2 posts tagged “moderates”
In Matthew chapter 13, Jesus teaches about the Kingdom of Heaven. "The Kingdom of Heaven is like..." is the often repeated introduction to a number of parables. Wheat and weeds, mustard seeds, hidden treasures, pearls, and nets. All qualify as metaphors for the Kingdom of Heaven.
Wheats and weeds. In this parable, Jesus uses a common agricultural problem to demonstrate the nature of his kingdom - the infestation of weeds in the garden that seem to spoil that which God has provided. God blesses us with something good - our relationships, our health, our community, our church - and we find out that it has somehow gone terribly wrong. Should we just cut our losses and move on or continue to do the hard work of living in the midst of, well, weeds?
This parable has particular application with much that goes on in Christian and conservative politics. Here we are establishing a perfectly good political agenda and empire when danged if those milk toast moderate squishes don't screw the whole thing up. How are we every going to see the completion of the Republican revolution with RINOs like Ahnold, and McCain getting all the press?
In Matthew 13, Jesus teaches to live in the midst of the weeds and moderates. Why? Because the field is the Lords, not ours. He knows who is in control and that, at the harvest, justice will be done and the Righteous Judge will separate the good and the bad.
Kingdom politics seems to indicate that we would do well to accept that fact that we are to live and operate in the midst of the weeds and moderates. Let us then pray for those with whom we rub elbows so that, in the final day, they would join with us in the harvest.
The middle is mad as fiddlesticks and is not going to take it anymore. So it seems as reported bythe Chicago Tribune in the article Chrisitan Middle Seeking a Turn at the Bully Pulpit.
Former U.S. Senator and current Episcopal Priest John Danforth wants the silent middle to be silent no more.
Seems incredibly dissonant - the unpassionate are more passionate in their anger towards the Religion Right than they are for poverty, environmentalism and the like. How do you motivate the middle in a bi-polar political world? Do these so-called moderates not understand that while they may be upset with the Republicans over abortion and traditional marriage, they will find little "tolerance" in the Democratic Party? Unless there is more behind this "moderate movement"?Predicting a backlash against the increasing political consonance of faith with conservative Christianity and the GOP, Danforth said, "I think the antidote to all of this is for a lot of people to speak out. Beyond people writing about it, the key is for the ordinary citizen to engage with this issue of the use of religion as a wedge to divide the American people."
Danforth said he is convinced the majority of Americans are religious moderates or centrists but that, in line with the very definition of the word moderate, they have not been as vocal or as driven by passion as their conservative counterparts.
"I think that honest, rational people have begun to understand that not everybody who uses the language of religion is religious. . . . They're beginning to see that, in some instances, religious rhetoric and relationships to [religious] institutions have been more about campaign strategy than they have been about the high principles of morality," Gaddy said.
Exactly! The campaign strategy of the Left is to demonize the political reality of the Right - that is - that more of the conservative faithful are motivated and active in voting than the mushy middle of faith. The other fact is that, in the end, movements need candidates. The Left is hoping to capitalize on the ascendence of a great mushy middle moderate for the 08 elections. Now who could that be?
