CHRISTIANS, THE TEA PARTY, AND THE POOR

            The Tea Party movement arose out of anger at the use of taxpayer money to help the poor during the recession. In February 2009, the day after President Obama announced his Making Homes Affordable plan to help people facing mortgage foreclosures, a reporter for CNBC named Rick Santelli went on a rant at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange against the proposal and announced that: “We’re thinking of having a Chicago Tea Party in July. All of you capitalists that want to show up to Lake Michigan, I’m going to start organizing.”

            The Chicago rant went viral and immediately attracted millions of right-wingers who were enraged that the government was going to spend billions of dollars to help poor people, particularly African Americans, whom they deemed to be lazy, shiftless, and undeserving. Said Santelli: “How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills.” There was not a word of sympathy for the families undergoing the agonizing trial of losing their homes, often because they had lost their jobs. While President Obama showed deep empathy for the misery and distress of these people, Tea Partiers all over the country organized and struck out against those suffering terrible hardship from the effects of the great recession.

            Naturally, the mass of adherents to this newly named right-wing movement were people who call themselves “Christians.” Those ultra-conservatives use their religion not only as a comfort and consolation, but also as a weapon to bludgeon those with different theologies and values. Their so-called Christian pastors can drive their congregations into frenzies of hatred merely by attacking abortionists, gays, liberals, Hollywood types, the ACLU, atheists, Moslems and Jews.

            It is the belief of these “Christians” that Almighty God came down to earth in the form of a wandering Jewish preacher named Jesus of Nazareth. They assert that unless you believe that Jesus was the eternal creator of the universe and the “Son” of God, you are doomed to spend eternity in Hell or in the outer darkness.

            Nevertheless, they do not seem to pay any attention to the teachings or example of Jesus. They are wildly antagonistic to the idea of government helping the poor even though helping the poor was the cornerstone of the life of Jesus. Surely Jesus did not mean that although we should all help the poor, government should do no such thing. I doubt that Jesus would have agreed with the anti-poor fury of today’s right-wingers. It is surprising that so many of these Christians can quote the Bible, yet seem indifferent to the message that Jesus left with us.

            One of the finest modern books about Jesus is Thomas Cahill’s Desire Of The Everlasting Hills. In his book, Cahill zeroes-in on the great moral teachings of Jesus, and movingly describes that part of the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus tells of the second coming and tells the story of the King who says, “...for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was naked and you clothed me…I was sick and you visited me ...as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.” (Matthew 25:35-40). Says Cahill:

It is ironic that some Christians …

have never bothered to heed

these solemn words about the presence of

Christ in every individual who is in need.

Jesus told us only once (at the Last Supper)

that he would be present in the Bread and

Wine, but he tells us repeatedly in the

gospels that he is always present in the

Poor and Afflicted---to whom we should

all bow and kneel.

            It is plain from reading the many passages of the Bible where Jesus spoke about the poor that he did not believe that they were worthless and undeserving leeches on society. He favored the poor. He even counseled some to sell everything they had and give to the poor (Matt. 19.21). He wanted his followers to see him in the faces of the poor and afflicted. How would he have felt to be spit upon and despised by the Tea Party people of today.