Category Archives: politics and religion

Religion and Politics–in the nation and in Wisconsin

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Jonathan D. Fitzgerald comments on the continuing debate over the role of religion in politics:

It feels progressive to say that we should’t mix religion and politics, because it feels like by saying so we are upholding the dream of our founders, but when citizens allow their politics to be informed by religious convictions, they are not leading our country down a slippery slope toward theocracy, they are being fully engaged citizens. This requires dialogue and compromise, give and take; it is not the easiest way forward, but, really, it’s the only way.

Consistent with that perspective, yesterday a group of Madison-area clergy held a press conference in which they expressed concern with the recently-passed budget. Their arguments used religious language and came out of the scriptural traditions of Judaism and Christianity. Several clergy stressed the importance that their religious perspectives be part of the public debate, when so often, the only religious voices being heard or receiving notice come from the Religious Right. The full document produced by the group, Concerned Religious Leaders of Wisconsin, is here.

 

More on Michele Bachmann and Religion

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Ryan Lizza’s in-depth examination in The New Yorker.  He talks about evangelical guru Francis Schaeffer, whose book and later video series “How should we then live” chronicled the decline of Christianity from the Renaissance on, and was wildly popular among a certain subset of Evangelicals in the late 70s (I remember trying to read the book at the insistence of a classmate in 79 or 80 and being finding it offensive and occasionally humorous). He also discusses the faculty of the law school at Oral Roberts University. Lizza begins, however, with this statement:

Bachmann belongs to a generation of Christian conservatives whose views have been shaped by institutions, tracts, and leaders not commonly known to secular Americans, or even to most Christians.

My guess is that while particular names or institutions might not be familiar to “most Christians,” these views are widespread, and widely disseminated among the hard-core religious right.
Lizza also discusses the biography of Robert E. Lee by J. Stephen Wilkins, who argues “that the South was an orthodox Christian nation unjustly attacked by the godless North.” The whole article is well-worth the read.
My previous entries on Bachmann’s religion are here and here.


 

The Plight of Christians after the Arab Spring

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Molly Worthen writes about the “persecution complex” of American Evangelicals and their ambivalent response to the persecution of Christians in the wake of the Arab Spring.

Today, we learned that the priest of the Anglican Church in Damascus, Syria, is being forced to leave.

On the other hand, here’s today’s example of the persecution complex at work in the US. A Federal court decided that the prayers beginning Forsyth County, NC county commission meetings were unconstitutional. The outcry has been intense. How 95% of a county (the estimated percentage of its 350,000 residents who are Christian) can claim to be a beleaguered and persecuted religious minority is beyond me.

Michele Bachmann and Religion

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Sarah Posner says “it’s complicated” and that the media can’t get it right. In a post at Religion Dispatches, Posner points out the multiple influences on Bachmann’s worldview, including the Wisconsin Synod denomination to which she used to belong. But there are many more influences:

But Bachmann is more of a mishmash: a Lutheran moved by Francis Schaeffer to get involved in conservative politics, who attended a law school founded by a Pentecostal and a Christian Reconstructionist; an alumna of the “Christian worldview” education that teaches that Christianity is on a collision course with other “worldviews,” including secularism, Islam, and post-modernism; an anti-public school activist who homeschooled her own children; an anti-gay rights activist; and now, a crusader against the “tyranny” of “big government” and “socialism.” She’s a product of all of those strands of church, political activism, and “worldview” training; she’s like a crucible of the religious right zeitgeist. And that’s why an ex-Lutheran-turned-we’re-not-sure-what can speak at an Assemblies of God church while running for president and wow the people in the pews. Or not. Because it’s complicated.

Posner points out how the “progressive” media gets her wrong, from Think Progress, to Salon, to Mother Jones.

More on Religion and Politics

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Nick Knisely ponders the issue of the role of clergy in politics by means of two essays written by Episcopal priests. Both of them are struggling with their public role as priest (or canon, or bishop), partisan politics, and hot-button issues. Dan Webster writes:

But matters of justice, matters that have an impact on the poor, hungry, the imprisoned and the stranger need to be addressed by church leaders in the pulpit, online, in the media and wherever else we can proclaim Gospel values.

For an alternative perspective, read Ed Kilgore’s piece on the connections between the Religious Right and the Tea Party. He writes of televangelist James Robison:

In other words, to Christian Right leaders like Robison, it appears that both Keynsian economics and tax increases have become “as wrong and immoral as stealing.” As with his attacks on judges that let bureaucrats help people who have failed to live up to God’s eternal standards, he sounds like an incongruous Christian Ayn Rand.