I wrote the following on a comment thread on deltoid, in response to a poster who wondered at the connection between Christianity and right-wing politics in the US. This is in a sense related to what I commented on Obsidian Wings earlier. (It turns out hilzoy identifies as agnostic, and is pro-abortion, and violent --- non-pacifist, that is. Well well, I suppose it's hard to find someone you agree with everything on, when you have opinions on as many issues as I have...)
Christensen: as a non-american Christian I can agree: it seems to me there is an unholy and unnatural alliance between the nationalist right and conservative churches in the USA. I have some theories to partly explain it:
Nationalism has always been pretty strong in the US, and an ideology as far-reaching as nationalism must either be a competitor to religion, or a bedfellow. Although US nationalism had a distinctly Deist (as in agnostic who believes in God - a muslim or a christian would not be a Deist in this sense) flavour, that recieved a Christian interpretation by most of the people, naturally.
Last, but not least, there are some symbolic issues that the political right have embraced that are important to most Christians - those in "liberal" Europe, too. Those are opposition to abortion and sexual promiscuity. It seems to me that people generally have strong opinions on a few issues, and then on other issues, they embrace the views of those who agree on the core issues.
That's really inherently sensible. Scientists, for instance, do it all the time. Think of how few physicists reject evolution: they don't do it because they have studied evolution, but because they trust those who have, on account of similar methodology, situation, interests, world-view etc. And in this case it leads to the correct result. But is still hard for a physicists to give a good defense of evolution against a professional creationist preacher.
Christians are not primarily concerned with economic policy, but we want answers on this issue as everyone else. The easiest is to adopt the opinions of our friends, who seem generally sensible to us.
Just as it is hard to learn everything about astrophysics, biology, medicine and climate, it's hard to form an informed opinion, one that you can defend, on all political issues. We all do it on trust.
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Posted by vintermann at May 22, 2006 09:41 AM