Professor Gushee has hit the nail on the head. His conclusion is what I've felt and said about the "religious right" (sic, twice over) in the USA for the past few decades. Compare their attitude and platform with what we hear and see in the behavior and teaching of Jesus the Christ in the gospels, and one comes away reeling over just how starkly the two schools of thought are on opposite ends of the spectrum and at utter odds with each other.

Gregory Orloff

It seems to me that folks like the Tea Party, the Religious Right, the neo-"evangelicals," etc. are actually very biblical. The New Testament calls them "Pharisees." (Not entirely fair to the real Pharisees, but we know what Jesus means. Sometimes he means us, too...)

The Bible on "social justice": "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers....Now by chance Glenn Beck was going down that road...." And then there's the Book of Amos. Mr. Beck evidently does not attend a church that uses the RCL.

Glenn Beck is no libertarian. Glenn Beck gives libertarians and many/most Tea Partiers a bad name. To the extent that Tea Partiers simply want government power to be transferred from the federal government to statement government they are not libertarian.

You can be a Christian and be a libertarian. You be a social justice Christian and be a libertarian. What you cannot be is a libertarian social justice Christian who believes that because there is something Christians ought to do - address the causes of poverty, for example - that justifies the use of government for that end. The libertarian attitude is that those problems ought to be solved by free association with others and voluntary giving. There are libertarians who believe in everyone for themselves. Not all libertarians are of that kind.

Further, not every libertarian believes smaller government is the answer to every problem. If government can do a better job at a social justice problem than free association and voluntary giving some libertarians would see a role for government just as they see a role for government for mutual defense or for anti-monopoly laws.

Libertarians are liberal on social issues like homosexuality. Some in the media are surprised that Tea Parties are opposed to the Defense of Marriage Act. That's not actually surprising given that many Tea Partiers are libertarians, and most are states rights advocates who believe state governments should be the sole regulators of marriage.

Unfortunately, John Chilton's evaluation of the libertarian movement misses the mark in some areas. For some inexplicable reason, even though they prize individual rights abouve all, libertarians consistently speak against same-sex relationships (and abortion) as anti-societal.

There is also the Catch-22 of the attitude of small government is better, except when it's not. Take the Gulf spill. Libertarians were some of the loudest protectors of "free market" capitalism,with no government supervision. After the spill, suddenly, the governemnt should have been there. There is no consistency to their thinking about small government/laissez faire attitudes. When it works well, they favor it. Yet who is to say when bigger government works well and when "free markets work well?

Ask a libertarian about taking a highway, calling a cop, licensing an airline pilot or controlling the friendly skies. Suddenly, "big" government is the necessary means to keeping a society functioning well.

Ayn Rand/Hayek philosophy is one of greed and self-interest- it has no basis in Christian ideology at all.

A pure libertarian would not be described by Rob's paragraph 1. A pure libertarian does have trouble reconciling their view of how the world could work with the examples Rob gives in his penultimate paragraph. And as someone with rather libertarian views - at least when I take tests of my views - I've never read Ayn Rand. I have read Hayek and while I appreciate that he's soared to the top of the Amazon best selling list, I'm sorely disappointed that Glenn Beck put him there.

Not everything can be neatly packaged even when it comes to Tea Partiers. Read this about DOMA,
http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/faith_and_politics/dont_give_me_the_facts_im_reac.html

See also the question there about the Obama administration and abortion. It doesn't match up with the notion that only Tea Partiers want to make abortions more difficult to obtain.