Reflections on an Evangelical Endorsement of Bernie Sanders

Reflections on an Evangelical’s Endorsement of Bernie Sanders

A former parishioner of mine (from quite a few years back) has on Facebook asked me and other Christians who know her to reflect upon remarks made by a man, who identifies himself only as “Jim,” who describes himself as an Evangelical Christian and who endorses Bernie Sanders for President. Jim made his remarks in response to the speech Sanders gave at Liberty University, the radically conservative, Evangelical university founded by Jerry Falwell, on Monday, September 14, 2015. You can find Sander’s speech on C-SPAN, and you can find Jim’s remarks at http://reverbpress.com/politics/biblical-argument-for-bernie-sanders/. Sanders’ speech is on that site too.

Before I get to Jim’s remarks perhaps some background reflections will be helpful. Bernie Sanders is an independent United States Senator from Vermont who is running for the Democratic Party’s nomination for President of the United States. Sanders describes himself as a democratic socialist. He takes his social and economic ideals from the social democratic countries of Scandinavia. He supports a woman’s right to abortion. He supports same gender-marriage and gay rights generally. He has a consistent anti-war record. He bases his campaign for the presidency primarily upon a quite socialistic critique of the injustice of income inequality in our country among other progressive insights into the realities of American life. I too support Bernie Sanders for President.

For the last one hundred years or a little bit more American Evangelical Christianity has not supported the positions Sanders takes or any political positions very much like them. Conservative American Christianity has focused not on issues of economic justice but on issues like denying women the right to control their own bodies and preserving legal and societal discrimination against people of minority sexual orientations and gender identities. It has worked hard to deny at least some of the truths of modern science and to try to force Christian prayer on everyone in the public schools. Evangelical Christianity has seen Jesus as being primarily a sinless sacrificial atonement for human sin so that those who believe in him can go to heaven when they die and has largely overlooked his teachings on social justice. That’s not to say that conservative Christians have not done good charitable work with people in need. A great many of the them have and do. It is however nonetheless true that conservative Christians have not for the most part let Jesus’ teachings on care for the poor inform their political positions. They certainly have not grafted Jesus’ teachings on nonviolence onto their political stances.

I will begin my reflection on Jim’s remarks by saying that I am a Christian but not an Evangelical one. I suspect that my take on the Bible is very different from Jim’s. I doubt that he would much appreciate most of my book on the Bible that will be published soon. I suspect without knowing that my take on Jesus is in some foundational ways different from Jim’s. Nonetheless I believe that Jim has come upon a profound truth about Jesus and that he is absolutely correct when he concludes his remarks by saying that he wouldn’t be much of a Christian if he didn’t stand on the side of the poor because that’s where Jesus stood. In his remarks Jim cites many of Jesus’ statements about bringing good news to the poor. He doesn’t always cite everything exactly correctly. He reads more of Jesus into John the Baptist than the texts will support, but he gets Jesus proclamation of good news to the poor quite correct. Jim says that Sanders spoke of one who is coming with good news to the poor the way, in his not entirely correct reading, John the Baptist spoke of Jesus coming with good news to the poor. Sanders didn’t actually do that. I find those technical errors a bit irritating, but they don’t take away from the profound truth of Jim’s basic point. Jesus calls Christians to care for the poor and for all who are in need. American Christianity, especially conservative Evangelical Christianity, has failed pretty badly in its response to that call because it has limited its activity to charitable work and has ignored the larger issues of societal and economic justice.

Jim is absolutely right that Bernie Sanders proclaims a value of Christianity that Christianity has far too often ignored, although Jim probably makes Sanders sound more Christian than he is. Sanders is Jewish, as Jim says again and again in his remarks. The demand for social and economic justice for the poor is a Christian value, but it is not exclusively a Christian value. In his speech at Liberty University Sanders quotes Amos 5:24, which in the NRSV translation reads: “But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Jesus got his commitment to justice from his Jewish heritage. Jim might have acknowledged that truth a bit more than he did.

Still, on the whole Jim is absolutely right. It’s past time for us Christians to listen to him, to Bernie Sanders, and most of all to Jesus Christ. I don’t expect many Evangelical Christians to vote for Bernie Sanders. His support of abortion rights and same-gender marriage is too much for most of them to swallow. That’s a pity. Jim is right when he makes Sander’s remarks sound profoundly Christian. They are first of all profoundly Jewish, but they are Christian too. Perhaps a few Evangelicals will hear Sanders and Jim and be called back to commitment to the things Jesus talked rather than to things like abortion and gay rights about which Jesus said not a single direct word.