Comment by WarOnPrivacy
18 days ago
I offer that intersection isn't definition. To run across politics and then need to navigate it doesn't transform an entity into a political one.
Folks who have transformed their faith into a political entity tended to utilize methods and beliefs that fall outside of the scope of the faith's founding principles (ex: Republican Jesus).
You're not going to find, with me, a realm of life that's not fundamentally political—"the personal is political," and one's religious choices are social choices fundamentally shaping your relations to others. Think of Siddhartha Gauthama—his renunciation was a withdrawal from a governing class, not just from private life and, in his final instructions, the Buddha is portrayed as telling the monks to govern themselves on the model of the Vajjian republic: regular assemblies, harmony, shared resources, and respect for agreed rules.
Jesus was very political. The archetype of the Messiah was understood to be explicitly political in the context of liberation from Roman occupation. Overturning the tables of the moneychangers was political. "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and Render unto God what is God's" is political. "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God", "If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also.", "If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.", "Let the dead bury their own dead." All political.
"Supply side Jesus" obviously has nothing to do with Jesus' actual teachings but the faith's founding principles are inextricable from politics because those principles are inextricable from the followers' relationship with the world and its power structures.