Editor’s note: Kit Kitchens, Ward 5 Alderman for the City of Hernando, sent in this op-ed. Anyone can submit an op-ed by emailing editor@desotocountynews.com.
Op-Ed
Bible Belt Democrats are wrapping their platform in Scripture. Mississippi voters should reject their interpretation.
This election cycle, after years of increasingly secularized messaging, the Democratic Party is employing a different strategy. A slate of candidates nominated across the Bible Belt is actively couching their policies in theological terms. And what is the crux of their message? “To be a good Christian, you must support the Democratic platform.”
The most notable of candidates messaging in this vein and the proponent of its wildest claims is Texas U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico. Among his claims are that God is “non-binary,” that deporting illegal immigrants is a failure to “welcome the stranger,” and that Christ’s divine provision of food to the hungry and healing to the sick are “biblical grounds” for food stamps and taxpayer-provided healthcare.
Mississippi has its own slate of candidates campaigning with this messaging, albeit in slightly less jarring terms. Trent Kelly’s opponent in Mississippi’s First Congressional District, Cliff Johnson, has signed on to this brand of messaging and openly affirmed Talarico’s stance. In June he posted a picture with Talarico to social media saying that Talarico “is speaking the language of faith and making clear that our SHARED values lead us toward change.”
Referring to the same “least of these” Matthew 25 which Talarico used in some of the arguments above, Johnson argues for taxpayer-subsidized healthcare. He implies that the same “least of these” label also applies to convicted criminals in our prisons and that it would be more just for them not to be there. Similarly, Scott Colom, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, cites Christian values in support of progressive price controls on wages that hurt small businesses.
What should we make of this? Does the Bible really teach us that to be good Christians we must establish a government that supplies free healthcare and ample food stamps? It does not. In Matthew 25, which they refer to in support of their policies, Jesus is not talking to the government; he is talking to his disciples and commanding them to take care of one another. Jesus is not telling you to vote for the government to take from one group of taxpayers to provide for all the material needs of another group. He is telling the individual believer, including you if you are in Christ, to provide for the needs of those in their community of faith.
Does Christ command the government to force employers to pay their workers potentially more than they can afford? Must a small business choose between insolvency, hurting itself and the worker, and fidelity to Christ? To the contrary. In Matthew 20:1-16, Jesus tells a parable that implies that the employer is just in paying a worker any amount they mutually agree to, though that is certainly not the main point of the parable.
Is a government unjust that punishes criminals? To the contrary, in Romans 13 Scripture says that the magistrate is an instrument of God’s wrath to the wrongdoer.
This is even more hazardous than the openly secular leftist rhetoric that we have seen over the last several years. An appeal to divine authority, if properly founded, is final and is constrained only by the limits established in the text itself. If God will judge us for sending illegal immigrants back to their country of origin, then deportation is categorically prohibited and our borders mean nothing. If opposing government redistribution is not an examination of incentive structures but a failure to care for “the least of these,” then government is in moral error not to violate the property rights of one who has produced to provide a comfortable life to one who has not. This has the potential to do what overt radical rhetoric could not: cajole normal people into embracing the most extreme policies of the left.
The Bible is not a weapon to be wielded against your political enemies. That is not to say that it shouldn’t inform our principles; it should be foundational in those. The difference is between searching the Word to determine what our beliefs and principles ought to be and searching it for passages that can be made to seem as if they support our presuppositions. The former is wisdom. The latter is abhorrent and has been used to justify all sorts of evils throughout history. Bible Belt Democrats have decided on a strategy of perverting Scripture to wrap their policies in false divinity. On Election Day, Christian voters in Mississippi should ensure that these methods backfire.
Kit Kitchens is the Ward 5 Alderman for the City of Hernando.
