Can you be a born-again christian and not a conservative?

Of course you can. First, you could have a Nurturant Parent interpretation of the Bible. Second, if you have a Strict Father interpretation, you need not use the Nation As Family metaphor to project Strict Father morality onto the political domain. That is, you could keep your religion private. Third, you need not use the metaphorical link between the Christian system of moral accounting and laissez-faire free-market economics.

Conservatism and born-again Christianity are distinct systems of thought. Conservative Christianity links them together by metaphor. That link need not exist. It is a matter of interpretation.

Nurturant Parent Christianity

To put the Strict Father interpretation of Christianity in perspective, let us look at the Nurturant Parent interpretation. The fundamental metaphors used in the interpretation are these:

• God Is a Nurturant Parent to Human Beings.

• Christ Is the Bearer of God's Nurturance to Human Beings.

• God's Grace Is Nurturance.

• Moral Action Is Nurturant Action (helping through feeling empathy, demonstrating compassion, acting out of love, etc.).

• Immoral Action (Sin) Is Nonnurturant Action toward Others (harming through lack of empathy, lack of compassionate action, etc.).

God's grace is the central notion in this interpretation, and it is understood metaphorically as nurturance. Since nurturance is a rich concept, the Grace As Nurturance metaphor leads to a correspondingly rich notion of grace. Here are some of the basic properties of nurturance:

Properties of nurturance

Nurturance is the expression of a parent's Love. Nurturance entails the Presence of the parent.

Nurturance entails the Closeness of the parent.

Nurturance involves Feeding that allows for Growth.

Nurturance involves Healing.

Nurturance results in Happiness.

Nurturance entails Protection.

Nurturance is not earned.

A nurturant parent gives nurturance freely and unconditionally.

Nurturance must be accepted if a child is to receive the benefits of nurturance. Only through receiving nurturance do children learn to be nurturant to others (to feel love, feel empathy, act for the benefit of others, and so on).

To learn to act nurturantly toward others, one must be nurtured by a nurturant parent.

The Grace As Nurturance metaphor projects these aspects of nurturance onto corresponding properties of grace. The result is a metaphorically rich notion of grace.

Properties of grace

God's Grace is the expression of God's Love.

God's Grace entails the Presence of God.

God's Grace entails the Closeness of God.

God's Grace involves a spiritual Feeding (or filling) that allows for moral Growth.

God's Grace Heals spiritual wounds and spiritual ills.

God's Grace results in Happiness.

God's Grace entails God's Protection.

Grace is not earned.

God gives his Grace freely and unconditionally.

God's Grace must be accepted if one is to receive the benefits of Grace.

Only through receiving God's Grace do people learn to act morally toward others (to feel love, feel empathy, act for the benefit of others and so on).

To learn to act morally toward others, one must receive God's Grace (e.g., one must be in God's presence, be close to God, etc.).

Since grace is understood metaphorically as nurturance, it is of course the central concept in Nurturant Parent Christianity. The central need in this version of Christianity is the need for God's Grace – -his nurturance along with his presence and closeness – if one is to learn to act morally and if one is to be spiritually filled, sustained, and healed. What gives rise to this need is a separation from God, a separation that is natural to the human condition.

Original Sin in the Nurturant Parent interpretation is rather different than in the Strict Father interpretation, as is sin itself. Sin is nonnurturant action toward others. The idea behind Original Sin is that we naturally act nonnurturantly toward others and we must learn to act nurturantly.

The way we learn to act nurturantly (that is, morally) is through being nurtured and then imitating the actions of those who nurture us, thus incorporating the capacity for nurturing into ourselves. But our own parents are never perfect nurturers, and may be very imperfect ones. Moreover, since we naturally start separating ourselves from them at an early age – in toddlerhood – we can never receive full and constant nurturance from our parents. The very best of nurturant parents cannot come close to making us perfect nurturers, that is, fully moral beings. Original Sin, then, is our inherent inability to be fully moral (that is, nurturant) beings for these reasons. It is also the state of being born and raised separate from God, the ultimate nurturant parent. The task of becoming a fully nurturant person is thus to find God, the ultimate nurturant parent, and receive his perfect continuing nurturance – his Grace.

On the Nurturant Parent interpretation of the Bible, Eden is the state of being completely loved and nurtured in early infancy. Eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is reaching the stage at which we begin to separate from our parents, follow our own desires, and have to learn to act morally toward others. The expulsion from Eden is reaching the stage at which we no longer are completely loved and nurtured, as in infancy, and have to face the difficulties of the world and learn to act morally. Thus we are faced with the problem of finding God and, through his Grace, growing morally and becoming as fully nurturant as we can be.

Let us now turn to how Christ fits into this picture. I begin with the general notion of Moral Accounting, as it applies to both the Nurturant Parent and Strict Father models: