According to the
New York Times, several weeks ago the White House hosted
several dozen pro-Obamacare groups to plot public relations during
the U.S. Supreme Court hearings this week about its
constitutionality. Mobilizing visible religious support evidently
was deemed crucial. The historic United Methodist Building on
Capitol Hill, conveniently across the street from the court, was
the natural choice as headquarters for the campaign and “prayer
vigil.”
So liberal religious groups have been demonstrating and
providing photo ops across three days outside the U.S. Supreme
Court, periodically ducking into the 90-year-old Methodist Building
for a chapel service or radio interviews.
Operating under the banner of “Faithful Reform in Health Care”
is the usual phalanx of Mainline Protestants, liberal Catholic
orders, a smattering of Jewish and Unitarian groups, plus the
Islamic Society of North America. One of the more interesting
developments of the last decade is how some U.S. Muslim groups have
politically aligned with ardent feminists, pro-choicers, and
same-sex union advocates. Evidently praying for Big Government is
religiously unifying.
“It’s the official position of the United Methodist Church that
health care is a human right,” announced United Methodist lobbyist
Jim Winkler at a rally outside the court this week. He was
surrounded by placards declaring: “People of Faith for Health
Care.” Over his shoulder stood the Rev. Bob Edgar, former
Democratic Congressman from Pennsylvania, former chief of the
National Council of Churches, ordained United Methodist minister,
and now head of the liberal advocacy group Common Cause. “It is a
governmental responsibility to provide citizens with health care,”
Winkler further intoned. Obamacare is “desperately needed by
ordinary Americans,” he insisted. “We believe the Supreme Court and
the decision it makes is a reflection of the moral and ethical
character of our people.”
For the Religious Left over the last 40 years, it has become
standard fare to mystically enshroud every proposed enlargement of
the state with divine imperative. As Sojourners activist Jim Wallis
often likes to repeat, “[Federal] budgets are moral documents.”
That budgets may actually become immoral if they spend too much or
intrude where government should not tread is rarely considered by
the true believers. That soaring medical costs, the ostensible
crisis mandating Obamacare, might themselves result from
well-intentioned but unwise federal intrusions is also not
considered. As under the apparatchiks of the old Soviet Union, the
failures of centralization demand ever more centralization.
Obamacare’s supporters are understandably distressed by the flak
from religious groups over the contraceptive/abortifacient mandate.
So this week’s rally of religious groups is somewhat of a
palliative for that controversy. The liberal Center for American
Progress explained that the Obamacare prayer vigil showcases an
“alternative faith-based narrative,” in which “religious leaders
argue that affordable health care is consistent with scriptural
injunctions to provide basic human rights protections for all.”
To what extent the Religious Left actually represents many
church goers is questionable. Even most active members of the most
liberal Mainline Protestant denominations still mostly vote
Republican. But the signage and religious talk at least make the
cause appear attuned to America’s innately religious spirit.
On the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives on the night
of Obamacare’s passage, Speaker Nancy Pelosi in her televised
speech specifically thanked the United Methodist Church for its
support. It’s doubtful that denominational officials actually
mobilized many constituents. But citing a church helped make the
coalition for Obamacare sound more diverse beyond the usual labor
unions and welfare lobbies.
The Catholic bishops are virtually at war with Obamacare’s
contraceptive/abortifacient mandate. So it was helpful for the
pro-Obamacare demonstration outside the court this week to include
a supportive nun. “In the Gospel story of the Good Samaritan, Jesus
challenges us to reach out and care for the vulnerable, respond to
the needs of the victim, and bind up their wounds,” explained
Sister Simone Campbell of Network Lobby, a “social justice”
advocacy group. She cited “working-poor families” as Obamacare’s
chief beneficiaries. And she highlighted the usual class
resentments: “Wealth inequality is exacerbated by the lack of
affordable, quality health care in our nation.”
Another United Methodist lobbyist at the rally promised: “We
will keep on keeping on,” since her denomination has “said that
health care is a moral imperative for years, and we will continue
to care about [it] until this country covers every single person
with health care.” Unbeknownst to virtually all 7.5 million members
in the U.S., the United Methodist Church as a matter of policy
actually favors a Canadian style, single payer health care system.
So for liberal church elites, supporting Obamacare’s sufferance of
private insurance must be a painful compromise of the true purity
of social justice.
Contrastingly, Barrett Duke, who represents the 16 million
member Southern Baptist Convention in Washington, D.C., recently
explained why his communion opposes Obamacare: “We believe it will
make health care worse for the vast majority of Americans as
government bureaucrats step between patients and their doctors.” He
cited “poorer care for Americans as government bureaucrats dictate
how insurance companies use their available resources to provide
health services.” And he warned that “limited health care dollars
will lead to rationed health care, which has occurred in every
other nation that has decided to take over its health care system.”
Noting inevitably higher insurance costs for employers, he
predicted “millions of Americans will lose the health care they
currently have.”
Such realism about human frailty, common sense to orthodox
people of faith who admit the world is fallen, is unacceptable to
the idealists and utopians demonstrating before the Supreme Court.
For them, God’s Kingdom can be built through politics and
legislation. The Methodist Prohibitonists who built the Methodist
Building on Capitol Hill were largely orthodox and certainly
believed humanity was sinful. But their boundless confidence that
laws could reform human nature foreshadowed the Religious Left’s
confusion today. Maybe the Supreme Court will show more discernment
than the ostensibly spiritual activists waving placards
outside.
