Tuesday, February 22, 2011

What forms Evangelical political views?

Is it the Bible?

Here is why I ask. Ed Stetzer linked to an article in Christianity Today that looked at evangelical American views on spending and the Federal government. Not surprisingly, given that most American Evangelicals are more or less politically conservative, evangelicals are far more likely to support cuts to what would be classified as humanitarian aid...

Overall, evangelicals were more likely to favor reductions in federal spending, but like other Americans, they wanted most areas to remain the same or increased.

The top choices among evangelicals for the chopping block are economic assistance to needy people around the world (56 percent), government assistance for the unemployed (40 percent), and environmental protection (38 percent). In each of these categories, evangelicals were more supportive of decreasing spending than are other Americans. In fact, evangelicals were more supportive of funding cuts in every area except military defense, terrorism defense, aid to veterans, and energy.


I am all in favor of cutting Federal spending across the board and I don't see anything Biblical about the confiscation and redistribution of wealth by the government. What I found interesting was that not only are evangelicals overwhelmingly (almost 80%) not in favor of decreasing defense spending, almost half are in favor of increasing defense spending in spite of the enormous national debt...

In general, Americans are more in favor of spending increases, not decreases. Evangelicals were more likely to favor an increase in defense spending (45 percent) compared to non-evangelicals (28 percent).

Now, I am in favor of cutting the Federal budget. Dramatically. Like eliminate entire departments dramatically. I am also in favor of big cuts to the defense budget (big being more than $100 billion). I have to ask the question though.

Does it make sense for Christians to support cutting funding for the needy and the poor but at the same time support increasing military spending in the midst of a budget crisis?

What say you? Are the above attitudes reflective of a life formed and shaped by the Gospel?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Just shows that evangelicals are not true Christians - they just use religion to justify their paranoid and selfish world view