The Consent of the Governed

With election season upon us, we are again bombarded by religious influence on politics. I received the following article and I thought it reflected my feelings very well. Now I am all for using your moral values and beliefs to choose a candidate. But I challenge everyone, including myself, to not fall for the superficial.

A lot of people voted for G W Bush because of his religious faith. I think they were taken advantage of. He was the antithesis of my moral values and has proven himself a master of deceit to further his agenda of worldy domination, trampling the Constitution, increased wealth for the wealthy and bankrupting the institutions that help the disadvantaged.

I remember how Christ kept himself above politics and focused his eyes upon the people around him. The separation of church and state is not to protect the government but to protect the religious freedoms we hold so dear.

How would Jesus vote?
By Richard T. Hughes, February 01, 2008
http://www.episcopalchurch.org/80050_94466_ENG_HTM.htm
[Religion News Service]

When Mitt Romney has to persuade evangelical voters that he is authentically Christian in order to become president of the United States, something is badly wrong with American politics.

What's wrong is the fact that many evangelical Christians -- some 30 percent of the GOP and 40 percent of Iowa caucus-goers, according to polls -- have little or no appreciation for the country's historic commitment to the separation of church and state.

Take, for example, the Rev. Jason Poling of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville, Maryland, who told The Baltimore Sun that he rejects Romney because "Mormonism is not a Christian religion. It is not aligned with historic Christian beliefs."

Where does the Constitution say that our presidents must be "aligned with historic Christian beliefs?" Romney is entirely right to complain -- as he did in his address on December 6 -- that when voters reject him because of his Mormon faith, they "enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the Constitution."

Poling said evangelicals and Mormons may look a lot alike, but "theologically, they are worlds apart." Poling complains, for example, that Mormons don't believe in the Trinity, and "the Trinity is non-negotiable."

Really? To be president of the United States one has to be orthodox on the doctrine of the Trinity?

The problem here is far bigger than people like Poling. The real issue -- implicit but seldom spoken out loud -- is the widespread belief, especially among evangelicals, that the United States is a "Christian nation."

It's not a belief that's confined to evangelicals. Christian Smith, the noted sociologist from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, reports that "not only conservative Protestants but the majority of Americans believe that America was founded as a Christian nation."

So it's no surprise that Sen. John McCain was able to make the perfectly absurd comment in October that "the Constitution established the United States as a Christian nation."

There is a sense in which America is a Christian nation. After all, some 80 percent of the American people claim to be Christian in one sense or another.

But the Christian character of the United States is comparable to the "Christian character" of the Roman Empire following Constantine, or the "Christian character" of the Holy Roman Empire in the 16th century. Christian trappings abound, but if one compares the Christian dimensions of the two empires with the teachings of Jesus, the differences are stunning.

Jesus counseled peace; empires practice violence. Jesus counseled humility; empires ruthlessly pursue power. Jesus counseled concern for the poor; empires exalt the rich. Jesus counseled modesty; empires embrace extravagance. Jesus counseled forgiveness and love for one's enemies; empires seek vengeance.

Like those ancient empires, America abounds in Christian trappings. Still, the United States as an empire embraces virtually all the values that have been common to empires for centuries on end: peace through violence, the rich over the poor, power over humility.

In a word, it rejects the values of Jesus. Yet Americans like McCain -- and the legions of evangelicals who form the base of the GOP -- claim that the United States is a Christian nation.

If America were really a Christian nation, and if Christians were faithful to the mandates of Jesus, evangelicals would demand from Mitt Romney and any other candidate answers to where they stand on questions of war and peace, wealth and poverty, and domestic and world hunger.

Instead, they want to know where Romney stands on the Trinity.

Until evangelicals exhibit a greater appreciation for the Constitution on the one hand, and for the values Jesus taught on the other, one can only conclude that the Christian factor they have injected into U.S. politics is fundamentally bogus.

It subverts not only democracy, but also the deepest meaning of the Christian faith.

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