Anti-Climacus

ON THE BELOW: As someone who spent a little time with liberation theology in his earlier college days, I think there's a lot to be said for the division Brooks outlines in the column. Religion that's just there to carry water for someone's particular political beliefs is worse than nothing--it removes the pull of religious argument, and debases it totally and necessarily. Religion motivating politics goes in entirely the opposite direction--the faith is reaffirmed and the force of the political argument ennobled. There's a big difference, after all, in saying (as a liberation theologian might've) that God always and everywhere sides with oppressed people, and that your suffering gives you a degree of closeness to God which the non-suffering can never match, and saying that, in counting your own particular God-given blessings, you would do well to remember the people around you, all of them, and that they have many physical and spiritual needs which need attending, and you would do well to think about the implications of that on the actions you choose to take.