Considering “the Least of These” 

On the afternoon of August 20, after making my last blog post early that morning which was the second day of the Democratic National Convention, I started writing this as my next blog article. 

“The least of these,” words attributed to Jesus, is a phrase found in the Gospel of Matthew: ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me” (25:40 NRSV). 

Who are Jesus’ “brothers and sisters”? Conservative evangelicals tend to restrict those words to Christian believers. For example, a writer for the Gospel Coalition says, “‘The least of these’ refers to other believers in need—specifically, itinerant Christian teachers dependent on other Christians for hospitality and support” (see here). 

In contrast, progressive Christians see the love of Jesus to be more inclusive and consider that those people in contemporary society who are poor and powerless as well as those who are marginalized and mistreated by many of the more privileged people are, indeed, “the least” among Jesus’ siblings. 

The lack of apparent concern for “the least of these” in political campaigns is quite common. VP Harris and Gov. Walz have shown concern for such people by what they have said and done through the years, but that doesn’t make for good campaigning. 

Thus, it is not surprising that at the Democratic National Convention last week, the candidates for President and Vice President talked much about helping the working class of the nation, but little was said about helping those who are living in poverty.  

True, there were some who did talk about “the least of these” (as interpreted by progressive Christians) even at the DNC. Just past six and a half minutes into his speech on opening night, Sen. Warnock quoted the words of Matt. 25:40. 

Also, in his acceptance speech on Aug. 22, Gov. Walz mentioned his policy of providing free lunches for all school children in Minnesota and his belief that no child should be left hungry.  

But those were the exceptions to the repeated emphasis on helping people in the middle class, who with some exceptions couldn’t be correctly labeled “the least of these.” 

In “Why Kamala Harris’s Centrism Is Working,” New York Times columnist David Leonhardt writes convincingly as how “many Democrats have been willing to tolerate her triangulation in the service of winning” (see here). 

(In politics, triangulation is a strategy by which a politician presents his/her position as being above or between the left and right sides or wings of the political spectrum. That was a strategy particularly associated with Pres. Bill Clinton in the 1990s.) 

After Harris is elected president—and at this point, I feel fairly confident that she will, indeed, be elected on November 5—I expect her to say much more in consideration of “the least of these” across the U.S. (as well as saying more about combating the environmental crisis).  

Last week, Harris pledged to tackle high grocery costs by targeting profiteering by food corporations and to bring down housing and prescription drug costs.  

In response to that stated intention to offer help that would include “the least of these,” Trump declared at a campaign rally the next day that in her speech Kamala went full communist” and then he referred to her as “Comrade Kamala.” 

Indeed, political leaders (most usually Democrats) who seek to use government action to lift people out of poverty are often denigrated as being socialists/communists—and we will likely hear that sort of talk by Trump and Vance between now and November 5.  

But I expect we will hear much more about helping “the least of these” after Harris is inaugurated on January 20 next year, which appropriately is also Martin Luther King Jr. Day.  

In February this year, the Vice President had a private conference with William Barber, Jr., the head of the Poor People’s Campaign, and Barber was reportedly pleased with Harris’s interest in his work for “the least of these” (see here).** 

I hope—and pray—that that meeting between Harris and Barber is a harbinger of what we will see in President Harris’s administration. 

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** In May 2018, I made a blog post titled “Can a Barber Do What a King Couldn’t?” 

The Loss of Transcendence: On the Sadness of Shrinking One’s Worldview

The importance of expanding one’s worldview was the subject of my July 30 blog post. I’m sure most of my blog readers have done, and continue to do, that. But I’m afraid that many people, but probably only a very few of my Thinking Friends, have moved in the opposite direction—and I think that’s sad. 

In recent decades, there has been a marked increase in secularism, which usually means a denial or rejection of transcendence. 

Please note that, as I have done previously, I make an important distinction between secularization and secularism. As I wrote in a February 2020 blog post, secularism as an ideology “is confined to ‘temporal’ or ‘this-worldly’ things, with emphasis on nature, reason, and science.”

Secularism usually rejects transcendence, the affirmation of reality “beyond” that which can be analyzed by science. As I  wrote in 2/20, “When secularism is truly an ism, it is a worldview that has no room for God, by whatever name God might be understood… .”

Such a denial of transcendence necessarily involves a markedly shrinking or flattening of one’s worldview. The postmodern mindset basically embraces subjectivism and rejects the notion of there being objective realities such as God, Truth, or Good. The result is often moral relativism and narcissism. 

As eminent Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor explains, subjectivism (and/or individualism) can lead, and has led, to “a centering on the self, which both flattens and narrows our lives, makes them poorer in meaning, and less concerned with others or society.”** 

Much recent secularism in the U.S. is a reaction to the “Religious Right.” There is much in conservative evangelical belief and practice that needs to be rejected, or deconstructed, to use a term that is popular in some circles.

There is even a Wikipedia article on “faith deconstruction,” describing it as “a phenomenon within American evangelicalism in which Christians rethink their faith and jettison previously held beliefs, sometimes to the point of no longer identifying as Christians.”

There is what can be called positive deconstruction, which means questioning the faith one has grown up in and growing into the reconstruction of a more mature, viable faith. That is what I was suggesting in my July 30 blog post. 

But there is also negative deconstruction as noted in the Wikipedia article. That doesn’t always lead to complete secularism, as there are, indeed, some who actively seek to be spiritual but not religious. But for many, deconstruction is accompanied by a loss of transcendence.

It is sad when people jettison religious faith and accept a narrower, shallower worldview. It is sad because so much is lost. The old cliché, throwing out the baby with the bathwater, seems an apt description of what is lost. 

How very sad if in disposing of the dirty, unneeded bathwater (the out-of-date, untenable beliefs) the precious baby (the belief in God/Transcendence) is also discarded!

Many who have lost their religious faith, or never had such a faith to begin with, are not “bad” people. Many secularists are kind, loving people, showing concern for others and for the environment, working for peace and justice—at least for a while. 

Without an ongoing, sustaining sense of the Transcendent, however, people often “burn out,” become cynical and/or depressed, lose the joy of living, and seek to escape the meaningless of life by excessive emphasis on hedonistic pleasures or by over-use of drugs, including especially alcohol.

In the early years of this blog, one of my Thinking Friends was a thoughtful man who convened a discussion group mainly of atheists and agnostics. He was concerned about social issues.

This friend was a vegetarian because, he said, he realized that the grain used to fatten animals for slaughter and human consumption could and should be used to feed people in the world who didn’t have enough to eat. I quit eating beef and pork partly because of his influence. 

Several years ago, though, this friend seemingly “burnt out” and dropped out, and I ceased hearing from him. Then a mutual friend told me that he had drunk himself to death. I was greatly saddened when I heard that. 

One can’t prove anything by an anecdote, but I think my atheist friend’s story is not uncommon. It is sad, indeed, when one doesn’t have or loses a sense of Transcendence. 

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**The Ethics of Authenticity (1991), p. 4. Taylor (b. 1931) is best known for his massive, 874-page book, A Secular Age (2007). I regret that I have never taken the time and expended the energy to read the latter book carefully. In keeping with the subject of this article, though, I did read (although too hastily) the eighth chapter, “The Malaises of Modernity,” in which Taylor describes the “three forms which the malaise of immanence may take: (1) the sense of the fragility of meaning, the search for an over-arching significance; (2) the felt flatness of our attempts to solemnize the crucial moments of passage in our lives; and (3) the utter flatness, emptiness of the ordinary” (p. 309). 

In Support of Harris and Walz

Delegates of the Democratic National Convention in a virtual roll call vote (completed on August 6) officially certified Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as the Party’s nominees for President and Vice President in the upcoming November election. 

How greatly the political landscape changed in just four weeks! On July 13,  ex-President Trump was wounded by a young man who apparently sought to assassinate him.

Then on the 21^st, just eight days later, Pres. Biden announced that he would not accept the Democratic Party’s nomination for POTUS.

Beginning the very afternoon of Biden’s announcement and his endorsement of his Vice President to be the Democratic nominee, there was an outpouring of verbal and financial support for VP Kamala Harris.

In light of the overwhelming early support received by Harris, virtual voting by the DNC delegates began on August 1, and by the next day, Kamala already had enough votes for the nomination. Now, she and her pick as a running mate are the  Democratic candidates for the election to be held in just 88 days.

The nation’s short-term, and perhaps long-term, future depends greatly on the November 5 voting outcome. This is the fateful decision facing the country: will voters elect Kamala Harris rather than “the worst presidential nominee in U.S. history,” as I dubbed Donald Trump in my July 20 blog post?

There is also this worrying question in the minds of many: if Harris is elected, will Trump accept the election results? Or once again will he claim that the election was stolen and seek to use unlawful means to attain election?

Kamala Harris has my full support. When in 2019 there began to be talk of who the Democratic candidate might be in 2020, Harris was my first choice. I already thought Joe Biden was too old to be President. (Now, though, I think he has done a very commendable job—and was wise to “pass the torch.”)

Kamala has a diverse religious background, but she has long been a member of Third Baptist Church in San Francisco. She is quite complimentary of her pastor, Rev. Dr. Amos C. Brown, as is he of her.*¹

On July 22, Thinking Friend Brian Kaylor posted “The Next Baptist President of the United States?” on his blog (here). It was largely about the interview he had with Brown in 2020. The elderly pastor told Brian that Kamala “is a role model for womanhood, and just human decency and dignity at its best.”

MAGA Christians, though, are highly critical of candidate Harris in many ways, including denigration of her Christian faith. At the Turning Point USA Believers’ Summit in West Palm Beach on July 26, TP president Charlie Kirk declared that Harris “stands against everything that we as Christians believe.”*²

Christian nationalist Lance Wallnau, says that Harris represents “the spirit of Jezebel in a way that will be even more ominous than Hillary (Clinton) because she’ll bring a racial component, and she’s younger.”

What about Harris’s pick for Vice President? Gov. Walz (b. 1964) has not been widely known nationally, but I think he was a good choice. In some ways, he reminds me of Harry Truman, another plainspoken Midwesterner, who 80 years ago in 1944 was elected VPOTUS.

Like Truman, Walz is more of a “commoner” than many high-profile politicians. JD Vance, the GOP VP candidate, graduated from Ohio State University (BA) and Yale (JD); Walz graduated from small Chadron State College (BS) in Nebraska, his home state, and Minnesota State University, Mankato, (MS).

Before becoming a politician, Vance practiced law for slightly under two years and then moved to San Francisco to work in the technology industry as a venture capitalist; Walz was a high school teacher and football coach for about ten years before entering politics.*³

Tim Walz and his wife, Gwen, were married in 1994, and they have two children, Hope (b. 2001) and Gus (b. 2006). They are affiliated with an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America congregation in St. Paul.

Please join me in support of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. I am confident that they will not only preserve our national democracy but will also work to enhance liberty and justice for all U.S. citizens—and will have compassion for the needy people residing in our country who are not citizens.  

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*¹ Brown (b. 1941) has been pastor of 3BC since 1976. That church is duly aligned with the American Baptist Churches USA and the National Baptist Convention USA. He is also currently the president of the San Francisco branch of the NAACP. Brian refers to him as “a civil rights icon.” You may also like to read this pertinent article about Brown posted by Sojourners on July 25.

*² Donald Trump also spoke at that TP meeting, and among other things, he said, “Get out and vote. Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what: it’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians…. Get out, you’ve got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.” (From Heather Cox Richardson’s July 26 newsletter.)

*³ Jess Piper had this to say (here) after hearing that Walz was to be the Dem. VP nominee: “Walz is so perfect for the job of VP. He’s a rural progressive. He’s my people. A dirt road Democrat. He’s a liberal guy who lives among conservative folks.” (Some of you may remember that I introduced Ms. Piper in my March 14 blog post.)