{"id":226,"date":"2008-10-24T17:16:23","date_gmt":"2008-10-24T17:16:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/progressiverevival\/2008\/10\/senator-obama-said-to-joe.html"},"modified":"2008-10-24T17:16:23","modified_gmt":"2008-10-24T17:16:23","slug":"senator-obama-said-to-joe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/10\/senator-obama-said-to-joe.html","title":{"rendered":"Spreading the Wealth, and other Christian Values"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"\"\"In a now famous exchange with Joe the Plumber (aka Joe Wurzelbacher)<\/a>, Senator Obama said: “I think that when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”  This quote has been the rallying call of the McCain campaign for the last week.  McCain is currently on a “Keep your Wealth” bus tour around Florida in an effort to make it clear to all of America that Obama is a socialist and is about to ship all of us out to work on a farm cooperative.<\/p>\n

Obama is not a socialist.  Any dogmatic economic system wouldn’t sit well with his pragmatic soul.  He is not a socialist, but he is a Christian.  Obama believes that as a society we do have an obligation to love our neighbors in need and that this is a spiritual mandate upon which we will be judged.  Perhaps Obama takes the Bible seriously when he reads the example in Acts 2: 44-45 which recalls the early Christian community: “All that believed were together, and had all things in common; And sold
\ntheir possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man
\nhad need.”  <\/i><\/p>\n

Money is a tricky thing for those who take Jesus seriously.  Keep Your Wealth would not be a tour that Christ would be able to get behind as he told the rich man that he could not love both God and Money; and instructed the rich man to sell all his possessions and give to the poor.   My great grandfather Walter Rauschenbusch <\/a>was also not a Socialist, but he did have a healthy suspicion of those who wanted to horde money while the poor starved.  In his book Christianity and the Social Crisis<\/a>, released in 1907 he wrote:
 
<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n

Wealth – to use a
\nhomely illustration – is to a nation what manure is to a farm.  <\/span>If the farmer spreads it evenly over the
\nsoil, it will enrich the whole.  <\/span>If he
\nshould leave it in heaps, the land would be impoverished and under the rich
\nheaps the vegetation would be killed.
<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Sounds like when you spread Money, and manure around, it is good for everyone. 
<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a now famous exchange with Joe the Plumber (aka Joe Wurzelbacher), Senator Obama said: “I think that when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”  This quote has been the rallying call of the McCain campaign for the last week.  McCain is currently on a “Keep your Wealth” bus tour around Florida…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,10,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christians","category-economy","category-election-08"],"yoast_head":"\nSpreading the Wealth, and other Christian Values - Progressive Revival<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/10\/senator-obama-said-to-joe.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Spreading the Wealth, and other Christian Values - 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Paul B. Raushenbush is the moderator of the Progressive Revival blog and the Associate Dean of Religious Life at Princeton University. .An ordained American Baptist minister, Rev. Raushenbush speaks and preaches at colleges, churches and institutes around the country including the College of Preachers at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C., The Chautauqua Institute in upstate New York, and the New America Foundation. Rev. Raushenbush has served at Seattle First Baptist Church, the Presbyterian Chaplaincy at Columbia University and as College and Young Adult Minister at The Riverside Church in New York City. He has appeared on ABC World News Tonight and is a repeated guest on CNN. He has been quoted in The New York Times and The Washington Post and is a contributing editor for Beliefnet.com. His first book, Teen Spirit: One World, Many Faiths (HCI) was released in the Fall of 2004. He is the editor of the 100th Anniversary edition of Walter Rauschenbusch\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s book Christianity and the Social Crisis \u00e2\u20ac\u201c In the 21st Century (HarperOne). His work at Princeton includes strengthening the interfaith community on campus. He is the Co-Director of the Program on Religion, Diplomacy and International Relations at The Liechtenstein Institute on Self Determination at Princeton University. Rev. Raushenbush studied religion at Macalester College before attending Union Theological Seminary in New York City where he graduated with distinction.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/author\/praushenbush"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}