Christianity and Power Politics

Yesterday I typed on this blog some excerpts from an article about the late Gore Vidal, & the story from which I quoted contained this paragraph:

He held an interest in politics and government from childhood, the descendant of a uniquely American style of aristocracy, gone now, that for good or ill, saw commitment to the general welfare as essential to its noblesse oblige philosophy.
[end quote]

"Noblesse oblige" -- the obligations that go along with nobility -- the idea that if you're from a family with the advantages of wealth and power, then you have obligations to do positive things for the rest of society, to serve....

That's OK as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough. We all have an obligation to do positive things for society and our country,  and we all should feel a commitment to the general welfare.   If our families don't have as much wealth and power as Gore Vidal's family had, we all have those same obligations.  We all are obligated by noblesse oblige, even if we don't know those words, or that phrase.    And we all have the power of the vote.   In his biography of Jacqueline Kennedy, Donald Spoto wrote, She refused to believe -- in the fashionably bogus humility that began to characterize so much in American life -- that she was unimportant or that her life was negligible, that she could do little, that she bore no responsibility.  Her attitude and actions counted, she believed; her inner stance determined what contributions she could make -- not only to the lives of those she loved but also to a larger world.   ...As 1960 began, then, Jackie...took up, to the mute astonishment of her husband's buddies and counselors, the writings of the American Protestant theologian and ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr.  He had been writing for years, in books such as Moral Man and Immoral Society and Christianity and Power Politics, about the profoundest kind of faith. ... What did Jack think of his wife's recondite interests?  "I never know what she's going to do," he replied...with genuine wonder.... [end excerpt]   -30-