Leftist Christian

The defense of many religious conservatives for their position has to do with their view of the role of the government and its relation to their view of the root of humankind’s problems. They say we are naïve when we suggest that there is a relationship between the evil things that people do (I’ll not shrink from such an absolutist characterization) and one’s socioeconomic status. This is a compelling argument for many. Higher murder rates, higher crime rates—robbery and murder are undoubtedly evil, and the rates of such are generally higher in urban centers. Why is that? As I see it, one can either hold an unstated racist answer or an acknowledgement of a correlation between certain crimes of desperation and poverty. And if one is to believe the right, one would have to hold a rather narrow view of sin. Many of its proponents do—sin is confined to things, and only certain things—that one can see. If we believe, though, that we are all susceptible to any kind of sin, the right condit...