As someone who strongly believes that faith is political, I haven’t given much thought to my own political philosophy. Rather, I’ve focused more on how my faith might apply from issue to issue. Given that my own theology is influenced by theologies of liberation, on most issues I’m much more in step with the Democratic party, at least in the context of American politics.
But the problem without having a guiding political philosophy is that at times I find myself having a tribal mentality in regards to my party affiliation. This tribal mentality is cancerous in that it becomes more about exerting a sense of moral superiority and an overemphasis on political tactics of “winning” rather than real attempts to reach some mutual understanding with those who think and feel differently. It can also lead to an inability for self-reflection and critique, which is damaging in so many ways.
So over the next few posts, I’ll attempt to work out my own political philosophy and I’ll see where it takes me.
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There are many motivations for why a person blogs. I’m not going to get into those reasons, only to say that I didn’t start this blog as a way of updating people about the details of my everyday life. Now a-person-who-shall-remain-nameless recently sent me a message asking me, “why doth thou need to blog? doth though need to feel heard in thou vast open world?”
This spring semester I finally got around to taking the Calvin seminar, a man I had previously credited with sucking the joy out of the church that I grew up in. I won’t go into too much detail, but my distaste for Calvin didn’t so much come from reading Calvin himself, but rather with his indirect association with the Westminster Confession of Faith (my least favorite Reformed Confession), which was oppressively held over me as if it contained all the secrets to faith and life (it doesn’t). But as I’ve been able to distinguish Calvin from Calvinism, I’ve found him to be much more engaging than I ever thought possible. But man, some Calvinists and Reformed folk just kill all the fun. It really is amazing what happens to a successful dissenting tradition when it becomes the dominant tradition. The liberative spirit behind the theology is quickly lost and all that is preserved is its written form which becomes the new oppressive dogma. What was once life-giving and freeing has been turned into something that strangles and constrains. To me this is proof that any particular experience or understanding of God’s grace in a certain time and circumstance is always in danger of being mistaked for being the whole of God’s grace and thereby becoming tantamount to idolatry. Same goes for biblical interpretation. I think Calvin would agree.
Random Musings 