• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Your beliefs, your politics

Secret Chief

nirvana is samsara
How do you see the relationship / interaction / influence of your beliefs (religious or otherwise) with your politics?

Pehaps they are in separate boxes? Perhaps one flows from the other? Perhaps they are expressions of the same "thing"?
 

ChristineM

"Be strong", I whispered to my coffee.
Premium Member
I am atheist so according to some theists i don't have beliefs.

What i believe in is family other than that anything that can be demonstrated to be valid does not need belief. If it can't be demonstrated to be valid then it's not worth spending belief on

How does that effect my politics? Not sure it does... I am centre left
Political Compass Results
I think even if i were religious then i still would be but who really knows?
 

Rival

Si m'ait Dieus
Staff member
Premium Member
I largely try to leave my religion out of my politics. I'm an individualist in that I believe what I do is between G-d and me, and what others do is between G-d and them. In an ideal world we'd all be on the same page but that world is not this one. I vote mostly based on local and economic issues that largely have little to do with religion in any case.
 

MNoBody

Well-Known Member
apolitical
yet difficult to be in a structured world with a domination complex neurosis running amok
bd50d39283b86476f23f787dbcc7b533.jpg
 

Erebus

Well-Known Member
I can definitely see parallels between some of my religious views and my political views. However, I honestly can't say to what extent each informs the other.

For example, nature worship is an integral part of my religion. I'm also very concerned about the damage humans do to the environment and take that into consideration when voting for a political party. There's definitely overlap between my religious and political beliefs there. However, there are a lot of people concerned about the environment and only a fraction of them are Pagan. So it's perfectly possible that my political views would remain the same for all practical purposes if I were a Christian, atheist or Hindu.
 

Secret Chief

nirvana is samsara
I can definitely see parallels between some of my religious views and my political views. However, I honestly can't say to what extent each informs the other.

For example, nature worship is an integral part of my religion. I'm also very concerned about the damage humans do to the environment and take that into consideration when voting for a political party. There's definitely overlap between my religious and political beliefs there. However, there are a lot of people concerned about the environment and only a fraction of them are Pagan. So it's perfectly possible that my political views would remain the same for all practical purposes if I were a Christian, atheist or Hindu.

Well, I've started this thread without cobbling together, sorry, thinking about my own attitudes. I will get round to it though! Thanks for your thoughts.
 

Secret Chief

nirvana is samsara
I am atheist so according to some theists i don't have beliefs.

What i believe in is family other than that anything that can be demonstrated to be valid does not need belief. If it can't be demonstrated to be valid then it's not worth spending belief on

How does that effect my politics? Not sure it does... I am centre left
Political Compass Results
I think even if i were religious then i still would be but who really knows?

Ooh I do like a neat diagram!
Phew, good to see I'm not in the quadrant with Hitler and Thatcher in.

2D1E0B3E-65B3-45A2-8D23-B11C256A958A.png
 

sayak83

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
How do you see the relationship / interaction / influence of your beliefs (religious or otherwise) with your politics?

Pehaps they are in separate boxes? Perhaps one flows from the other? Perhaps they are expressions of the same "thing"?
I am a Hindu. Politically I am a liberal democrat ( John Stewart Mill, Rawls etc.)
 

exchemist

Veteran Member
Ooh I do like a neat diagram!
Phew, good to see I'm not in the quadrant with Hitler and Thatcher in.

View attachment 39084
I think Thatcher was in the purple quadrant - she was an economic liberal and did not devote much time to trying to impose morality on the nation, as I recall. This is the quadrant where I would put myself, though reasonably close to the centreline.

Regarding the OP, I think my religion encourages me to think about social responsibility, which makes me more in favour of taxation and central government initiatives than a true libertarian would be. But I grew up in the 1970s, so I believe strongly in the market economy and I tend to be suspicious of trade union power.
 

Vouthon

Dominus Deus tuus ignis consumens est
Staff member
Premium Member
Interesting question.

Yes, my faith has played an important role in my political formation. It has definitely helped tilt me decisively to the left of the contemporary spectrum on economic issues, to focus upon one key area.

The Lord's Prayer - the "Our Father" - literally mandates debt cancellation: "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive those indebted to us". So social issues are right there at the heart of the faith.

I am also heavily influenced by the social justice teachings of the Torah and Nevi'im, which are very important in Catholicism. There we find such concepts as the biblical Jubilee, which cancelled debts that kept the poor enslaved to the rich in ancient Israel and mitigated intergenerational injustice.

From the prophet Isaiah in the 8th century BCE....


Woe to you who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is room for no one but you, and you are left to live alone in the midst of the land!(Isaiah 5:8)


To Pope Francis today...


While the earnings of a minority are growing exponentially, so too is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few. This imbalance is the result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation.

(Pope Francis November 2013)


.....the religious scriptures and traditions I hold to be sacred have denounced social injustice and inequalities.

The church I belong to has an established "social doctrine" which is informed by the divine revelation believed to subsist in the Tanakh, New Testament and Sacred Tradition (as witnessed by the Church Fathers and maintained in the apostolic succession).

It doesn't dictate morally binding technical solutions to policy debates but it does provide a very comprehensive guide for what a society structured according to the values of Christ should look like, by critiquing a range of anthropological errors at the root of different ideologies and commending general pathways for change.

In the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, the Patristic writings and in the modern papal encyclicals, I find a strong body of social teaching which I think is in contradiction to some fundamental assumptions of, for example, libertarian capitalism.

As Professors Horsley and Pounds, two historical Jesus scholars, both note:


"Jesus engaged in economic conflict...[in] a Palestine burdened by intolerable taxation and debt causing the disintegration of local village economies. With regard to Galilee, Horsley points to Herod Antipas' building projects in Sepphoris and Tiberias, which he proposes drained resources from the peasant population.

Within this specific context...Jesus responded to economic exploitation by attempting to found an egalitarian village community. As opposed to the imperial system of economic exploitation, within this community there was to be a mutual economic support, cancellation of debts, redistribution of land, local resolution of economic and social conflicts, and an absence of hierarchy...

In line with the broad contours of Horsley's thesis, there is plausible evidence that Jesus' economic critique extended beyond the confines of Galilee to the high-priestly aristocracy and their retainers in Jerusalem. Much of his prophetic critique of them involved a condemnation of economic exploitation that is consistent with depictions and remembrances of the first century high priesthood"
(p.119)​


I thus identify with secular political movements today that advocate for the rights of the underprivileged and marginalised in society (those who are on the losing "end" of the great capitalist rat race), that aim to resist economic exploitation of the poor, grossly unequal concentration of wealth and much else along similar lines.
 
Last edited:

sun rise

The world is on fire
Premium Member
Now that I've refreshed my beliefs:

How do you see the relationship / interaction / influence of your beliefs (religious or otherwise) with your politics?

Pehaps they are in separate boxes? Perhaps one flows from the other? Perhaps they are expressions of the same "thing"?

My ethical/moral beliefs directly influence my politics. Of course politicians are human with human faults, but some are more human than others in that regard.

When I look at Trump and his most fervent supporters, I see no ethical/moral beliefs, words and actions stemming from those beliefs that I can endorse in any way, shape or form.

I'm not writing about conservative vs liberal policies but root morality.
 

Secret Chief

nirvana is samsara
I think Thatcher was in the purple quadrant - she was an economic liberal and did not devote much time to trying to impose morality on the nation, as I recall. This is the quadrant where I would put myself, though reasonably close to the centreline.

Regarding the OP, I think my religion encourages me to think about social responsibility, which makes me more in favour of taxation and central government initiatives than a true libertarian would be. But I grew up in the 1970s, so I believe strongly in the market economy and I tend to be suspicious of trade union power.

yup.

6398CB9E-7639-4B77-A05E-DE2B00964A09.gif
 
Top