A Biblical Refutation Of Secular Welfare

Forbes ^ | 05/05/2011 | Bill Flax

[billflax]

My writing began in response to America’s escalating culture war. As my book The Courage to do Nothing explains, progressive elitists are building another tower of Babel. Where Nimrod furnished bricks to raise himself to the heavens, his modern descendants fashion theories on progressive cloud dancing. Their ambition resembles that of antiquity: separating creation from its Creator. Socialism proves a critical tenet in this tower.

These pages have previously waged temporal battles defending liberty, prosperity and justice. But the spiritual aspects of this relentless assault on traditional American culture had been avoided before reading an editorial on Forbes conflating Christianity and secular socialism.

There are many points in Richard Salsman’s article “Holy Scripture and the Welfare State” of complete agreement. Salsman does terrific work.

It’s true: Bi-partisan unanimity on many issues does reflect a shared civic religion. Both parties act in an abiding faith barreling down similar paths. Unfortunately, this religion isn’t Christianity. America has eschewed her distinctly biblical roots in favor of political correctness. A philosophy derived from decidedly unchristian origins, but that’s another article.

Salsman also explained reasonably well the influence of the “Social Gospel” on modern welfare. But as its leading proponents Walter Rauschenbusch, Harry Emerson Fosdick and others readily acknowledged, their motivation wasn’t the Holy Scriptures, but developments in popular culture. The leading fundamentalist voice, Princeton professor J. Gresham Machen’s classical liberalism was so pronounced as to make Ron Paul blush. The Social Gospel sought to maintain the relevancy of churches with scant faith in the sufficiency of Scripture. It was their fundamentalist opposition adhering to Sola Scriptura who laid the foundations for what eventually became the Religious Right. Which is only “unavoidably hypocritical” if you fail to distinguish between the individual acting voluntarily (as the Scripture instructs) and the collective employing coercion.

[billflax]

Sorry Shibumi. It just gave an error message telling me that Forbes must be excerpted and linked. No more than 300 words allowed. So that's what's there.

[humblegunner]

They aren’t on the list, which the powers-that-be admit is incomplete:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1111944/posts

Thanks for the effort though.

Good article.

[vanilla swirl]

keep for later

[shibumi]

Looks like the software is more current than our printed list.

I (we) do appreciate that you’re trying to get into the spirit of the forum. Now we’ve just got to find you a more reputable publisher - and maybe get you paid for what you’re doing.

(Contrary to what some have said, we’re not anti-blogger, or anti-profit. We just don’t like stuff being pimped unnecessarily.)

[FourPeas]

Thank you for trying.