Baptizing foreign policy

There’s a segment of evangelicalism (or whatever we wish to call it) that levels a stock objection according to which the “religious right” has become a wholly owned subsidiary of the GOP (or words to that effect). That it blurs the separation of church and state. In a word, it’s guilty of baptizing the domestic or foreign policy of the GOP.

Is the GOP God’s party? Is God a Republican?

To some extent this criticism is mediated by Anabaptist theology, which often feeds into Fundamentalist or Baptist theology–although there are notable exceptions.

This, in turn, dovetails with the libertarian, noninterventionist ideology of policy wonks like Ron Paul, Robert Pape, Pat Buchanan, Michael Scheuer, and Paul Craig Roberts.

So, for instance, when there’s an event like the death of Bin Laden, evangelicals of this stripe tend to say it’s inappropriate to celebrate the outcome. That to do so is worldly, and there’s a sense in which we brought it on ourselves by our wicked foreign policy.

Now, I’m not commenting on whether this is good or bad, right or wrong. I’m going to make a different point:

Evangelicals who say this are doing the very same thing they fault the “religious right” for doing. They are baptizing the foreign policy of Michael Scheuer, Pat Buchanan, et al. They are using their theology to retroactively justify a pragmatic political ideology that’s not inherently Christian.