Religion and politics

André in Zuid-Afrika · Religion and politics

One thing that I've noticed on this forum, and also on news report on American and European politics, is the constant references to whether a specific politician is religious or not, and more specifically whether they're Protestant or Catholic (European politicians). Why is that? In South Africa, we often don't even know whether a politician is religious or not, leave alone whether he's Protestant or whatever.

greg in noord-frankrijk · Re: Religion and politics

André in Zuid-Afrika · Re: Religion and politics

Benjamin [inactive] · Re: Religion and politics

I think it's fairly well known in this country that Tony Blair is an Anglo-Catholic (High Anglican) who has expressed an interest in converting to Roman Catholicism. I think this mainly came out when he and his wife, herself a devout Roman Catholic, controversially chose to send their children to a private Roman Catholic school, instead of the local state school.

Gordon Brown is a Presbyterian/Calvinist (i.e. Church of Scotland), but I don't think that this is all that widely known. I've no idea about John Prescott, David Cameron or Menzies Campbell, and in Scotland, I don't know about Alex Salmond, Nicola Sturgeon, Jack McConnell, Annabel Goldie or Nicol Stephen either.

Ruth Kelly, the British Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, and Minister for Women and Equality, has attracted criticism for being a member of Opus Dei.

greg in noord-frankrijk · Re: Religion and politics

Uriel

I thought this was an interesting article on the other side of evangelical Christians in the US --those who lean to the left, rather than to the right, as the stereotypes always say they must:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2254508,00.html

God moves to the left

America's evangelical Christians are anti-gay, pro-gun, keen on capital punishment and obsessed with lower taxes. And, of course, they all vote Republican. At least, that's what vicar Giles Fraser thought - until he went to meet them

Friday February 8, 2008
The Guardian

As night fell, a small group of pilgrims crept through a side door and into the silent and empty gloom of Canterbury cathedral. A hand-held torch did little to illuminate the wonders of the 14th-century nave. We felt our way past the place of Thomas Becket's murder, up a flight of stairs and gathered around a simple stone throne where the arch-bishops of Canterbury are consecrated. No one spoke. Faces were serious and tense. Here is the centre of gravity of world Anglicanism. Some of the party were not sure if they still wanted in. Many wanted them out.

These were unusual travellers to Canterbury, all progressive Christians, all leaders of big churches, and all struggling with what it meant to be a part of a world church that regards them as dangerous subversives. Many have blamed these people for forcing change and splitting the church. To me, they are the vanguard of a new progressive Reformation. They speak about God with a confidence that has little in common with the claustrophobic and institutional narrowness of the English church. They are my heroes.
But here I need to make a confession. I had known and admired most of these Virgin Atlantic pilgrims by reputation for a while, but had been in denial about one basic fact: that they were Yanks. Yes, I admit it. I suffered from that chronic prejudice of the left, an instinctive distrust of Americans with Bibles. Theologically speaking, what could the home of McDonald's offer a culture that painted the Sistine chapel? How can anyone who thinks the word "Jesus" has three syllables lead a progressive movement in the church? I knew it: I had to take on the source of all this prejudice and make a pilgrimage of my own. I needed to find out for myself: was there really such a thing as the Christian left in America?

"I love the Lord's day," boomed the rector of All Saints Church, Pasadena, in a guttural southern drawl, brimming with gum-chewing confidence. I shrank into my coffee. To non-religious Brits - and to quite a few religious ones, too - this sort of thing sends waves of ideological squeamishness down the cultural central nervous system. We just don't get it. Most days the Rev J Edwin Bacon Jr is up to say his prayers at 4am and in the gym by 5am. His church is packed to the rafters and is currently fundraising for a $40m (£20.6m) extension to the All Saints campus.

This is not a profile we would naturally associate with the left. Yet the rector of All Saints Episcopal Church was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam war. His predecessors as rector marched with Martin Luther King and threw themselves in front of the trucks that hauled Japanese Americans off to internment camps during the second world war. He is pro-choice on abortion and conducts gay blessings. The bumper stickers in the church car park tell their own story of activism: "The Christian right is neither"; "Support the troops, bring them home."

It is a stance that has pitched Bacon's church into the centre of America's culture wars. The Sunday immediately before the last presidential election in 2004, a retired clergyman took to the pulpit in All Saints to deliver a sermon critical of the war in Iraq. In the great scheme of things it was hardly a call for revolution. Yet this 15-minute homily was to make front-page news all over the country and kick off three years of trench warfare between teams of Washington lawyers. The sermon idea was simple: if Jesus could speak to George Bush and John Kerry, what would he say?

"War is itself the most extreme form of terrorism," the preacher imagined Jesus telling the candidates. "Remember: the killing of innocent people to achieve some desired goal is morally repudiated by anyone claiming to follow me as their saviour and guide. Mr President, your doctrine of pre-emptive war is a failed doctrine. Forcibly changing the regime of an enemy that posed no imminent threat has led to disaster."

On that same day, all over the United States, thousands of preachers offered their congregations coded political references, asserting the importance of protecting the unborn child or the wickedness of homosexual marriage. But only one church got into trouble with the authorities for its message. Yes, you guessed it. Some weeks after the election, All Saints Pasadena received a letter from the Inland Revenue Service (IRS) informing them that this sermon had violated rules designed to keep charities out of politics and, as a result, their tax-exempt status was being reconsidered.

The IRS picked on the wrong church and at the end of last year it backed off, calling a halt to its investigation and withdrawing all charges. Unfortunately, it left hanging in the air the whole question of what constitutes legitimate political engagement from the pulpit. Which is why Bacon still is not happy: "This leaves me wondering whether we will be investigated again the next time I am called to preach against war, poverty, bigotry or any other of our core moral values as they relate to current social issues and policies." Ed Bacon is liberal Christianity on steroids, a seemingly implausible combination of fiery evangelical rhetoric and a progressive social conscience. Like peanut butter and jelly: unlikely until you taste it, when you realise it really works.

Although the development of leftwing politics in Britain owed a great deal to the evangelical left of radical Methodism, many of today's Christian lefties in Britain - such as the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams - come from the more Catholic wing of the church. The Oxford movement sent generations of be-cassocked young men into the inner cities preaching good news to the poor. This was the tradition of the heroic slum priests who set up boxing clubs in the East End of London and built beautiful Gothic churches in the wrong part of town. I worked for a while in a church like this in Walsall. As whippet-thin pre-teens stripped the roof of its lead, we swung our incense and said our Hail Marys.

In the US , the Christian left has a more consistently evangelical DNA. Its great saint is Martin Luther King, and its signature tune is social activism. It's a religion of huge rhetorical power, managing to bring together the Bible's vision for a new social order as well as its call for individual transformation. Here, for example, is classic preaching from Baptist minister Tony Campolo, something of a guru to the new left-leaning evangelicals: "I have three things I'd like to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don't give a shit. What's worse is that you're more upset with the fact that I said shit than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night."

On this side of the pond, we commonly think of US evangelical Christianity as the preserve of the right. Our lazy caricature is straight from central casting - the TV evangelist, active in the Republican party, obsessed with gay prejudice, gun ownership, capital punishment and low taxes. It's true that from Ronald Regan's presidential campaign onwards, the evangelical right became politicised as never before and were rightly credited with the electoral success of George W Bush. In 2004, nine out of every 10 white evangelicals voted Republican. On the other hand, two-thirds of non-white evangelicals voted for Kerry. And we often forget that born-again Jimmy Carter and Bible-quoting Bill Clinton were as much evangelicals as Bush. The reality is that US evangelicals are a mixed bunch.

As it happens, the evangelical/Republican alliance was never the love match it seemed. Back in 1964, Barry Goldwater was the Republican nominee for president. "Every good Christian should line up and kick Jerry Falwell's ass," was his reaction to the founder of the Moral Majority. As a libertarian of sorts, Goldwater famously defended a woman's right to abortion. "I don't have any respect for the religious right. There is no place in this country for practising religion in politics. That goes for Falwell, Robertson and all the rest of these political preachers. They are a detriment to the country." This attitude still lingers in the corridors of Republican power. Indeed, even at the height of the evangelical influence, it was always fiscal conservatives that were really pulling the strings, wrapping up their economic Darwinism in the language of faith for electoral advantage.

This election many conservative Christians are waking up to the fact that they have got absolutely zip out of their misadventure in Republican party politics. For all Bush's praise-the-Lord bravado, he has done nothing to change the laws on abortion and nothing to make gay marriage illegal. Disadvantaged churchgoers in the cornfields and ever-ailing rust belt have been had, voting against their economic interests to give tax breaks to billionaires. All Bush has done is associate their name with an unpopular war and a reputation for shrill and heartless moralising.

This may be why, according to the Christian Barna Research Group, a third of young evangelicals now claim to be embarrassed about being believers. "They're tired of the hard-edged politics that the Christian right has practised in the last couple of generations," says John Green from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life "They see all this, all this anger, without a lot to show for it." No surprise then that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been dropping to their knees and taking to the pulpit to claim full electoral advantage of this disillusionment. And although many Christians will still be voting for Baptist minister Mike Huckabee, in many ways he is a throwback. Huge numbers have been persuaded that Obama or Clinton are the future of Christian America.

The face of US Christianity is changing. The old generation of leaders are dying off or getting past it: Falwell went to meet his maker earlier this year (and I reckon he had some explaining to do), and the equally unpleasant Pat Robertson (the guy who called for the assassination of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez) is pushing 80. These people were a big deal politically. Robertson made a bid for the presidency in 1988 and actually polled ahead of Bush in the Iowa primary. But they are yesterday's men. The new breed of mega-church pastor is cut from a very different cloth.

Take someone like Bill Hybels from Willow Creek Community Church outside Chicago, one of the most influential churches in the US. Its sprawling campus is larger than Vatican City and is run by legions of Harvard MBAs. More Starbucks than St Paul's, they get 20,000 people to their stadium-like church on Sundays. OK, it's not what you would call cutting-edge progressive. But it is certainly not the hang 'em and flog 'em brigade either. It is all consumer-oriented short services, with catchy music and first-class childcare. And, increasingly, this sort of evangelical is leading the call for environmental justice, using the language of care for God's creation to the same purpose as those who prefer the secular language of green politics. Much to the irritation of old-school hard-core evangelicals, the new generation tend to avoid divisive social ethics in order to broaden their appeal. They are sunny, soft-focus, all-things-to-all-men evangelicals. Or, as they would be keen to insist, all things to all men and women. For unlike the defiantly unreconstructed old school, some would even go so far as to describe themselves as feminists.

For two months I travelled the US on my mini-pilgrimage, preaching in churches, staying with friendly church leaders and listening to the views of ordinary Christians in the pew. A lot has been said about those US Christians who are to the right of Attila the Hun and who believe multiple crazy things about the world and the world to come. We are rightly anxious about the degree of political influence these people have come to exert. But they are actually in the minority. We don't hear about the progressive side to US religion because it doesn't fit the stereotype. These Christians are passionately concerned with issues of poverty and social justice, they run soup kitchens, give generous proportions of their income to good causes, have taskforces to reduce their carbon footprint, go on demonstrations against the war, and speak out against the use of torture. God bless America.

· Giles Fraser is the vicar of Putney.

Okay, it's a long article and you can read it in its entirety or not, but I just thought it pointed out several things of interest in the relationship of religion and US politics:

A) I have a hard time saying "evangelicals", because here we call 'em fundamentalists.

All quibbling aside, though, the article points out that the Republican party and the Christian right have not always been in bed together. In fact, from a political standpoint, I tend to think of the basic tenets of the Republican party as fiscal conservatism, an aversion to regulatory legislation, an aversion to social entitlement legislation (welfare, social programs), an aversion to taxation (without which you obviously can't fund welfare and government inspectors, so they are being logically consistent, at least), a laissez-faire attitude toward business and the economy, and a firm belief in the adage that "the government governs best that governs least" -- i.e., the government's involvement in day to day affairs of its citizens and businessmen should be as hands-off as possible. This is why I consider the recent addition of such issues as being anti-gay marriage, anti-abortion, and the Patriot Act to be tacky add-ons that are, if anything, completely out of character for that party! (What happened to the gov't NOT poking its nose into people's personal business?)

So it's amusing (and heartening) for me to read that former Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater once scathingly said of the religious right:

"Every good Christian should line up and kick Jerry Falwell's ass .... I don't have any respect for the religious right. There is no place in this country for practising religion in politics. That goes for Falwell, Robertson and all the rest of these political preachers. They are a detriment to the country."

B) My mother, who finds it entertaining to actually let missionary types who knock on her door IN, so she can debate them (I just would never have that patience!), and is herself very active in environmental causes, says that she too has heard religious support for environmentalism under the argument cited here:

"And, increasingly, this sort of evangelical is leading the call for environmental justice, using the language of care for God's creation to the same purpose as those who prefer the secular language of green politics."

C) While fundamentalism is often associated with the Republican party, in a country where over 90% of the citizens call themselves religious, religion HAS to be present in the Democratic party, as well as the Libertarians, Greens, and independents, so it's gotta be irksome to constantly be equated with one party and not the rest. AND, while I am an atheist, I find it annoying that pundits tend to smirk at leftwing politicians who publically go to church or mention their faith as simply being opportunists or showboaters, as if it's just so unlikely that they might be sincere, when in fact, statistically, they most likely are just as sincere in their professions of belief as George Bush is in his (although we hope they don't hear quite the same voice in their heads that he does....

)

Religion and politics

Re: Religion and politics

Re: Religion and politics

Re: Religion and politics

Re: Religion and politics