Faith-Based Politics Versus Faith In Politics

Last Friday and yesterday I've pointed out that "conservative" writers for Town Hall have claimed -- without offering any evidence -- that American law is somehow founded on scripture. Today Terry Paulson joins the club. Yet there's a bit more to like in Paulson's article than in the other two.

Paulson quotes Newsweek: "A third of Americans say they are born again; this figure, along with the decline of politically moderate-to liberal mainline Protestants... suggests a movement towards more conservative beliefs and particularly to a more 'evangelical' outlook among Christians." Paulson sees that trend as positive; I see it as troublesome. There are fewer Christians per capita, but there are still a lot, and they are more hard-core in their beliefs.

Paulson claims, "Contrary to what most secular Americans fear, most Christians want nothing to do with a government-endorsed religion." If we're talking about the government endorsing one sect to the exclusion of others, Paulson's claim is true. But many Christians want to impose their religious dogma by legal force by banning abortion, forcibly transferring funds to religious organizations, legally discriminating against homosexuals, censoring unsavory expression, beefing up the drug war, restricting birth control, and banning all sorts of "vices" among consenting adults.

Thus, Paulson's concerns about "attempts to banish God from the public square" ring a little hollow. I don't care if some politicians prays to God in public or invokes some Biblical passage in a speech. I do care if a politician wants to impose Christian dogma by force of law. Paulson, and many other Christians I have read, conflate these two issues.

Paulson does admit -- nay, brag -- that Christianity advocates an altruistic foreign policy. He writes:

For our rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness come not from Presidents or legislators, but from God. It's our Christian values that have driven us to extend those freedoms to others, even if it means sending our young men and women to defend Muslim citizens in Bosnia and to free Muslims from tyranny in Iraq.

Well, the Declaration says "Creator," not "God," but at any rate our rights are separable from the question of how we came about. But Paulson's comments illustrates that Christian "liberty" is not at all the same thing as the government protecting the individual rights of its citizens. For Paulson, Christianity demands that the government forcibly redistribute wealth from its citizens and put soldiers in harm's way to intervene in foreign conflicts absent any clear gain to American security.

Then there is the obvious fact that, historically, Christianity tended to promote oppression, censorship, inquisitions, and conquest over liberty. America's Founders may have been mostly Christian, but what made their revolution in government possible was not the influence of religion, but the influence of the Enlightenment.

Cupp On Religion in Politics

S. E. Cupp worries that "the media" blasted the likes of Sarah Palin, Michael Steele, and George W. Bush over their religious beliefs while giving Democrats a pass.

For example, Bill Clinton wrote that children "can express their beliefs in homework, through artwork, and during class presentations, as long as it's relevant to the assignment. They can form religious clubs in high school." Joe Lieberman invoked Abraham in a speech about Israel.

But Cupp is making a "moral equivalency" argument like those over which the right likes to beat up the left. Mentioning Abraham in a speech or grading a paper with a religious theme is hardly the same thing as what the likes of Bush and Palin have in mind.

Recall that Bush launched a war partly and explicitly based on his religious faith. Recall that Bush gave us robust faith-based welfare (which Obama has been happy to expand). Recall that Palin wants to completely ban abortion, from the moment of conception, perhaps with some exceptions for the life of the mother.

The religious right is not about speeches and homework. The religious right is about bans on abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, and in some cases even popular forms of birth control. The religious right is about building a welfare state based on religious dogma and religious institutions. The religious right often endorses censorship and legal discrimination against homosexuals.

Cupp does have a point in that the left increasingly plays the "me too" party on matters of imposing religious faith by force of law. But that hardly justifies the politics of the religious right.

Dobson Insists on Faith-Based Politics

James Dobson of Focus on the Family makes two main argument in a recent posting that was brought to my attention by 5280 magazine. First, the religious right didn't really lose in the last election, and second, the religious right should continue to make explicitly religious arguments to advance their faith-based politics.

As I've pointed out, the religious right got trounced in Colorado. Voters rejected McCain and his evangelical running mate, picked a United States Senator who penned a particularly eloquent defense of the separation of church and state, ousted a House member known for her faith-based views, rejected an anti-abortion candidate for state senate, and defeated the "personhood" initiative (which Dobson endorsed) by 73 to 27 percent. The religious right hardly could have taken a worse beating.

To "refute" this obvious fact, Dobson points out that voters in "California, Florida and Arizona voted to define marriage in their constitutions as the union of one man and one woman..." But that hardly proves Dobson's point. Defining marriage as heterosexual is hardly the same thing as endorsing the religious right's vicious anti-homosexual agenda. It is common to want to restrict "marriage" to heterosexual couples and still confer full legal rights to homosexual couples. In this case, many voters side with the religious right by coincidence.

Dobson simply ignores all of the other electoral outcomes.

But here is the more substantive point: Dobson calls on Christians to attempt to enforce their distinctly religious views through politics. Dobson rejects Barack Obama's stance that political policies must be based on "some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.” Dobson calls on Christians to reject the "invitation for believers to show up, but then only to be allowed to make arguments that are not based in their deepest beliefs."

And what are Dobson's priorities? "We will continue to stand up for the sanctity of human life, the sacredness of marriage and the right to have a say in the principles that will continue to guide this nation founded on biblical principles."

Banning abortion is his first priority; discriminating against homosexuals is his second. (No serious person protests Dobson's right of free speech; that's hardly the issue.) And Dobson frankly admits that both these causes are particularly religious in nature. With an agenda like that, it's no wonder that most Americans (particularly in the Interior West) have rejected the faith-based politics of Dobson and the Republican Party.

GOP Not Sufficiently Evangelical?

J.C. Watts argues in an article for the Las Vegas Review Journal:

In 2006, 66 percent of the evangelical community did not vote. In 2004, 52 percent of evangelicals did not vote. In 2000, 75 percent did not vote.

I haven't seen any stats on 2008 yet, but I'm not confident that McCain attracted a large segment of that vote, for whatever reason. He certainly stood for their values and principles more strongly than Obama, but couldn't seem to close the sale.

When you consider there are approximately 66 million evangelicals -- some place it as high as 90-100 million -- GOP candidates win when this demographic votes.

Watts hardly gets to the crux of the problem. As I've reviewed, McCain selected Sarah Palin in order to secure the evangelical vote. His strategy worked to a large degree, but it carried the cost of alienating many independents, women, and nonsectarian Republicans. If selecting hard-core evangelical Palin isn't enough to secure the evangelical vote, that proves only that nothing short of an outright theocrat could do so, but such a candidate would further alienate everyone else. The GOP can win on faith-based politics in the South, but the issue is a clear loser in other regions, such as Colorado.

But the category of "evangelical" is also difficult to pin down. I don't know what sources Watts has in mind, but some fraction of every demographic doesn't vote. Also, evangelicals do not all necessarily vote the same. For example, around a third of evangelicals think abortion should remain legal. So, by appealing to some evangelicals on faith-based politics, the GOP risks losing even some evangelicals, particularly those who recognize that keeping religion out of politics also means keeping politics out of religion.

If the GOP takes Watts's advice and becomes more religious, the party will lose even worse, particularly on the coasts and in the Interior West.

New Life, Same Old Subjectivism

Salon has published an article about the politics of New Life Church. This is the paragraph that struck me:

"I'm not going to tell you who to vote for," [Senior Pastor Brady Boyd] said. "You pray, fast and vote for whoever God tells you represents your values. We have a biblical worldview here, so vote for candidates who are going to do that -- who are going to uphold the Biblical worldview we all have." Mostly, Boyd seemed worried about Amendment 48. "If you're not interested in any other issue on the ballot please, please, go to the polls on Tuesday -- if you have not voted yet -- and vote yes for Amendment 48," he said, probably violating the terms of the church's tax-exempt status. "It's the right thing to do."

These people literally believe that a supernatural being is "telling" them how to vote. But presumably they don't hear an actual voice: "Hello, Brady, this is God. You need to vote for Candidate X this year. My will be done. Over." So what, then, is the mechanism by which God imparts his election wisdom? People just feel that God is guiding them in some particular way. That's it. A feeling. This is subjectivism masquerading as divine intervention.

But Pastor Boyd already knows that God will tell his flock to vote for candidates who share a "Biblical worldview." What is that? Presumably, it includes such beliefs that a fertilized egg is a person, that homosexuality is sinful and should be legally discouraged, that certain types of expression should be censored, and that certain types of peaceful activities should be criminally punished. Increasingly, the "Biblican worldview" seems for many to imply that the government should forcibly redistribute wealth, including for religious welfare and education, and centrally plan the economy such as to "protect" God's creation.

Boyd seems even more certain that God wants Coloradans to outlaw abortion (despite the weak Biblical support for such a position, which is in any case properly irrelevant). But Amendment 48 is not the "right thing to do;" it would, if enforced, unleash horrific injustice in this state. But that is a natural consequence of the moral subjectivism implicit in religion.

Does God Want Higher Taxes?

The Denver Post reports:

Rabbi Joel Schwartzman of Congregation B'nai Chaim in Morrison gathered with faith leaders from across the state in support of Amendment 59.

Called "Embracing the Common Good," the campaign has mobilized more than 2,500 Colorado congregations, including Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and Jews, to vote in favor of the amendment, which focuses on the creation of a savings account for public schools.

"If you're Jewish, you vote for this," Schwartzman said.

Oh, really? I suspect I could come up with a list of quite a few Jewish people who intend to vote against it, and who would take Schwartzman's condescending attitude with offense. His comment is rather like telling all blacks, whites, Hispanics, Catholics, Muslims, etc. that they will "vote for this," whatever "this" is.

While there is a Judeo-Christian impetus toward altruism, which often manifests as support for the welfare state, quite a few religious people don't approve of higher taxes and don't think God demands them. I wonder why Sally Ho, author of the report, didn't talk to some of those people.

But the broader point is that the alleged will of God, however that's interpreted by various groups, should have nothing to do with politics.

At least House Speaker Andrew Romanoff offered a nonsectarian argument for the net tax hike: "We believe budgets are moral documents which must embody the common good and reflect our shared responsibility to each other." Romanoff's view is not tied to any religion (though it is indirectly inspired by Judeo-Christian altruism); it is a bald assertion of leftist collectivism. I do agree that we have a "responsibility to each other:" we have a responsibility to respect each other's rights. Romanoff believes that the majority has the "responsibility" to seize by force the wealth of the minority and redistribute it to others. But legalized theft hardly makes society as a whole better off.

As for me and my house, we advocate individual rights.

AP Details Palin's Tax-Funded Church Tours

I actually meant to place this post here, but now that it's been up I'll leave it. The upshot is that Sarah Palin used tax funds as governor to attend religious events and used her political offices to work against abortion rights and support faith-based welfare. Read the article from the Associated Press for more.

"A Task That Is From God"

Fox News points out that Sarah Palin did not claim that "Saddam Hussein helped Al Qaeda plan the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon," as The Washington Post reported. Fox also points out that Palin did not call the Iraq war a "holy war," as ABC News implied.

However, here's what Palin did say, as Fox reports:

Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God. That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan.

The McCain camp objected to ABC News's treatment of the quote:

"Governor Palin's full statement was VERY different" from the way Gibson characterized it," read a statement circulated by McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds.

"Gibson cut the quote -- where she was clearly asking for the church TO PRAY THAT IT IS a task from God, not asserting that it is a task from God.

"Palin's statement is an incredibly humble statement, a statement that this campaign stands by 100 percent, and a sentiment that any religious American will share," Bounds wrote.

Yet here it is Bounds who is performing the spin. The difference between saying that the Iraq war is "a task that is from God" and saying that we should pray that it is "a task that is from God" is pretty trivial. Palin clearly says that the war should be "God's plan." This gives a religious motivation to foreign policy, which should be grounded solely in the national defense of the United States.

Moreover, as I've pointed out, at the same event Palin also said she thought it was "God's will" that she help build an energy pipeline, and she added that political reform "doesn't do any good if the people of Alaska's heart isn't right with God."

Palin clearly made the case that politics must be fundamentally based on religion.