunday - she (this older woman) refused point-blank to give to any charity that might benefit single mothers, despite this being an Anglo-Catholic church with plenty of emphasis on Mary. The Mother of God may have been a single mother after Joseph died but that didn't suggest to this person any need for compassion for single mothers in the world right now. Also my aunt and uncle treated this as a cute old lady quirk rather than, y'know, an abomination to God.
Not really, neo-liberalism requires a much more interventionist government, markets have to be actively made and protected after all.
Well put. After all, pre-1909 was the heyday of the British Empire, built on Imperial Preference, protected by the massive Royal Navy.
And would Imperial Preference have been the primary method of "actively making and protecting markets" at that time?
So, this would seem to call into question the idea that contemporary right-wingery is especially contradictory of Christian values.
No, because the kind of socialism I describe doesn't really exist any more in the UK. Socialism in the UK, such as it still exists, has embraced a more firmly anti-imperialist stance. My point was more about warning against hearkening back to a Nonconformist Socialist Golden Age of Nye Bevan et al.
Have either of them ever explained how they reconcile their politics with their religious beliefs?
I'm pointing out that things like the 'non-conformist conscience' or indeed the old 'Tory party at prayer' assumption no longer apply.
The landscape has changed.
There has always been a non-conformist element in the Labour Party. In the past it was rather moralistic but less so now.
I do recall an observation by a vicar who I knew personally and liked very much.
The politics of the Right emphasise personal responsibility. The politics of the Left emphasise social responsibility. The message of the gospel includes both. But it does so with a bias to the poor, for whom it is good news.
Not to mention "your situation is person's responsibility so there's no reason I should do anything", aka "why should my taxes feed poor people's children?". It's a sort of "I've found someone else whose fault it is so I don't care"
Yeah. I've never had a job where "working harder" was an option. There's never overtime or anything.
Sorry if it seemed like I was suggesting that you were hearkening back to a Golden Age, your comments on Bevan et al just prompted those thoughts - although in general I do think some left-wing types in the UK are rather prone to it. Not maliciously, but I think romanticising a sense of community that inevitably wasn't actually there for particular groups. I think it's (the yearning for a past that never was) understandable though. I feel like there is probably a word in Welsh for that
--- eat breakfast before the Eucharist
--- eat meat
--- wear leather
--- drive a gasoline-powered vehicle
--- laugh at "Seinfeld"
--- plant non-native species in your garden
--- use a different translation of Scripture from the one I use
--- give your alms to organized charities instead of handing out cash to beggars
--- invest in the stock market
--- enjoy classic rock music
Invent your own.
For me the issue is the gulf between the words "personal responsibility", and what is really being said when some people use those words. For instance, I wouldn't really see the kind of moral personal responsibility in the Gospels as being related to what politicians are saying when they use the phrase. There isn't an issue with actual personal responsibility, just what the phrase is used as shorthand for.
Does Seinfeld have a lot of anti-Christian jokes? I can see where someone could use a Scriptural argument against all of the others - not that I would agree with them necessarily, but there are plenty of Christians (and indeed entire churches) opposed to eg eating meat or listening to rock music on Scriptural grounds.
I would say a lot of the positions then put moral obligations on rich Christian invokers of them that (even for allowing for them not living in their ideal world) we don't seem to see.
Compassionate conservatism and government austerity don't seem to have led to the private sector or charitable sector really stepping up in delivery.
The newer right wing, on the other hand, quite blatantly vice signals.
Inevitably "personal responsibility" will be used by those who want to wash their hands of any community response to need. I mean, if I just want homeless people housed, questions of their responsibility for their situation are somewhat irrelevant.
Similarly, it's an attractive way of sidestepping the issue of the extent to which someone, through their circumstances, psychology or experience, is able to discharge the responsibility being emphasised about them.
Let's just leave it that I can't recall the phrase ever being used to encourage largesse or generosity of giving or spirit; always as a reason not to act in such a manner.
I agree with all of that.
To expand on this a little bit, in the US, it really isn't possible to separate the political right wing from white supremacy, sexism, and nativism. All their stated policies, even the ones that sound neutral on the surface, are just dog whistles for "we should still be allowed to have segregated schools".
-"Shrink the federal government" never means "spend less on the military." It means "get rid of food stamps and the Department of Education", which means "impoverish minorities and disabled people."
-"Pro-business policies" never means "enact universal healthcare so businesses don't have to spend so much time and paperwork on insuring their employees". It means relaxing environmental/safety regulations and re-legalizing discrimination against women and minorities. Likewise "free market."
-"Secure the border" doesn't mean "adequately fund and staff our immigration system, so that it takes less than four years to process an asylum claim or five years to naturalize a citizen's spouse." It means "get rid of brown people."
If you have any understanding at all of how a policy can seem to be facially neutral, but in reality be extremely discriminatory, you really can't avoid seeing this stuff.
I accept that some US conservatives may only be subconsciously racist. They may not understand at the conscious level that that's their motivation. Another possibility is they might be a single-issue voter on the subject of abortion, which position is usually downstream of sexism. But you really cannot be firmly against discrimination and vote Republican in the US.
Now, I think that kind of attitude is anti-Christ, but such folks don't ask the likes of me.