Samuel Wurzelbacher isn’t named Joe and he isn’t a plumber, but he is known as Joe the Plumber. For some reason people are fascinated by what he has to say. Now he’s emerging as some kind of explicitly Christian spokesman and telling Christianity Today how he interprets the faith:
People don’t understand the dictionary—it’s called queer. Queer means strange and unusual. It’s not like a slur, like you would call a white person a honky or something like that. You know, God is pretty explicit in what we’re supposed to do—what man and woman are for. Now, at the same time, we’re supposed to love everybody and accept people, and preach against the sins. I’ve had some friends that are actually homosexual. And, I mean, they know where I stand, and they know that I wouldn’t have them anywhere near my children. But at the same time, they’re people, and they’re going to do their thing.
I leave it to you to unpack all that is wrong with that statement. Sam is seriously intolerant about gay people, but he also seems unfamiliar with Deism and the prevailing attitude about abortion in the state of Georgia.
Conservatism is about the basic rights of individuals. God created us. As far as the government goes, the Founding Fathers based the Constitution off of Christian values. It goes hand-in-hand. As far as the Republican Party? I felt connected to it because individual freedom should not be legislated by the federal government.
One thing I’ve been thinking about is taking the social issues out of national politics. For example, if Georgia wanted abortion and Alabama didn’t, that’s going to be up to the people in Georgia. I can’t sway them. Would I give them advice not to? Absolutely. Would I say it’s wrong? Yes. I’ll go to Alabama where they say, “I don’t want abortion.” Trying to get 350 million people to agree on an issue is not going to happen. That way, people can live the way they want to as opposed to being imposed on by the federal government.
I was struck by how seamlessly he moved from saying that the government shouldn’t legislate individual freedom to saying that Alabama would be right to outlaw reproductive freedom. I also like how unselfconsciously he assumes that individual woman in Alabama will be ‘living the way they want to’ once their reproductive freedom is taken away from them by their state government.
I especially enjoyed this next part:
We’ve lost our American history. Every state has “In God we trust” or “With God’s help” in their constitution. God is recognized as, if you will, America’s religion.
Of course, this ‘God’ guy was invented by non-Christians a long time ago, but Sam’s point could be improved if we put ‘In Christ We Trust’ on our currency and in our state constitutions. How about this exchange?
CT: Who do you see as the emerging Christian leaders?
SW: James Dobson. I love Dobson…
James Dobson retired two months ago.
