Abuse of Faith: How Christians Manipulate Facts to Support Intrusion Into Politics
by Christian values are used as the buzz word for intrusion into politics to the detriment of individuals and the nation. How can we preserve our beliefs and keep both politics and religion safe? Our Constitutional safeguards certainly. Perhaps intrusion has in part been cause of poor government when religion has been not an aid but a smokescreen for improper behavior.
Once again religious groups have been involved in politics to the detriment of the nation. This time the intrusion is more subtle than preachers standing in pulpits directing congregations how to vote. Now it is by way of emails and videos passed from one to another. It started out very early and has mushroomed in the final days of the campaign for the Presidency. It is insidious and harmful in many ways.
One of these messages is a prayer. It begins by stating how non partisan it is and then proceeds to be partisan. It tells people how God answered prayers by helping Christians in their search for a man of God to lead them and how that prayer was answered in the right way. Then four years later, according to the “prayer,” God again embraced his followers and gave them that man of God again. Now, says the prayer, Christians need to turn once again to God in the same way and in the same direction for an answer and to have the man that God wants for America’s future.
Videos feature prominently in the items passed around. Again they announce themselves as non partisan. One of late shows a solitary man in the semi darkness, outlined on a hillside. The suggestion is to vote for values, with a series on what some of those values are. It concludes with a column itemizing Barack Obama’s stand in favor of infanticide, the killing of babies after they are born.
The extreme nature of some of the statements in emails and the content of videos indicates that Christians have been swept up into political efforts contrary both to Christian teachings and that are on that narrow line that separates religion from politics.
This is alarming as it has been practiced now for more than 20 years, since one party proclaimed it more Christian than another.
Perhaps this election might cause people to step back a moment and not be one-issue oriented and to think carefully about the agendas of individuals who sometimes smokescreen their private agendas with religious dogma. Those smokescreens risk the democracy as well as religious choice, because often the religious group creating the smokescreen has the agenda of conversion of people to their specific set of beliefs.
Elections come and go, but it’s time to think carefully about the risks involved when religion is allowed to dominate thinking, thinking that may be destructive, erroneous and create additional divisions. Thomas Jefferson believed firmly in separation of church and state, and he was likely wise in his efforts to provide protection from religious intrusion into politics and politicians intrusion into religion to keep them separate as they should be for the spiritual health of individuals and the nation.
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