The Religious Left Finally Finds Something to Be Orthodox About

The minimum wage, which some scribe must have long ago failed to make the 11th Commandment:

But note the tone of utter moral certainty from the prelates. The various Episcopal and Lutheran bishops, presbyters, and Methodist functionaries who signed on, along with an ecumenical smattering of others, would never and probably could never proclaim with such certitude any traditional articles of their own faith such as the virgin birth or bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, not to mention moral teachings about homosexuality or abortion. On these issues, they would likely boast of their "diversity" of opinion.

But the minimum wage is an uncompromising "justice" issue. A separate and similar letter jointly composed by Jewish and Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) officials likewise quoted the Old Testament when demanding the government-mandated wage increase: "We take to heart the words from Deuteronomy and that command us to open our hands to the poor and moreover, to help others establish self-sufficiency."

Perhaps still smarting from their controversies of earlier this year, when the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) overturned its divestment policies against Israel after strong complaints from Jewish groups, the Presbyterians probably saw this letter as a mechanism for a new Presbyterian-Jewish alliance. The minimum wage has become a plank for interfaith cooperation!

The religious endorsers of the minimum wage bill strike a pose that has become old hat for the Religious Left over the last 40 years. Every proposed increase in the powers of the state to regulate the private economy, along with every proposed expansion in the welfare system, is by definition a religious imperative for which compromise is unacceptable.

While priding themselves on not being "fundamentalists," these liberal religious groups pin their grand political and economic claims on fragmentary Scripture texts upon which they build very expansionist definitions. Somehow, we are to believe that the Old Testament prophets were insisting that Israel construct a larger, regulatory state that guaranteed material care by the government of all people from cradle to grave.

The Old Testament prophets, of course, devoted most of their fire to demanding that their Hebrew theocracy stamp out all idolatry and sexual immorality, causes in which the modern Religious Left obviously have little interest. The New Testament demands that individual believers give away their own belongings to the poor and to the church. This, too, is often unpalatable to the religious left, which is primarily interested in giving away other people's wealth.

We'll be addressing the Catholic Church's view of social justice in an upcoming post.

Suffice it to say that it's a stretch at best to say that God or Church mandates a minimum wage increase. I would not be surprised to see that the clerics who signed this petition are to a man big supporters of the abortion rights movement.

It would be a curious theology indeed to hold that you can aspire to make the minimum wage presuming your mother doesn't have you sucked out into a sink first.