Politics and Religion

This afternoon I will be on a local talk radio show discussing politics and religion.  This has been a subject that I have been interested in ever since a long ago Bill Moyers special on The Bible and the Constitution. 

There was a lengthy discussion about the rise, decline and rise again of the religious right in America.  It was a fascinating program, and still applicable today.  At one point in the interview Moyers was having a conversation with, to me anyway, an obscure Minister in Jackson, California.  I really can’t remember the Minister’s name.  During the interview the Minister talked about how America would become the Christian nation once again that it had been founded to be.  More on this later.  Moyers asked the Minister what would happen if people didn’t want to be the kind of Christian this Minister was proposing.  I’ll never forget the response.  “Oh, by the time we’re finished, they’ll want to.”  Chills went up my body.  He didn’t define what they would do that by the time they were finished we would all want to be his kind of Christian!

This was in my memory banks when I ran for office.  I am a committed believer in the separation of church and state.  For one thing, it is in the First Amendment of the Constitution, but also because I was an English major in college.  We not only read and studied the literature of England, but English translations of some mainland European literature, and a whole lot of American literature, particularly that around when our nation began forming itself.  The conclusion I came to was that my own religious faith was no one else’s business, but how I translated that faith into action was very much everyone else’s business.  Consequently in my campaign literature I mentioned that I was a member of the music liturgy at my Catholic parish, and that was that.  However, when it came time to present my positions on the issues, that is where I put my ideas, but not in religious terms.  I figured if people liked where I was coming from they would vote for me.  If they didn’t, they wouldn’t.  I think Elizabeth Warren, who is a US Senate candidate from Massachusetts against Scott Brown, is a good example.  Those of us like me who are political junkies know exactly where she stands on the issues.  I haven’t got a clue whether she has a religious faith, or not, or if she does, what it is.  Which is precisely as it should be. 

There has been a lot of rhetoric lately about the United States being founded as a Christian nation.  Well, the literature of that time proves that it was not.  This is not my opinion, which I am entitled to, but a matter of fact.  The reasons for this are many, but one of the primary reasons was that England and mainland Europe had recently concluded a religious war of 30 years, called, of course, the Thirty Year War, in case someone wants to google that.  Catholics and Protestants were trying to make their respective versions of Christianity the state religions wherever they had a plurality.  Needless to say England and Europe were exhausted.  Our founding fathers had their own fathers and grandfathers involved in that war, and the memory of it made them determined that it should not happen here. I, for one, am deeply grateful to them for that determination. 

Although I am not inclined to vote for Mitt Romney, the constant “chatter” in the media about his Mormonism is completely out of place.  It is extremely un-American, for one thing, because the Constitution clearly states that, “…no religious test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or Public Trust under the United States.”  Article VI, Section 3.  There are, in my opinion, many reasons not to vote for Mitt Romney.  His religion is not one of them. 

If that Minister from Jackson, CA were ever running for office, asking him how he would see to it that everyone would want to believe his version of Christianity would be a very appropriate question.