A few months ago, I found an interesting page on the website of Mark Rosenfelder, where he states the thesis that "God is a liberal" and lists a number of passages demonstrating Biblical support for social welfare and sympathy with the poor and needy. Although I do not agree with everything he argues for (quite the opposite in many cases), I do at least respect him for his generally well-reasoned and enlightening thought. In this case, I felt the need to offer a response, however, and give my thoughts on the relationship between Christianity and liberalism.

Strictly speaking, of course, the modern concepts of liberalism and conservatism did not necessarily exist as we would understand them in Biblical times. Both Republicans and Democrats (as their names imply) assume the validity of a democratic republic, an idea that did not exist 3000 years ago. At that time, monarchy was, after all, the only game in town. Part of the problem, I think, is the fact that Biblical writers could not possibly have anticipated modern developments such as stem cells without a level of foresight that defies human limits.

My first impression of this sort of argument, however, is somewhat negative. Rosenfelder appears to make the unstated assumption that all those that care about the poor are liberals and that a body of passages supportive of the poor necessarily indicates support for liberal causes. It thus unsubtly implies that all conservatives are necessarily callous and uncaring toward the poor, whihc may be true of the Republican party leadership but seems a bit unfair when applied even to the average voter. More problematically, it ignores the existence of anarchists, Marxists, and other socialists out there who not only clearly care about the poor, but go further and seek to abolish poverty entirely.

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