Tuesday, March 29, 2005

Sorry To Disappoint You, But Saint Paul Was Not a Republican

It's always interesting to see how conservatives selectively quote from scripture to support their positions, as someone named Richard Turpyn does in his March 29 letter ("Christianity and Capital Punishment") to the Washington Post. Turpyn is responding to an earlier column by Eugene Robinson:

So Eugene Robinson can't reconcile Christianity with capital punishment [op-ed, March 18]. I don't think he's trying hard enough.

Jesus Christ spared the sinner the punishment for sin; he did not spare the criminal the punishment for crime. Saint Paul made it clear in Romans 13 that government is authorized to punish criminals with the power of the sword, which was not a figure of speech under Roman law.


True, so far as it goes. But if you're a conservative, you might want to be careful whom you quote. In the very chapter Turpyn cites (Romans 13), Paul comments, "The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted" (Rom. 13:1-2).

Does Turpyn believe that the American Revolution was a mistake and a sin, as this statement would clearly imply? Does he think that the folks in Florida who want to use force to defy the courts in the Schiavo case are "rebelling against what God has instituted"? Does he write letters to the editor advocating these positions?

Follow Paul down a few lines and you read, "This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants, who give their full time to governing " (Rom. 13:6). Has Turpyn written to Grover Norquist about this?

On the other hand, if Turpyn rejects Paul's position on the latter two points, on what basis can he insist that we accept Paul's authority on the death penalty?

In the end, we're driven back to doing what we should be doing in the first place: deciding political issues based on what our own reason and our best sense of morality dictates, rather than searching for isolated Bible verses to justify particular positions.

It would be nice to have a cadre of Bible-loving progressives who would regularly expose the right wing's scriptural cherry-picking. Conservatives have the right, like anyone else, to choose their favorite religious teachings and cite them when making political arguments. But they shouldn't be able to get away with presenting their highly selective version of the Bible as if it is the Bible, to which all right-thinking people must kowtow.
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