Are Most Christians Politically Conservative?

This past Friday on our radio broadcast we were talking about Trump’s popularity along with Sarah Palin endorsing him. The tea party is livid over that endorsement wondering what in the world has happened to conservatives and conservative principles. Palin, like so many others, has sold them out, they say.

We simply reiterated the point we’ve been making for years that most so-called conservatives are not really conservative. Like most people, they vote for the candidate who says what they want to hear. That’s called populism. They have no real principled commitment to conservativism because they have no real coherent or comprehensive public policy worldview. Sadly, most Christians fall into this same category.

Our point was that Christians should be different. They shouldn’t simply vote for things they like. It’s selfish at the very least; oppressive in reality; and downright unbiblical in most cases. We need a biblical view of government and public policy. It’s called liberty.

It’s interesting that others are talking about the same thing. Of particular note, a Christian conservative commentator picked up on this theme in his morning show. He lamented long and hard that conservatives weren’t conservative and populism had gained a foot hold in the Republican Party. What to do, what to do? “We need to call Christians back to conservatism,” he declared.

He then cited W. as one of those conservatives. Yeah, big spending George Bush – that W. But that didn’t get a mention. Strangely however, this did: “He allocated thirty-three million dollars for abstinence education.” This is his example of W’s conservativism.

But this example is really a shining illustration of exactly what we were talking about on our show. Allocating money for abstinence education is not conservative – it’s as liberal as it gets. This commentator is not Christian or conservative on that point. W. is a populist on that point and this Christian conservative is voting for what he wants – not principled public policy. In other words, he’s for abstinence and therefore he’s for government (tax-payers) funding abstinence education. But conservatism says it’s not the role of government to fund abstinence education or any other kind of education. Conservativism is against that kind of tax and spend policy. Taxing people for what you want is contemporary liberalism. It’s big government. It’s tyranny. And this man’s proving my point that Democrats and Republicans are all for big government despite what Republicans say. Both use government – just for different spending programs. That’s called hypocrisy. And Jesus had a lot to say about that – none of it good. So this Christian conservative, like most, is really a populist.

It’s bad form to go ballistic over Palin or Trump followers when you’re just like them. Just saying.

 

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