This situation is an unfortunate outgrowth of religion taking a more central and influential place in American politics over the last thirty years. We've gone from John Kennedy having to prove that his religion (Catholicism) would not have any affect on his decision making, to now one's religion (faith) being a public litmus test for being seriously considered for political office. Everyone has to know who your "spiritual advisors" is, or how "Jesus helps your decision making" before they vote for you. How good and moral have "born again" Dubya's decisions been? What happened to separation of church and state?
I lived in Australia for seven years. In Australia, religious beliefs are off limits to the press and public. The Aussie public considers religion a personal matter not relevant to politics/government. I've seen politicians over there actually say "none of your business mate" when asked about their religious beliefs by the media with no repercussions or outcry. Agnostics, and atheists, along with believers hold high office--which is as it should be. That can never happen here no matter how kind, decent, moral, or compassionate you are. You'd never get serious consideration here without publicly declaring your faith or "personal relationship with God". This church/state paradigm shift in our society is why Senator Obama is in the predicament that he is in today.
Obama and Wright - The Real Lesson
No, it's not political. No, it's not about the black church. No, it's not about whether Obama should have "denounced" Rev. Wright, "thrown him under the bus," earlier or explained his religious connections better. It's not even about Clinton or the Republicans. And in the end it will have nothing to do with the final result of the 2008 elections. Obama will win the Democratic Party nomination and McCain will self-destruct, because he's an old man whose time has passed, attached -- by an unbreakable chain forged by 4000 needlessly killed American soldiers and our ruined economy -- to the worst president in the last hundred years.
So what does the latest Rev. Wright flare up teach us? Just this: religion is a subjective and irrational business and those who hook their wagon to religious leaders -- beware.
I speak as a religious person. I go to a Greek Orthodox Church and have for 20 years. I was raised in an Evangelical home by one of the founders of the Religious Right. I bother to struggle with my faith long after I moved away from the religion of my childhood -- fundamentalist Protestantism -- because I still need meaning in my life. But as a writer and novelist I don't for one moment believe that religion should define my writing, my country, my science, or my politics.
Religion defines itself and nothing more. Religious leaders are by nature walking by faith not by sight, and when they intrude into the land of the here and now, and begin to spout about politics, science (for instance where the AIDS virus originally came from, or creationism!) art, or anything else in the tangible world they eventually will sound stupid and/or shrill and/or downright dangerous.
Obama was a young man who wandered into a church when he was a community organizer. In that church he had a religious experience which connected him to a branch of the Christian faith. That experience was sincere and has stayed with him. (Obama has shown great sensitivity and generosity toward his old pastor that bodes well for his presidency. He has been loyal and honest and used this trial-by-media to teach a history lessons to our country about race.)
What Obama could not have known back then was that as he grew as a person the religion he had embraced would not grow with him. This had nothing to do with any particular church or denomination or with his pastor, but with the fact that religion can only speak to one aspect of human existence-the subjective experiential aspect.
The Rev. Wright-type problem comes up when religion and religious people, mistake the deep longing we all have for meaning with the actual day-to-day world we live in. Here's an analogy: a great chef who suddenly decides that because he wields a handy paring knife that he would make a good brain surgeon.
As Rev. Wright staggers around the country defending himself, posturing and trying to look relevant he's not doing anything different from any white minister would do, or for that matter that the pope did on his recent visit. Ministers never look so sadly irrelevant as when they are trying to be relevant. Popes learn this when they write encyclicals on science. Evangelicals have just learned this by forcing the worst president in the last 100 years of American history on us because he was "born-again" and spoke their "language."
There's a larger point: let's stop attaching religion to American politics altogether. Let's admit that it's just nuts that someone like Billy Graham was regularly called to the White House to legitimize everything from Richard Nixon's near madness to Bill Clinton's adultery. Let's admit that people like Doug Coe and others, who organize national prayer breakfasts, and semisecret Washington power elite Bible studies, are really doing this country a massive disservice by trying to force the round peg of religion into the square hole of politics.
Why do we do this? For the same reason that the Spaniards brought a priest along to baptize their conquests.
We're suckers for being perceived as the good guys, if by no one else then at least by ourselves. We want religion to bless what is actually a totally secular enterprise of commerce and global power.
It may surprise some of my readers to learn that I think American global power sometimes serves good purposes, for instance that we keep the sea lanes open for commerce around the world. But the fact remains that at the heart of our enterprise is our own self-interest and not altruism.
Enter religion. We want Billy Graham blessing our presidents, or popes or bishops or priests or Rev. Wright (or whomever wanders through saying they have a direct line to God) to give us a sense of a greater purpose than simply ourselves.
The problem is that religion can only do religious things well. And when a Rev. Wright speaks at the National Press Club, or when a Billy Graham endorses a Nixon or when the adulterous Bill Clinton invited ministers to the White House to airbrush his squalid affair, or when McCain sucks up to the worst of the Religious Right that he once called "agents of intolerance" so he can get elected by religious nut-jobs, or when Hillary Clinton speaks of her faith and of carrying her Bible everywhere, so she will make good with those blue collar voters, it's hard to tell who's abusing whom -- the preachers or the politicians. One thing is certain; the relationship of religion and politics does America no more good than the Oracle of Delphi did the ancient Greeks.
Fortunately we Americans are thoroughly schizophrenic when it comes to religion. We believe, but we also don't. (Evangelicals may say the expect the return of Jesus at any moment but they still all have bank accounts!)
In spite of the Wright brouhaha, when it comes to November 2008, we'll all be voting for whomever we think is the best candidate, not what some pastor said. In the end we know that religion is a private matter that has nothing to do with -- for better or worse -- what we all really care about which is: our kids, the economy, the war in Iraq, the price of gasoline, the availability of medical insurance, the crappiness of our schools, the soundness of our Social Security and Medicare systems, and our standing in the world, after it's been driven into the abyss by Bush-the-idiot.
Now it's time for all concerned to take a deep breath and admit that religion in politics is nothing more than a sideshow. It's time to move on. And that goes for Republicans, and Clinton supporters, as well as for Obama supporters.
Here's the one thing we should all be able to agree on: when religion jumps the track and crashes into places it doesn't belong we'd all be better off ignoring the silliness.
Frank Schaeffer is a writer and author of "CRAZY FOR GOD-How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All) Of It Back"
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American voters are a strange lot, and although your point about religion in the election is well taken, it doesn't reflect the reality of the situation.
The Republicans will use Rev. Wright, in part, to define Obama. Obama's late in the day separation won't be of much value. Wright gives the right wing an easy way to bring race into the process by stealth. They don't have to say Obama went to "that crazy, radical, black preacher's church for twenty years before he had a problem with him". They'll just show the pictures. The bigots will get the message just as clearly as they did with Willie Horton.
They'll throw that into the mix "proving" Obama is a dangerous liberal out of touch with mainstream America and its values--and it will work. Obama will lose to McCain even with all McCain's Bush baggage. Pennsylvania proved exactly how vulnerable Obama really is.
It's amazing that McCain's main stream media buddies are not calling McCain out for the hypocrite that he is and airing the comments that Rev. Hagee and the rest of the comments made by the "agents of intolerance," religious right who McCain has courted.
It's amazing that these same people said nothing when catholic politicians did not walk away from the Catholic Church.
Are Rev. Wright"s comments worse than an institution that protects pedophiles and asserts that the problem is "an American problem," although it is documented that worldwide the Catholic Church has protected priests who are pedophiles?
Teens from polygamist sects who are called "lost boys" also feel that the abuse they endured is worse than Americans acknowledge, while child brides suffer rape without any of the outrage that has surrounded Rev. Wright.
Which is worse; the angry ranting of Rev. Wright or, the scared lives of children who have been harmed by adults who are sheltered by religious institutions?
McCain's MSM buddies sold America lies about the war really want McCain to win the election. They don't care that McCain will continue the Bush/Cheney policies because their sons and daughters are not the ones fighting the war and their 6 and 7 figure salaries are not being effected by the economy.
McCain"s buddies in the MSM would rather see another incompetent "good ole boy" in the White House rather than Clinton or Obama.
I'm happy to have discovered your blog. I just reviewed your memoir, Crazy for God, for Christian Feminism Today (www.eewc.com). As an evangelical who heard your father speak when I was in college, I was fascinated by the backstage view of the evangelical world I found in your book.
Interesting that you say in this blog that mixing religion and politics is not good for America: "I don't for one moment believe that religion should define my writing, my country, my science, or my politics."
I'm still an advocate of your earlier position, that my faith and reading of the Bible (however flawed my understanding may be) should inform my writing and my politics. If we Christians confine our faith to the walls of a church, that leaves the world of politics without any prophetic voice. Micah 6:8 calls us to "to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with [y]our God."
Do you feel we are called to do justice only in our private lives, not working together for public goals like avoiding wars and alleviating hunger?
Of course, if 100 Christians take their faith into the public arena, there will be some Rev. Wrights along with the ones who come closer to doing God's work in the world. But one Rev. Wright doesn't mean the other 99 should avoid politics.
Religion and the state have been related since religion and human organization began. There is an automatic opportunity for a quid pro quo between religions and states. States have physical power and religions have moral power. But both have the need to be dominant among their people. That's where the quid pro quo comes in. If religion pursuades the people of the rightness of the state's authority then the state makes sure that religion is exclusive or at least dominant to the point of using its force.
Both sides must be cynical to make the quid pro quo work. Religion sometimes has to warp their faith to bless the state's actions. The state sometimes have to wage dumb wars to support religion. But with a true believer on either side, the agreement falls apart. Usually violence ensues.
Our founding fathers recognized the cynicism and problems that is naturally part of state-sponsored religion. They didn't like it. They separated church and state. That separation has mostly held. The state-religion quid pro quo did creep back during the Prohibition era. The state recognized the error and fixed it fairly quickly.
Now we have a new quid pro quo whereby leaders use religion, probably cynically, to gain control of the reins of state. Based on the results (the Bush administration) of that reapproachmant so far, it hasn't worked too well either. Hopefully history will repeat and we'll correct that too.
Many fail to grasp a difference, or create a difference, between Spirituality and Organized Religion... I have no problem believing in a Eternal Love and Life based Godliness of Nature and a Nature of Godliness...
The Fear based God/Allah of Organized Religion is NOT mine by choice... That "GOD" is External and all about creating Fear and Control... Convince a Child they "have a Soul" that is in Danger and one gains Religious Fear based Control... (political "Controllers" are grasping this tactic quite well)...
Good Post. It's a blessing that the founding fathers separated chuch and state. A church is afterall just a building, and the person leading the congregation is just a man. Faith is something you can have without either of them. It's what you do from day to day and how you live your life that's important. Isn't it ironic that Baracks mother didn't identify with any organized religion, but the one he wanders into turns out to illustrate all of the reasons she didn't?
Nice article. I often thought the same thing about tying onself to any religon. What is really troubling is that there is more than ONE person who actually believes that whatever Rev Wright believes then Obama believes also. Or that anything that comes out of Wright's mouth is actually coming out of Obama's as well. It's very demoralizing to me that peopel are actually that stupid. Or maybe they'll jump on anything as an excuse so as not to give the real reason why they don't like him. That's right. I think that the only reason why the Wright issue is an issue is because of racism, pure and simple. It's one thing to not want to vote for him because of his stances, but the moment you try to say that his pastor is an issue and THAT'S the reason you can't vote for him, then IMHO, you really aren't comfortable with the idea of a Black man at the helm of the greatest freaking country in the world. (at least it can be the greatest country if we the people stop being sheep!)
That's not the real lesson.
The real lesson is what a bunch of fools believe this crap.
Don't forget the Taliban, Iranian theocracy, Islamic extremists, etc.
There may be a God. I don't know. But if there is one (or more) just remember that just because He exists doesn't mean that He gives a crap about any of us.
An afterlife does not make sense to me. We are who we are largely due to our bodies. For example, if you are male then is your soul also male? If so, what makes it male if there is no body involved? Will your soul be recognizable to yourself if it does not carry with it the bodily attributes to which you have become accustomed all your life?
Anyway... good blog Frank.
I am spiritual but organized religion seems to be more about money and power than religion, and I include all branches and all faiths in that.
I grew up in a fundamentalist church and left it as quickly as I could and then attended a more liberal branch of Protestantism. However, as the church became more like a business, and less spiritual, and then rigid in doctrine, I left that as well.
However, the Reverend Wright has been, from the sermons dating back several years which are in the public domain, a demanding, shrill, self-absorbed, hate spilling force. He taught alienation and played the race card and Obama sat there for twenty years. I can tell you that had I witnessed such outpourings of viciousness, I would have, as I have done, taken my behind out of that church. My break came when our minister started spewing hate toward homosexuals and I wasn't in church to learn hate, I was there to learn how to be good, spiritual and leave judgement to God. Apparently, it was okay with Obama when Wright was targeting others, but when Wright felt that Obama wasn't aggressively standing behind him, the snake turned around and bit. It just makes me question Obama's judgement in having stayed in that church and listened to such a vindictive ministry for all those years.
So many of us started out in fundamentalism, moved to a more liberal church, and even left that. I did my years of attending no church at all, but I did stick with women who were making a journey similar to mine, Evangelical & Ecumenical Women's Caucus. Some of us don't identify as evangelicals today--who would want that label after it became attached to the bandwagon of George Bush? But there are lots of progressive evangelicals out there: the Sojourners crowd, The Other Side (no longer publishing), EEWC, CBE, some of the profs at Fuller Theological Seminary, others elsewhere such as Randall Balmer at Barnard College.
You are not acknowledging that Rev. Wright mostly did NOT preach in the way you are suggesting. Many of the people who did and still do attend his church have said that. Many of the people who attend the church are highly educated academics--do you think they would have sat there while Wright spewed hate speech? He didn't. Obama did not "sit there for 20 years" and hear hate speech. The few demented things he said Obama was not there for--like most politicians, he is OFTEN gone on a Sunday morning doing other things, so I would guess he's been missing more often than not. That doesn't mean Wright did not preach a social gospel--that is true at most Protestant churches in the 21st century, whether they are right or left leaning.
I too, once attended a church where the minister said things I disagreed with politically. Did I leave that church? No--I waited for the guy to move on. I attended another church where the minister sexually abused a woman he was counseling. Did I leave the church? No, the church eventually threw him out. The point is, a church community is a whole lot more than the minister. It's not like a movie you're watching where you get up and walk out if you don't like what you see.
I don't hear you talking about Clinton's connection to hatemonger Doug Coe, or McCain's connection to hatemongers Hagee, Parsley, and Robertson. What's your agenda?
Ha! Well said. AMEN even.
I liked your article. You were right about everything except Obama - you seem to lose your objectivity with him. He is no different from any other politician - despite his best effort to portray otherwise. Like the rest that use religious personalities, Obama used Rev. Wright to create his political base in Chicago and now the 'chicken has come home to roost.'
immkib- how do you know Obama's motives for attending Trinity? "Obama used Wright to creat his political base" How do you know this?
Why are we still talking about Wright? I have never seen such a witch hunt and guilt by association obsession by the media with any celebrity of any kind. I feel like I'm living in the dark ages of McCarthyism, but worse. Why is REverend Wright news when this isn't::
"Clinton's Former Pastor In Arkansas "Expressed Sympathy" For Rev. Wright And Said That Wright's Sermons Were "A Totally Different Animal When You Look At Its Full Context." ... the Reverend Edward Matthews, a little-known Arkansas preacher who is the closest Senator Clinton has to a pastor of her own...expressed sympathy for Rev. Wright in a 35-minute phone interview with The New York Sun. "We preachers get irresponsible,' Rev. Matthews, the former pastor of First United Methodist Church in Little Rock, said yesterday with a laugh...Rev. Matthews, 73, cited in particular the period during the Vietnam War, when he spoke out against America's stance on colonialism. "I've come pretty close to saying in some sermons, I guess, what Jeremiah Wright did,"... "that America's going to have to get its act together, you know, that if we're going to be a leader, we can't just say, 'America right or wrong.' He said that Rev. Wright's sermon was "a totally different animal when you look at its full context." [New York Sun, 4/2/08]
"religion is a subjective and irrational business" for some.
Only for some.
Article Six of the United States Constitution provides that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States".
Is not Obama being called to task for the "controversial" religeous views of Wright? Is this not essentially a "religious test"?
Article Six is, as you like to cite, prohibits religion from being a formal qualifier for office. But, it most certainly is not a rule for voters who may decide based on any number of subjective quaifiers - rational ot not. I, myself, will not vote for Obama because he dresses too neatly.
You wouldn't vote for him if he wore no suit, or thought like you, or was married into your family. Your "qualifier" is subjective fear - don't confuse yourself fred.
Fear of what? I was making a comment on the relevance of Article Six with respect to the VOTERS and you missed the point. (And my name's not Fred.)
The fascinating thing about all this topic is: the next president will NOT be a Christian conservative. At most, they are mainline Christians of the 'social-action liberal' stripe. And in some cases, McCain's particularly, not particularly religious at all.
In November, this is a moot topic. In fact, it's already a moot topic - except for the re requirements by the CNN, Fox and MSNBC entertainment channels to gin up conflicts that result in higher ratings. (After all, their primary business is to sell advertising; they are not news organizations.)
Religion is a messy business. Thankfully personal faith out performs cold institutional models. Anyway what do you readers think of these remarks about Obama. True or False? A problem or not? Just wondering.
"Thanks for sending out an alert about Obama. We are living and working in Kenya...and know his family (tribe) well. They are the ones who were behind the recent Presidential election chaos here. Thousands of people have been displaced by election violence (over 350,000) and I don't know the last count of the dead. Obama under 'friends of Obama' gave almost a million dollars to the opposition campaign who just happened to be his cousin, Raila Odinga, who is a socialist trained in east Germany. He has been trying to bring Kenya down for years and the last president threw him in prison for trying to subvert this country! December 27th elections brought cries from ODM (Odinga Camp) of a rigged election. Obama is a Muslim and he is a racist and this is a fulfillment of the 911 threat that was just the beginning. Jihad is the only true Muslim way. He is not an American as we know it. By the way, his true name is Barack Hussein Muhammed Obama. Won't that sound sweet to our enemies as they swear him in on the Koran!"
These are not my writings. Is this the truth?
So you're living and working in Kenya - but you basically have a working predjudice against the same people you are there to help? What would you say if he grew up with say - a White family out of, say Kansas - who were members of a White supremacist group, who worshipped under the swastika? Should we be afraid then? Wonder if those Kenyans you "live and work with", observe you in the same light I do? How can a person walk - being so full of shit?
i voted for Obama. I do not live and work in Kenya. This quote is from a letter I received. I think the claims seem bogus. Did not intend to mislead.
Put simply: no. It's not. Its a load of crap that's been debunked over and over again, and you are a fool for perpetuating it.
Good Article!
Thanks
Our success as a great nation was made possible by Jefferson separating religion and governing. He did not magically make this happen. He looked at the history of what happened before him over thousands of years and then developed our framework. I believe, as a nation we should evolve our money, pledge of A and other things that inject god into life into a more secular construct. Then, we can truly make religion and faith a private and non-issue in evolving our nation. Otherwise, we would follow the path of the Roman Empire crumbling almost instantly when the pope and his merrymen crafted their dogma or whatever at the Council of Nicaea and proceeded to force feed it to the masses. The net is that one can be good with our without belief in god. As a proof point, wright validated that one can be bad with our without god too. He, in my opinion, has been doing lots of bad things while his flock went into societies and did lots of good things. When you add it all up, he moved back the clock on his own people. Obviously, clocks usually move forward, so he will fade into obscurity and endure his "cross" for the rest of his life. Either way, someone needs to dig up some dirt on him just for the sake of it. After all, am not black or white and he insulted me.
It would be better if people took their religion more seriously, not less seriously, and made it more, rather than less, a part of their everyday life. Perhaps then people would demand that their religion actually make sense in their everyday life.
What? Let's put the F-U-N back in Fundamentalism??
Religion requires faith -- not sense. If people demand that their religion make sense -- they become agnostics or atheists.
R-I-D-I-C-U-L-O-U-S-!
Frank, you've picked up the fallen mantle of CS Lewis. It's about time we had a thinking person writing on the relationships between faith and life.
Posted April 29, 2008 | 06:45 PM (EST)