Here is a very interesting article about an upcoming vote in Alabama regarding radical changes to the tax code. Basically, some fundamentalist Christians there have decided that, really, insofar as the Republican party seems to favor the rich and screw the poor, it (*gasp*) really isn't consistent with the teachings of Jesus. And they're trying to change the law as a result:
Last fall, Susan Pace Hamill, a Beeson theology student, published a master's thesis arguing that "Alabama's tax structure economically oppresses low-income Alabamians and fails to raise adequate revenues." [...] Her 112-page thesis, published in the fall 2002 issue of the Alabama Law Review, is an attack not only on Alabama's regressive tax code -- which requires poor families to pay up to three times the percentage of income in state tax that wealthy families pay -- but on the Christians who permit such an injustice to persist. [...]
In a state that raises the least tax revenue per capita, Hamill's thesis -- reprinted as a book titled The Least of These: Fair Taxes and the Moral Duty of Christians -- somehow ended up as a rationale for politicians to imagine and initiate the unthinkable.
In late May, Gov. Bob Riley, a conservative evangelical Republican who'd never supported a tax increase in his life, unveiled a plan to enact the largest tax increase in Alabama history. Riley's plan lays claim to enough revenue to pay off the state's $675 million deficit and still raise hundreds of millions more for public schools and social services. In addition, Riley's $1.2 billion plan substantially shifts the tax burden from poor Alabamians to the wealthy.
"Jesus says one of our missions is to take care of the least among us," Riley told The Birmingham News in May, echoing the same Gospel passage that supplied the title of Hamill's book. "We've got to take care of the poor." [...]
While the Bible is a famously supple text, allowing multiple, even contradictory exegeses on everything from the role of women to the death penalty, its message on the poor has an almost nagging consistency. The Jesus portrayed in the Gospels has enormous respect and compassion for the poor and little regard for wealth.
There is much more history to the article, and it is a good 5 to 10-minute read. Obviously, I support progressive tax structures, but not because of Biblical text. The question is, should I support something that is being promoted because of a religious agenda just because I happen to agree with it in principle? Doesn't that promote the establishment of a religious agenda in politics?
Just shows you what a stupid liberal I am. A Republican would say, sure, if it happens to fit our agenda, we're on board with whatever rationale people want to use. We liberals meanwhile sit uselessly in the corner and ponder the larger issues of right and wrong while Republicans go about the business of looting the economy.
Posted by Observer at August 30, 2003 08:22 AMComments on entries can only be made in pop-up windows while those entries are still on the main index page. Sorry for the inconvenience this causes, but this blocks about 99.99% of the spam the blog receives.
>should I support something that is being promoted because
>of a religious agenda just because I happen to agree with it in
>principle?
I'm no fan of organized religion, but in my humble opinion, that Jesus fellow described in the gospels was a decent person. If people realy did contemplate, "What would Jesus do?' the world would probably be a better place.
I have no idea how the teaching of Jesus got mutated into the political opinions of the American religious right, though. As far as I can tell, the assumption is that all of the laws governing the Jews got thrown out when the Messiah came, except the ones they like. (I do often hear echos of his words in the religious left.)
Anyway, just because a religious person said it, and used his faith to justify it, doesn't necessarily mean it's not true.
Posted by: Shamhat on August 30, 2003 08:55 PM