Christianity is often associated with right-wing politics, but this shouldn’t be the case, as Jesus taught everyone to work together as a community, which are often ideas floated in left-wing circles. So, why are Christians not more left-wing?

Jesus of Nazareth, known by Christians around the world as Jesus Christ, the son of God, was a radical Jewish reformist from the land of Judea, now known as Palestine. From a purely secular, historical point of view, he was a renegade who criticized the Pharisees for their hypocrisies, and then was martyred, where Christians believe he died for all of man’s sins.

Numerous of Jesus’ teachings can be considered “left-wing” in nature. However, to be clear, the politics of Jesus’ time were fundamentally different from ours. Jesus’ views do not conform to modern political terminology. However, inferences can be made based on the actions he took while he was alive.

Furthermore, left-wing ideas typically involve well-funded social welfare programs such as universal healthcare and working together more as a community. Right-wing ideas, however, traditionally pursue rugged individualism while minimizing governmental expenses, including welfare programs, in favor of reducing the tax rate for wealthier individuals.

However, many right-wing viewpoints align with Christian ideas, such as being anti-abortion and upholding tradition. These are valid points from a religious perspective, but I believe the fellowship and community service taught by Jesus fall more into the left-wing point of view of egalitarianism, or rather, the doctrine that all people deserve equal rights and opportunities.

Furthermore, Jesus and his apostles all lived and traveled in Judea together, sharing everything they had with each other, but also with those who most needed it. Plus, a few of Jesus’ teachings are talks about fairness, including the parable told in Matthew 25:37-40.

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you [as] a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison, and go to visit you?”
“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’”
The least fortunate in society are the impoverished, the homeless, and the disabled. We live in a society that believes in pulling yourself up by your bootstraps; however, due to many systemic circumstances, not everyone has bootstraps by which to pull themselves up.

Christians in politics should be inclined to help the least in society by advocating for government programs. This includes universal healthcare, universal basic income, and free lunches for students from kindergarten to 12th grade.

While Jesus didn’t advocate for governmental welfare programs, they’re just natural evolutions of what Jesus and the early church advocated for and did themselves.

Despite Christian resistance to welfare systems due to skepticism about governmental overreach, if the early church trusted flawed humans to share resources, as seen in Acts 2:44-47, why can’t we trust democratically elected institutions to do the same?

“All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who needed them. Every day, they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people.”

In this, we see the apostles living together in a community, sharing amongst each other, and helping anyone who needed it. We should work our way to help as many people as possible, because part of Christian dogma is that Jesus died for our sins, bringing an end to our eternal suffering by believing in him.

So if we believe in him, why don’t we try to live like him? Why don’t we see these Christian politicians try to live like Jesus by passing legislation that can help reduce and eventually end suffering?

For instance, people shouldn’t have to go through medical debt. Jesus wouldn’t want them to have to go through that, and Christian politicians should live like Jesus and help those who genuinely need it instead of using religion as a mechanism to get votes. Christianity is not a grocery store; you can’t pick and choose what you believe, you must believe in all of it.

The core of Jesus’s teachings was to help everybody, not excluding anybody for any reason. The word of God was meant to be for everybody, regardless of creed, gender or nationality. We should apply these same ideals to how we help people through government programs funded by the collective populace to provide for many.

Welfare is what we currently have as the system in place to help the least fortunate. However, though many different presidencies and congresses were full of alleged Christians, these welfare programs have been stripped down to their very core. Ultimately, this has caused defects to become more obvious and a constant obstruction when anyone attempts to change or improve these programs.

The roots of American conservative dogma are in active opposition to New Deal policies, including welfare programs. Maybe these conservative politicians should re-read their Bibles, as the teachings of Jesus contradict their opposition to systems that help the less fortunate. They can call themselves followers of Christ, but they aren’t living like he instructed.

Henceforth, I think we need to bring back the concept of “What Would Jesus Do?” because, in most cases, if we followed what Jesus would’ve done, we would be more helpful to people who are down on their luck and don’t have the same opportunities as you.

We’re all connected to a metaphorical web, and we must work together to keep it intact. We are only as strong as our weakest link.

Therefore, people who believe in the word of God, whether they be Protestant, Baptist, Catholic or any of the other denominations of Christianity, should be more left-wing because Jesus taught us that we should help the needy. One way we can help the needy is by implementing social reforms that help us supply the bootstraps we can pull ourselves up by.

Andrew Sarhan is a 19-year-old mass communication major from Baton Rouge, La.