How Christian is the Tea Party?

"This is the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were proud, had plenty to eat, and enjoyed peace and prosperity; but she didn’t help the poor and the needy." Ezekiel 16:49 

In response to Kenneth's concern yesterday of Christians fighting over politics at the expense of preaching the gospel, I have a counter. 
Jesus was killed for his politics as much as he was killed for his theology. And not just his politics but for how he acted politically. This is central to one of the best Christian books ever written ' The Politics of Jesus' by the American theologian John Howard Yoder. 

It's too obvious to be overlooked but we miss it all the time. Jesus would have never been elected for any political office. How could he? 
With a fiscal policy insisting that the rich sell their possessions to provide for the poor. 
With a defence policy that insisted we were to love our enemies and not kill them. 
With a social policy that stipulated that we are all brothers and sisters having only one Lord and Master, that contrary to the politics of Cain, we are our brothers' and sisters' keeper. 
With a monetary policy that insisted that one could only serve either God or Money, not both. 
With a law and order policy that insisted we forgive one another 70 times 7 even if the wrong being committed was a repeated one. 
With a civics policy that committed all its citizens to visiting those in prison, welcoming into our homes refugees and immigrants, clothing the naked, feeding the hungry etc. 

I repeat - Jesus would never be elected to any political office anywhere - whether Israel, the Vatican, the US, not even here in Canada! 

So when a political party insists in promoting a politics which claims to reflect 'family Christian values' and adopts as its platform 
- the cutting of social programs to the poor 
- the increase of military spending to safeguard the American way of life 
- a law and order policy that increases the number of inmates in what is already the most incarcerated country in the world 
- insists on the constitutional right to bear arms even as year after year more and more of its innocents are being tragically killed; 
you have to question whether that party is advancing the politics of Jesus, or the politics of Empire. 
In my humble opinion, the Tea Party is the politics of Empire so divorced from anything Jesus stood for, it isn't Christian at all. For one's politics to be Christian, it must reflect Jesus - and I think we'd all agree, there is no political party anywhere, which comes anywhere close. 

It is just as important we get this right as we get the matter of Jesus' divinity right. 
Bad politics makes for bad societies whose policies are driven by fear. 
Good politics makes for good societies whose politics are driven by the concern for our neighbour's welfare. 
Christians should ever be advocating the politics which got Jesus crucified but are in the end, the only politics that really matter.