The Bible and Politics part 2

Is Jesus a conservative or a liberal?

This is a question that has been overly trivialized and that most people answer neither as quickly as they can. The fear is that claiming Jesus to one side of the political aisle or the other is closed-minded, uncaring, and excluding people from the Kingdom of God. The reality is that the issue is a little more complicated than simply answering one way or the other.

Most of the time people will take this answer issue by issue when answering that Jesus is neither. What is said is that Jesus would support conservative causes, like pro-life, pro-traditional marriage, and fiscal responsibility. He would be against the attitude of conservatives toward the poor, homeless, women, and the disenfranchised. On the other hand, he would be supportive of liberal causes, like giving to the poor, the redistribution of wealth, environmental stewardship, welcoming illegal immigrants, and other social issues. Truth be told, this approach totally misrepresents the nature of conservatism, liberalism, and Jesus.

Liberalism and Conservatism are relative terms. What we consider conservative in America is considered liberal elsewhere. What is considered liberal in America is considered conservative elsewhere. What it boils down to is accurately defining what conservatism and liberalism is as ideas and not necessarily as words (if that makes any sense). After all, some would make the argument that the conservatives of today were the liberals from the past. Let's take a moment to define conservatism and liberalism ideologically according to how they are represented in modern day America.

I would argue that conservatism is the ideological belief that the traditions and institutions of the past that have brought success for human civilization still have value today and should be practiced and promoted. You can see a more thorough definition of what I believe to be conservatism at www.williamhseng.com under the Building Blocks page.

Liberalism is not focused on being liberal anymore. Liberalism, today, is focused on what is called progressivism. The progressive movement more or less teaches that the traditions and institutions of the past will not always be relevant, thus they can be discarded once society has deemed them obsolete.

Whether or not Jesus was a Liberal or a Conservative will need a more thorough answer in the next part of this series. For now, let us conclude that there was an aspect of Jesus' message that was liberal, but that it was only liberal in that it was departing from the traditions of the day to restore the true intentions of God's plan from the beginning. In other words, his message was inherently conservative. But this is not necessarily a political statement. This too will be discussed in the next entry of this series.

www.williamhseng.com