Inserting religion into politics

I wrote the title purposely. It’s bound to get people’s dander up.

I probably could have written “Religious values and politics” and increased folks’ blood pressure just as much.

“Moral values and politics” may have been a little more acceptable.

So how about “Values and politics?”

Am I far off base here? Don’t we all have values? Don’t we want to see all Americans embrace those values?

Isn’t equality for all men a value? Isn’t honesty a value? Try this list:

“…care and responsibility, fairness and equality, freedom and courage, fulfillment in life, opportunity and community, cooperation and trust, honesty and openness.”

Not bad. And that was a liberal.

Aren’t all of our laws an expression of values? Don’t we all hold certain actions to be right or wrong? We may not agree on the rightness or wrongness, but I think we all have actions we consider right or wrong.

And we all express our approval or disapproval of actions.

If you approve of smoking, you contend it’s freedom of choice. If you disapprove, it’s because it’s a health hazard.

See how it works? Even though we might disagree when it comes to defining values above, most of us could agree with them. So when he says conservatives don’t have those values, is he a “hater?” Is it wrong to now express disagreement based on values?

That seems to be what happens when religious conservatives express disapproval of a lifestyle or choices made by a group of people. We’re “haters.”

Now I agree that religious conservatives haven’t always been smart or convincing in their expression of their values. But does that mean they’re “haters?”

Because I think homosexuality is wrong, it doesn’t mean I hate anyone. I disagree with their lifestyle choices (yes, you read that right, choices) same as I would anyone else’s lifestyle choices. I don’t hate anyone I haven’t met, for one, and you would have to do a lot to make me hate you, like kill one of my kids or something.

I don’t hate them, but I could be called a “hater.” I don’t fear them, but I could be called a “homophobe.”

Substitute any thing else you like.

Well, I didn’t want to go on this long about this because I really wanted to talk about what Mitch Daniels said and the repercussions of it. Because after this post some folks may then be surprised how I feel on the subject.

Maybe in the next post….

McCain’s Evangelical Problem?

The Week had a compendium of op/ed pieces about John McCain’s potential (?) problems with conservative evangelicals. Here are the pieces if you can’t access the link:

McCain Extends His Outreach, but Evangelicals Are Still Wary

Lori Viars, an evangelical activist in Ohio, said she is waiting to see whether McCain uses his choice of a running mate to ease concerns among social conservatives about his views on abortion and other social issues. “A lot of us are in a holding pattern.”

Evangelicals not McCain’s only problem

McCain needs to drum up more enthusiasm from many parts of the Republican coalition, but his “need for the evangelicals is most crucial.”

Religious Right feeling rejected by McCain

“the fact is, McCain’s moderates can’t beat Obama’s adoring groupies.” Moderates aren’t the voters who “raise money, register voters, print and pass out voter guides, recruit their neighbors, and drive people to the polls.”

A Campaign We Can Believe In?

There are plenty of reasons for Republicans to be “alarmed that the McCain campaign doesn’t seem up to the task of electing John McCain.”

There was also one in the Tennessean over the weekend.

D. Michael Lindsay, assistant director of the Center on Race, Religion and Urban Life at Rice University, said white evangelicals, which make up a quarter to a third of the vote in most elections, have been the largest and most loyal bloc of votes for the Republicans.

But in high-turnout Democratic primaries, there were signs of slippage for the GOP. Exit polls showed that in Virginia and Georgia primaries, both won by Obama, the Illinois senator won overwhelmingly among those who go to church at least weekly. Those voters were 44 percent of the Democratic primary electorate in Georgia, 38 percent in Virginia.

So they make it sound like McCain only has trouble with evangelical or social conservatives. My observations are that he has trouble with conservatives of all stripes, not just religious ones.

McCain’s just got problems and i don’t think they’re getting better yet. That may change.

I sure hope so.

Review of Bible and Government – part 1

Written by Dr. John M. Cobin, an investment adviser and Visiting Professor of Economics and Public Policy, Bible and Government(subtitled Public Policy from a Christian Perspective) gives a view of government from a Christian perspective most Christians would probably be surprised to read.

This is not Mike Huckabee government, folks.

And he doesn’t wait till chapter one to get started. In the introduction he asks four basic questions (p. 5):

1. What kind of government should Bible-believing Christians support?
2. What public policy must be obeyed?
3. When, if ever, should Christians revolt?
4. To what extent is the Christian’s submission to the state qualified?

These questions Dr. Cobin seeks to answer in his book.

He then discusses three dominant philosophies of biblical public policy that have emerged (p. 7-9).

…theonomists (or Christian Reconstruction) would tend to allow civil government action that assists in the establishment of the postmillennial golden age. …Anabaptists… advocate non-participation in most civil government offices. [ed.-in some cases, this leads them to pacifism]. …Still a third perspective,…seems to offer a revitalized vision of the divine right of kings….if God ordains the state, then nearly all of what it decrees must be obeyed as if God Himself had issued the order.

Reformed Christians (like Huckabee) see civil government as “a redeemable and, hence, potentially useful institution that may be placed in the service of God’s kingdom as a restraint against evil.” This is what most evangelicals mean by Cobin proposes that at least part of civil government is beyond the pale of transformation.

What might surprise some Christians is Dr. Cobin’s interpretation of 1 Samuel 8:4-20. Israel is asking for a king and Samuel is trying to tell them what a king will mean, especially in the area of taxation.

Another of Cobin’s premises is that civil government is, in fact, a lethal institution. He quotes extensively from a speech that includes data that can be found on this website.

Well, that’s the introduction, there’s more to come.

The Evangelical Crackup (?)

A tip of the conservative cap to the Recess Supervisor for this article by David D. Kirkpatrick from the New York Times magazine. It’s long, 8,000 words, but for anyone interested in where Christianity and politics are going, it is an essential read.

Mr. Kirkpatrick covered the movement and the 2004 election. For this article he went to Witchita, Kansas to see what, if anything, had changed.

I’m not going to comment much on this article, since I wrote my own post on the subject recently.

UPDATE: Jason at The Independent Conservative takes Christians to task over their voting and promises to post on why Christians should support Ron Paul. The Crossed Pond has a similar question.

Nick Schweitzer, Jessica McBride, and Rick Esenberg weigh in on the Giuliani endorsement by Pat Robertson.

GOP notes

At Politico.com today it’s all GOP, all the time.

First a poll finds Thompson appeals to churchgoers.

Giuliani leads Thompson 29 percent to 21 percent among Republicans generally, the new national CBS News poll suggests.

But weekly Republican churchgoers back Thompson by a margin of 29 percent to 19 percent for Giuliani — roughly tying John McCain.

Then Republicans trade blows at fiery debate.

After two weeks of sparring from afar, the top GOP presidential candidates took their attacks up close Sunday, using the first round of their debate here to question one another’s conservative credentials.

Even Rudi claimed to be conservative. The four co-called top tier candidates received most of the questions.

While the lesser-knowns were brought into the conversation more toward the end, they were largely used as foils for the front-runners.

Then the Family Research Council’s “Values Voter Straw Poll” found Mike Huckabee winning among those people attending the event but Mitt Romney winning the online poll.

The 5,775-vote total included thousands of people who had voted online, and might have become eligible by paying as little as $1 to join FRC Action, the legislative action arm of the Family Research Council.

Heck, the Romney campaign could have had hundreds just in Mitt’s pocket change.

Although the audience of evangelicals at the Washington Hilton was not told about the alternate count, the crowd favorite by a mile among the 952 attendees who voted in person was former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. He took 51 percent of the in-person votes, compared to just 10 percent for the former Massachusetts governor.

Organizers said they wound up with more than 2,200 attendees, plus more than 400 journalists. Further complicating the voting totals, about 600 attendees voted online, so making it tougher to generalize about the discrepancies, organizers said.

Boy, what confusion. So essentially it doesn’t mean much.

The scrambled results obscured a clear message: To the degree that the group represents evangelical voters, they remain flummoxed about where to put their prestige and muscle in the ’08 race.

Even more surprising, Democrats got 32 of the online votes and 10 votes from those attending. So much for the monolithic Christian right vote, although it was overwhelmingly Republican.

Religious test?

According to Robert Weitzel writing at Fighting Bob

Contrary to Article VI of the United States Constitution, which states in part that, “No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States,” the realpolitik of American political campaigning is that all candidates for public office must pass a religious test. This is not a de facto religious test. It is the real McCoy. But it has become the de facto law of our Christian nation.

This, of course, depends on one’s point of view. Weitzel and liberals like him (not all, just those like him) feel religion has too large a place in politics. He illustrates,

Imagine the scurrilous hay right-wing pundits would make of the following blasphemous snippets:

John Adams: “This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.”

Thomas Jefferson: “Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man.”

James Madison: “Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise.”

Shall we duel with quotes? Jefferson wrote most of the Declaration of Independence, which contain these words,

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Or another?

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.

But more than that Weitzel should check his sources first.

This quotation has so far not been found in any of the sources available to us. However, it may possibly be a misleading paraphrase of the following:

“…but a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, & perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in church & state: that the purest system of morals ever before preached to man has been adulterated & sophisticated, by artificial constructions, into a mere contrivance to filch wealth & power to themselves, that rational men not being able to swallow their impious heresies, in order to force them down their throats, they raise the hue & cry of infidelity, while themselves are the greatest obstacles to the advancement of the real doctrines of Jesus, and do in fact constitute the real Anti-Christ.” – Thomas Jefferson to William Baldwin.

Hmmm. Should I trust the rest of his citations then?

John Adams? Let’s get the context

Twenty times in the course of my late reading have I been on the point of breaking out, “This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!!!” But in this exclamation I would have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without religion this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company, I mean Hell.

Hmmm.

James Madison? Well, one out of three isn’t bad. But Joseph Leconte from the Heritage Foundation gives that quote and many others and makes this point

Liberals make Madison into an anti-religious rationalist, determined to quarantine the republic from the disruptive influence of faith. Conservatives, when not trying to Christianize him, invoke Madison’s faith-friendly rhetoric to justify the latest attempt to reinsert religion in the public square. The truth is more complicated. What is nearly indisputable is that his religious instincts fueled much of his political activity.

But all that aside, what does Weitzel propose for those for whom religion is the foundation of their values? Ignore them?

But at the same time any opposition I have to Romney is not because he’s Mormon. Any opposition would come because of his record as governor of Massachusetts.  Any opposition to Obama would not be because of his religious beliefs or whether he attended Muslim school or not.

But my political values come from my faith.