Trueblue
02-17-2008, 02:59 PM
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/15/do_religious_conservatives_des/
The TV Christians, however--despite their ultimate institutional failure (though not personal failure: Falwell and Robertson became multimillionaires)---did fabricate three great falsehoods that we are still debating today:
1) That Evangelicals Protestants are a near-majority of the country, and in concert with conservative Catholics and Jews, are indeed a majority, albeit now uncertain and confused about how best to exercise their majority rights;
2) That an anti-religious minority—“secular humanists” or just “liberals” the preferred epithets—has for too long controlled most elite institutions (including the Democratic Party, the federal courts, the universities, and the mainstream press)--and that the SHs have been forcing their agenda on the majority;
3) That the Republican Party would—if enough religious conservatives voted for it—save America from the secular humanists.
In fact, white evangelical Protestants have never come close to being an American majority. For over half a century in fact they’ve made up only a quarter of the US population—with over three-quarters of them living in in just two regions, the South and Midwest . The rest of the often-cited “forty percent” of Americans who are“born-again” are African-Americans (or a growing minority of Hispanics) who are evangelicals and generally Democrats—and in many cases are furious with the white TV Christian crowd, despite a shared faith.
Has Rick Warren, who has “embraced” the problem of global poverty, told us how he’s going to solve it?
He has apparently decided how he's not going to solve it. Here’s Warren two weeks ago rebuking a conservative columnist who called Warren a “statist like Jim Wallis” (Wallis—because he actually votes for Democrats, is married to an Anglican priest, and was raised in a Northern evangelical denomination—is still treated like a leper by the most of his ostensibly “new evangelical” colleagues):
“Actually, I completely disagree with Jim Wallis’s big government approach to poverty," Warren wrote. "The answer is not aid, but trade, not subsidies but freer markets, not wealth redistribution but wealth creation. not the government but local congregations. Saddleback’s P.E.A.C.E. plan is the exact opposite of outdated and ineffective liberal social government programs that have failed.
"We believe the answer is the Church, not bigger government.
"People who have studied our program know it is the exact opposite of Jim Wallis’ program. I’d appreciate you making this distinction and correction."
Warren then adds this:
"The great thing out of all of this is that I discovered the Von Mises website! Peter Drucker was my personal mentor for 20 years, right up to his death. Drucker introduced me to Hayek who obviously led me to Von Mises. Of course you know Von Mises said 'Human action is purposeful behavior.' I’d call that a purpose driven life!"
Frankly I’m hard-pressed to see what’s so “new” or “transformative” about this sort of evangelical talk, or why Rick Warren is being celebrated as a “new voice" among white evangelicals. I think it's terrific that, unlike Falwell and Robertson, he doesn’t blame gays, feminists, and the ACLU for 9/11 (although the McCain campaign is edging toward blaming the Democrats for "losing Iraq") and that he refrains from calling Islam, as Franklin Graham (Billy Graham's son and head of Samaritan's Purse) did, "a very wicked and evil religion." This is very good.
But does Warren really believe that “the churches” rather than “the government” will, for example, come up with the $500 billion or so that will be eventually needed to rebuild New Orleans post-Katrina? Does he really plan to take his PEACE program to Africa—and cure poverty by using the same principles as the now utterly-discredited Washington Consensus, which the World Bank and IMF now admit was a disastrous failure that led to a "lost decade of development"?
Does Warren seriously believe that Saddleback or Habitat for Humanity rather than the FHA and Fannie Mae can build enough housing to shelter those in need? Does he honestly think that wealth redistribution is not an issue, now that America has the most unequal wealth and income distribution in the Western world or in its own modern history? And how precisely will more Wal-marts and Chinese imports make up for the export of high-wage, high-skill jobs from America ? (Ludwig von Mise and Friederick Hayek, whom Warren is praising here, were two of the most reactionary economists of the 20th century, heroes to Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of economics. These are the policy mentors of the “new” evangelicals like Warren?)
More at the link
The TV Christians, however--despite their ultimate institutional failure (though not personal failure: Falwell and Robertson became multimillionaires)---did fabricate three great falsehoods that we are still debating today:
1) That Evangelicals Protestants are a near-majority of the country, and in concert with conservative Catholics and Jews, are indeed a majority, albeit now uncertain and confused about how best to exercise their majority rights;
2) That an anti-religious minority—“secular humanists” or just “liberals” the preferred epithets—has for too long controlled most elite institutions (including the Democratic Party, the federal courts, the universities, and the mainstream press)--and that the SHs have been forcing their agenda on the majority;
3) That the Republican Party would—if enough religious conservatives voted for it—save America from the secular humanists.
In fact, white evangelical Protestants have never come close to being an American majority. For over half a century in fact they’ve made up only a quarter of the US population—with over three-quarters of them living in in just two regions, the South and Midwest . The rest of the often-cited “forty percent” of Americans who are“born-again” are African-Americans (or a growing minority of Hispanics) who are evangelicals and generally Democrats—and in many cases are furious with the white TV Christian crowd, despite a shared faith.
Has Rick Warren, who has “embraced” the problem of global poverty, told us how he’s going to solve it?
He has apparently decided how he's not going to solve it. Here’s Warren two weeks ago rebuking a conservative columnist who called Warren a “statist like Jim Wallis” (Wallis—because he actually votes for Democrats, is married to an Anglican priest, and was raised in a Northern evangelical denomination—is still treated like a leper by the most of his ostensibly “new evangelical” colleagues):
“Actually, I completely disagree with Jim Wallis’s big government approach to poverty," Warren wrote. "The answer is not aid, but trade, not subsidies but freer markets, not wealth redistribution but wealth creation. not the government but local congregations. Saddleback’s P.E.A.C.E. plan is the exact opposite of outdated and ineffective liberal social government programs that have failed.
"We believe the answer is the Church, not bigger government.
"People who have studied our program know it is the exact opposite of Jim Wallis’ program. I’d appreciate you making this distinction and correction."
Warren then adds this:
"The great thing out of all of this is that I discovered the Von Mises website! Peter Drucker was my personal mentor for 20 years, right up to his death. Drucker introduced me to Hayek who obviously led me to Von Mises. Of course you know Von Mises said 'Human action is purposeful behavior.' I’d call that a purpose driven life!"
Frankly I’m hard-pressed to see what’s so “new” or “transformative” about this sort of evangelical talk, or why Rick Warren is being celebrated as a “new voice" among white evangelicals. I think it's terrific that, unlike Falwell and Robertson, he doesn’t blame gays, feminists, and the ACLU for 9/11 (although the McCain campaign is edging toward blaming the Democrats for "losing Iraq") and that he refrains from calling Islam, as Franklin Graham (Billy Graham's son and head of Samaritan's Purse) did, "a very wicked and evil religion." This is very good.
But does Warren really believe that “the churches” rather than “the government” will, for example, come up with the $500 billion or so that will be eventually needed to rebuild New Orleans post-Katrina? Does he really plan to take his PEACE program to Africa—and cure poverty by using the same principles as the now utterly-discredited Washington Consensus, which the World Bank and IMF now admit was a disastrous failure that led to a "lost decade of development"?
Does Warren seriously believe that Saddleback or Habitat for Humanity rather than the FHA and Fannie Mae can build enough housing to shelter those in need? Does he honestly think that wealth redistribution is not an issue, now that America has the most unequal wealth and income distribution in the Western world or in its own modern history? And how precisely will more Wal-marts and Chinese imports make up for the export of high-wage, high-skill jobs from America ? (Ludwig von Mise and Friederick Hayek, whom Warren is praising here, were two of the most reactionary economists of the 20th century, heroes to Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of economics. These are the policy mentors of the “new” evangelicals like Warren?)
More at the link