Amusingly, his ideas align more with beliefs held by “the young left” than by “the old right”. (Yesyes, bad terms but you know what I mean) And yet the real-world allegiances are inverted.
Given the 'young left' is a collectivist ideology, which seeks to institute a form of 'ancestral sin' - people being responsible for their parents' and grandparents' wrongs, etc. - and which has made physical wealth and attributes the sole measurements of moral integrity, being a purely secular worldview - it is not in any way compatible with the teachings of Christ.
But people don't like to hear that. Self-righteousness is a potent drug, something else Christ taught about quite regularly. :)
Your 'ancestral sin' interpretation could easily be said on capitalists who don't have a problem with people capital fortune being decided mostly a birth. (You're born poor, you are likely to stay poor, you're born rich you're likely to stay rich no matter what you do). Or, You could also easily say that the Protestant morals equate physical wealth accumulation with how moral you are. Because if you do good by God, of you'll get rewarded with prosperoty. In your lifetime.
This is of course nonsense just as your interpretation of social democrat ideology.
Being born into wealth lends a significant chance of mismanagement and losing that wealth.
Protestants - not the megachurches that go by the label 'protestant', but believe nothing remotely related to Scripture - have no such conception.
Lastly, you're moving what I said, narrowing the scope to 'democratic socialists'.
1. It's very hard to lose wealth while in management. Networking and clique play a big part of the manager eco system. Plus, in the startup area, if you are an entrepreneur that his startup failed you are not considered a failure, far from it. It is also more likely for you to bean entrepreneur if yoy have a strong financial background.
2. This 'True Protestant Ideal' isn't relevant. This 'false Protestant' developed from a Protestant mindset, through a natural evolution of ideas. Plus, I think you'd find that a similar part of these so called 'True Protestant' make claims like those I made point with.
3. The only relevant left in the west, is social democratic. Maybe in the US less so, only Sanders could fit that description. But, I'm not from the US, so my default meaning of left is social democratic. Which left we're you speaking of?
Especially the old testament.
In genesis whenever god made a covenant (like made Abraham the main dude) it always came with God giving them great wealth (sheep and an abundance of land) as well as leadership of entire areas. At least the early stuff, the leaders/prophets were hardly the poverty stricken Jesus story.
A lot of that poverty narrative became a greater part of Christianity with Saint Francis of Assisi in the middle ages which help push the helping the poor angle as mainstream image of the church.
But otherwise you can find plenty of evidence of great wealth leaders in Christian history. Not just in the centuries of mass wealth accumulation in the Holy empires and the Catholic church.
“Christianity” is about Christ, not something else.
> Especially the old testament.
The old testament is context for the NT, but with a very small number of exceptions (and with the exceptions of potential general applicability to Jewish Christians, which were common in the first Christian communities but rare today) the dictates of the OT law expressly are superceded by the “Jesus stuff” for Christians.
Jesus was a radical hippie immigrant refugee, and his teachings are of course co opted now for the exact opposite effect.
I highly recommend reading: "Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth" https://www.amazon.com/Zealot-Life-Times-Jesus-Nazareth/dp/B...
He was far from a hippie immigrant. He fit a pattern of many men before him claiming similar sanctity and happened to be at the right time and right place in a warn torn Israel for it to really find an audience.
But I wasn't even talking about the man himself from a historical perspective, just the general religious and historical environment from which his legend grew. The man-of-the-poor and anti-wealthy narrative was very much a later development in the history of christianity and was always floating on the sidelines of their work, especially in terms of how it was adopted, not merely what was written in the decades and centuries after he died in the bible.
Like all religious works there are plenty of room for interpretation and holy but great wealthy leaders are plentiful in the history of christianity. It's hardly a new thing. It's even more established in the Koran through the various prophets and leaders in their canon, all of whom held great power and leadership in their local areas.
Even today the works of Mother Theresa are very controversial. Especially in terms of their long term ROI (ie, helping the poor stay poor by accepting their place and not developing the skills or industry to escape such die situations, which to me is not something to be revered).
You also see a lot of extreme behavior tied to single issues like abortion or birth control. In short, people very passionate about an issue will often veer (or be steered) into an ends justify the means type philosophy.
Citation? Not my experience at all.
On the wealth issue specifically, you can certainly read it that way. I mean, I think it's wrong, but it's not like there aren't things that can be viewed, in isolation, as just as emphatic support for the prosperity gospel as other passages can be viewed as a mandate for asceticism.
> I think the population of people that are left leaning and Christian practicing is low and they don’t tend to be as influential on the national stage as the religious right.
The left-leaning Christian types tend not to wave Christianity around like a cudgel in political discussions, which makes them less visible as Christians in those contexts, even when they are quite visible.
The parallels are particularly strong with the Roman imperial cult now that so many seem to want to worship a Caesar. I see this trend as independent of Trump per se. I saw it around Bush II, but IMHO it didn't take there because Bush did not want to be emperor. I get the impression that Bush actively rejected that role, especially seeing the quiet life of apparent personal recovery he has pursued after the presidency.
You have places like HN that fill a certain purpose for the audience, but you also have places where neonazis and other repugnant fringes can do their thing.