2006 Interim (Essay #4) (Religion-B)
September 19, 2006

"POLITICAL ABUSE OF RELIGION"

Politics and religion do mix.  They have to mix, since each of us has both in our life.  We negotiate a way to live together in the same country, which is politics, and we marvel at creation, which is religion.

However, in the public sphere the two mess with each other.  God is not the problem.  The problem comes from those who know for sure what God thinks.  (Does God think?)  Political action is not the problem, unless we have someone who claims to know what is divinely directed for every one.

Senator Danforth stated the problem succinctly, in a shorthand quote of these ‘experts’:  "My god is bigger than your god."  (I drop ‘god’ to lower case, since the statement clearly is not about God.  It is about us.)

The radical religious right has dipped deeply into politics, working with one political party in an effort to change the outcome of an election.  Though I have frustrations with anyone trying to throw an election or skewing it away from a base that is representative of the citizens at large, that is the American way.  We have our political opinions and we push them and spin them in psychedelic ways.  We always have.

My protest is not against differing political opinions.  It is with what a few politicians do to religion.  Mark Warner, former governor of Virginia, objected:  "No one -- no one -- in politics has a monopoly on virtue, on patriotism, or most important, on the truth."  When my or your political view is considered a religious heresy, someone stepped over a line.  A Muslim cleric adds his objection:  "The worst that happens is letting any person claim to speak authoritatively for God........  We are not in a world of absolutes.  We are surrounded by ambiguities."  (In our current climate, "Liberty Counsel" urges that "Christian educators really have a missionary opportunity in the public schools" to talk about Judeo-Christian influence/references on any class subject.)

That is enough to help you understand why I am deeply offended by some political religious protagonists.  I noted last time the example in the 2004 elections.  Jim Wallis summarized the faith part of the administration's claims in four assertions:  1. This war is right.  2. Abortion is wrong.  3. God loves success.  4. Gays are bad.

This is not a legitimate summary of any form of Christian faith.  Studious Christians know that Jesus never spoke of these assertions as if they were his values.  The Bible student knows that Jesus and the Hebrew prophets spoke of the poor more than any other subject.  For Jesus and the prophets the next powerful subject was justice.

Most political statements on faith do not center on poverty -- in fact do not even mention it.  Justice is the leveling of the playing field between classes, rich and poor, privileged and "third class."  A philosophy which does not wrestle with justice is political, not Christian.

Jim Wallis, a conservative evangelical theologian with a worldwide reputation, nonpartisan, is better qualified than most to protest this charade.  The following comments are a mix of Dr. Wallis's statements from an interview, an address given at Creighton this spring, and his book, "God's Politics:  Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It."  To simplify, I am treating the mix as one quote.

"Many of us feel that our faith has been stolen, and it's time to take it back.  In particular, an enormous public misrepresentation of Christianity has taken place.  And because of an almost uniform media misperception, many people around the world now think Christian faith stands for political commitments that are almost the opposite of its true meaning.  How did the faith of Jesus come to be known as pro-rich, pro-war, and pro-American?  What has happened here?  And how do we get back to a historic, biblical, and genuinely evangelical faith rescued from its contemporary distortions?

"Of course, nobody can steal your personal faith; that's between you and God.  The problem is in the political arena, where strident voices claim to represent Christians when they clearly don't speak for most of us.  It's time to take back our faith in the public square, especially in a time when a more authentic social witness is desperately needed.

"Take back our faith from whom?  To be honest, the confusion comes from many sources.  From religious right-wingers who claim to know God's political views on every issue, then ignore the subjects that God seems to care the most about.  From television preachers whose extravagant lifestyles and crass fund-raising tactics embarrass most Christians.  From liberal secularists who want to banish faith from public life and deny spiritual values to the soul of politics.  From liberal theologians whose cultural conformity serves to erode the foundation of faith.  From New Age philosophers who want to make Jesus into a non threatening spiritual guru.  And from politicians who love to say how religious they are but utterly fail to apply the values of faith to their public leadership and political policies.

"When we reclaim faith we discover that faith challenges the ‘powers that be’ to do justice for the poor.  We remember that faith hates violence.  We see that faith creates community from racial, class and gender divisions.  We are reminded that faith regards matters such as the sacredness of life and family bonds as so important that they should never be used as political pawns.

"The media like to say, ‘Oh, then you must be the religious Left?’  No, not at all.  The very question is the problem.  Just because a religious Right has fashioned itself for political power does not mean that those who question this political seduction must be their opposite.  To always raise the moral issues of human rights, for example, will challenge both left and right-wing governments that put power above principles.

"Similarly, when the poor are defended on moral or religious grounds, it is certainly not ‘class warfare’ as the right often charge.  Rather it is a direct response to the overwhelming focus on the poor in the Scriptures, which claim they are regularly neglected, exploited, and oppressed by wealth elites, political rulers, and indifferent affluent populations.

"It is precisely because religion takes the problem of evil so seriously that it must always be suspicious of too much concentrated power -- politically and economically -- either in totalitarian regimes or in huge multination corporations, several of which have more wealth and power than many governments.

"We have a President who changes the words of scripture.  ‘The light shines in the darkness.  The darkness does not overcome it,’" he said regarding Ellis island after 9/11.  Well, that's from the Gospel of John.  It's not about the American beacon of freedom.  You don't change the words of scripture.  That bothers us evangelicals.

"Or he changes hymnology:  ‘Power, power, wonder working power.’  When he said that in the State of the Union, he got 60 million people going, ‘I know that song.’  But the wonder working power in the song is the salvation of Christ -- not the idealism of the American people. This is an American civil religion.  This is not biblical faith.

"Plus, the President and many of his administration are omitting central scripture.  My conversion text is the 25th chapter of Matthew, where Jesus said,  ‘As you've done to the least of these, you've done to me.’  I do not ever hear them quoting the Sermon on the Mount.  I'm hard pressed to think of teachings of Jesus that are being talked about in the administration.

"Jesus did not speak at all about homosexuality."  There are about 12 verses in the Bible that touch on that question.  Most of them are very contextual.  There are thousands of verses on poverty.  I don't hear the balance of scripture.

"What you really do not hear from political leaders is Jesus saying, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers.’  Or even more, how many sermons have we heard lately on the text, ‘Love your enemies?’  We should at least have a debate on what that means.

"A talk radio host one night was yelling at me about Iraq.  I said, ‘What would Jesus do?  Can you imagine him climbing into the cockpit of a B-52 and dropping a load of bombs over Baghdad?’  He:  ‘Well, Jesus would surely want to protect the American people.’  I said, ‘Really?  What about the Iraqis?’  ‘Well -- well -- them too.’  Once you start talking about this in a religious frame, it's troubling.

"There has got to be a progressive religious response to our President that says, ‘We do not quibble with your piety, but we challenge your theology.’  I believe in the separation of church and state, absolutely.  But I do not believe in the separation of public life from our basic values, and for many of us, our religious values.

"The Christian Coalition is not in the evangelical tradition.  They are fundamentalists who espouse a kind of cultural American religion that does not have much to do with Biblical faith.  Martin Luther King Jr. really understood the role of the church when he said, ‘The church is not meant to be the master of the state.’  We don't take power and impose our agenda down people's throats.  We don't legislate Leviticus. We are the servant of the state.  We are the conscience of the state.  We are prophetic interrogators.  ‘Why are so many people and families in our shelters?’  ‘Why?’ is the prophetic question.

"Abraham Lincoln had it right.  Our task should not be to invoke religion and the name of God by claiming God's blessing and endorsement for all our national policies and practices - saying, in effect, that God is on our side.  Rather, as Lincoln put it, we should worry earnestly whether we are on God's side.

"Those are the two ways that religion has been brought into public life in American history.  The first way - God on our side - leads inevitably to triumphalism, self-righteousness, bad theology, and, often, dangerous foreign policy.  The second way - asking if we are on God's side - leads to much healthier things, namely penitence and even repentance, humility, reflection, and accountability.  We need much more of all those, because they are often the missing values of politics."

Cheers

Lowen

Note:  Several articles develop this subject in a solid way.  I will email any of them to you upon your (email) request.
Randall Balmer, another evangelical theologian, on the current political misuse of scripture.
Senator Obama (D-Illinois) whose opponent in his last campaign asserted that Jesus would not vote for Obama.  The senator responds with a "Call to Renewal" about how we can recover talking about faith in politics. Jim Wallis article taken from "God's Politics:  A Better Option,"  which has a more complete text of some of the above.
Harvey Cox, Harvard School of Divinity, on "The Oldtime Religion" -- comparing the present right-wing zealots to oldtime conservatives like William Jennings Bryan and Billy Graham.

Lowen

Note:  Garry Wills, Northwestern University, in a New York Times op-ed, "Christ Among the Partisans,"  states  "There is no such thing as a ‘Christian politics.’  If it is a politics, it cannot be Christian .... Jesus brought no political message or program ......"

If you want the article, please request it by an email to me. Jim Wallis book:  "God's Politics:  Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It"  (Harper, 2005)