McCain and the Monks of Myanmar: Two Very Different Ways of Mixing Religion and Politics
The blending of religion and politics is back in the headlines. Again. And the latest examples make it clear that combining these two isn't inherently good or inherently bad. It all depends on how it's done. And even more importantly, why it's done.
The extremes on this subject can be found in two recent stories: the protests being led by Buddhist monks in Myanmar, and John McCain's increasingly absurd pandering to the religious right.
Let's start with McCain. His latest panderfest came in an interview with Beliefnet that included the head-scratching claim that "the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation," prompting blogger Steve Benen to respond that McCain has "sworn to uphold the Constitution on more than a few occasions. One would like to think he's read it enough times to know this is nonsense."
McCain also delivered this gem: "I just have to say in all candor that since this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles...personally, I prefer someone who I know who has a solid grounding in my faith."
When the predictable uproar ensued, McCain responded with a clarification. Followed by another clarification to clarify his clearly not-clear-enough original clarification. (If nothing else, we can rest assured that a McCain White House would be second to none in clarifying things.)
This PR wreck is but the latest misguided attempt by the driver of the Straight Talk Express to win over faith-based voters. It's been a circuitous and confusing journey. Perhaps his spiritual GPS is on the fritz.
Like many a religious parable, the tale of McCain's evolving position on religion in politics goes way back. In February of 2000, in response to taped phone message by Pat Robertson sent to Michigan residents accusing a McCain aide of being anti-religious, McCain said: "The political tactics of division and slander are not our values. They are corrupting influences on religion and politics, and those who practice them in the name of religion or in the name of the Republican Party or in the name of America shame our faith, our party and our country... Neither party should be defined by pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and the agents of intolerance."
In the years since then -- and especially since he began running for the 2008 GOP nomination -- McCain has, to be generous, rethought his take on pandering quite a bit. To be sure, McCain is not alone in this: the current crop of Republican candidates is running toward the Almighty as fast as it's running away from African-Americans. But while he may be lagging in the polls, when it comes to Religious Panderfest '08, McCain has opened up a comfortable lead.
McCain's "conversion" on the religion-in-politics front has not been without a few moments of bewilderment -- not of the Mother-Teresa-questioning-her-faith kind, but rather of the hard-time-keeping-his-stories-straight kind.
In May, in the midst of a spring spent kissing various rings of those "agents of intolerance," McCain's campaign told the AP that he was an Episcopalian, while noting that his four younger children are Baptists and that he attends a Baptist church when at home in Arizona.
In June, McCain told the McClatchy Newspapers, that he found the Baptist church more fulfilling than the Episcopal church, but still considered himself Episcopalian.
Then, in September, when asked by an AP reporter about how his Episcopalian faith affects his political life, McCain replied: "It plays a role in my life. By the way, I'm not Episcopalian. I'm Baptist. Do I advertise my faith? Do I talk about it all the time? No." I guess it depends on what your definition of "all the time" is.
Of course, this being McCain, a clarification of the Episcopalian/Baptist flip-flop soon followed: "The most important thing is that I am a Christian, and I don't have anything else to say about the issue."
And he didn't. Until he spoke to Beliefnet shortly thereafter, misrepresenting the Constitution and casting aspersions on all future non-Christian presidential candidates.
None of which is to suggest that religion and matters of faith should have no role in politics. Contrast McCain's unseemly position shifting with the resolute actions of the Myanmar monks. Their growing protests were sparked by a rise in fuel prices but have since grown into a widespread uprising against the country's military dictatorship. As Seth Mydans notes in the New York Times, Myanmar has as many monks as it does soldiers, about 400,000 in each group. "The
military rules by force," Mydans writes, "but the monks retain ultimate moral authority."
The monks are using religion to unite and inspire people against a brutal regime; McCain is using it to divide people for transient political gain.
And McCain is not the only one wielding religion as a campaign weapon. I've been hearing whispers from a variety of political insiders that efforts are well underway in a number of GOP campaigns to use Mitt Romney's Mormonism to undermine his candidacy.
Of course, candidates and their campaigns are not wholly to blame here. This kind of ugly pandering wouldn't work if the electorate refused to allow it. Until then, we'll just have to be treated to the incessant, depressing and profoundly cynical spectacle of presidential candidates not talking about their religious views -- repeatedly and vociferously.
Follow Arianna Huffington on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ariannahuff
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The Founding Fathers seem to be the new God of secularist
I admire the monks as for macpain !@#&^%$(*&*_)(
The sight of the strong, committed yet peaceful monks in Myanmar marching against a brutal military regime has been more than moving. It is virtually overwhelming to see the monks protecting the innocent bystanders and marchers at their own expense. They know full well that the pure CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE they were/are expressing is in keeping with Thoreau's, Gandhi's and MLKing's examples. Only their lives and all they hold dear are at stake, yet they keep/kept marching. What a powerful statement!
Well, I'm a heathen, and from my perspective,
when you mix your religion and your politics it's kind of like when they cross the antimatter
streams on Ghostbusters or whatever, it's gonna get ugly...and it has in the past, and it will
in the future, the Crown and the Church made a
Dynamic Duo that spread the British Empire around the world, kind of really didn't work out
for em so well there, at the end...I'm all for
auditing all these religious institutions on a monthly basis to find out what REALLY happens to all that money...
McCain forgot who it was who comprised his natural base: independents, moderates and fiscal conservatives, not religious wing nuts. A few years ago as he began to embrace the old Bush machine, I wrote to him and told him he was making the biggest political mistake of his life. I guess he must have suffered the same inexplicable mental breakdown as Dick Cheney who a decade or so ago actually was quite rational. Go figure?
I just had a marvelous idea - we send all the candidates to the top of the mountain and the first one that God speaks to wins the election. Saves us money, we won't have to redo all those voting machines. All we have to buy is one tape recorder.
It is amazing how many people claim to talk to god or for god. If a person is truly what they say they are it will show in how they live their life. The rest is all bullshit. McCain has just about ruled himself out as a candidate because he is no longer true to who he once was. It is time to get back to the constitution as the founding idea of our society. So much talk at this point is like white noise. It serves a purpose on some level but there are many more important things to deal with in this country like the huge debt and the out of control spending to fuel Bushie's image.
Whatever meds McCain is on is the same that so many neocons have been using...on
Ariana, there is a stalemate in Burma, because the Military Dictator makes fun of political workers.
Religions are written to semoiticise publics and God isnt dependant on his creations. The state governments are non christian because they are English Constitutions creations that takes in Religion that shows a person only where/who to depend on in crisis.
Arianna, you're right on again. This is just another example of why this age-addled hypocrite should NEVER be given the keys to the Oval Room.
The minute religion enters the conversation, I lose interest. Definitely don't need McCain to clarify his religious identity. Who really cares? The media most likely. The monks on the other hand, are silent heroes - strong, confident and Yes, "inspiring people against a brutal regime." Yet it's not required or forced on the people.
Even to this day when I hear "Imagine" I get a little teary eyed. It's time to Imagine there's no Heaven, Its easy if you try, No hell below us, Above us only sky, Imagine all the people Living for today....Y
This country belongs to ALL citizens of the USA no matter what gender--faith--or nationality.
The religious right needs to get that RIGHT.
Not only are they ARROGANT but don't even follow the CREDO----. Being anti-abortion isn't enough if they support GWB & the killing of 100,000 civilians and 4000 troops over lies and changing reasons now for even going to war. They LIE to themselves about so much they don't even know what is good and what is bad any longer.
Walk the WALK --- and if they don't WALK the WALK all the talk isn't going to get them in heaven because God can't be fooled.
The fighting for democracy in Burma explains which side pushes which side and how much blood goes before a revolution is ripe ... In 1978 The bhutto Regime shot down more than over 300 marching protestors on the 9th of April at Lahore while same things happened everywhere .All this was covered by a new Martial Law ........
Be tolerant, Gaga McCain has lost his marbles and is wandering in the wilderness.
But he still collects his handsome pay as a US Senator, so don't feel too sorry.
Imagine this guy making Presidential decisions.
Could be better than Bush though.
A dead slug would make better decisions than Bush. It has been very said to see John McCain sell his soul and lose his moral compass over the past 8 years. I used to respect him because I thought he had integrity. I keep wondering if the Bush people have Congress people's children held hostage somewhere. I keep looking for an explanation for why things are so totally insane. Bush could not have gotten away with what he has done if others had not sold their ethics (or lost their minds, not sure which).
It is so odd to me that the so-called Christian Right is so totally the opposite of everything I think of as Christian. They are unashamedly socially and militarily violent.
The monks in Burma are living their faith (in a most Christian way) as opposed to talking about it. I wish there were more politicians who lived Christian principals instead of just talking about them.
This story about the McCain Follies came out just a day or two after a news item about how religious conservatives are very unhappy with the current GOP crop of Presidential hopefuls and Guiliani in particular. So maybe the GOP will nominate Guiliani or Romney and McCain will be the Ross Perot of the 2000's, siphoning away right-wing votes next November.
Maybe. McCain's call for a theocracy will certainly be sweet enough to draw quite a few flies.
Arianna, you have this one wrong.
Mixing politics and religion is bad.
Where you have become mistaken is misrepresenting the reason the monks are protesting. They are not protesting as an extension or result of their religion and they do not seek any special political status for their religion. They have become politically active as human beings in order to secure their freedom, nothing more.
That is why their protests draw our sympathies and the republicans' attempts at destroying our country by subverting one of the key tenants of a free society, draw nothing but scorn.
They seek freedom and no help comes. Where is the Great America?
I agree....
* Religion is a Road Map
* The direct internal experience and expression of the source of all that is is the destination.
The monks have power because of their experience of the source (and the honor, integrity, generosity, compassion, and self sacrifice that comes with that (kinda like Jesus demonstrat
The day we agree that the United States of America is a "Christian" nation is the day we agree to give up the rest of our freedoms and submit to institutionalized religious persecution. Why not just burn the constitution and bill of rights?
Not that I have a religious nature, or I might just say, AMEN!
You might want to talk with -
John Quincy Adams:
"All the public business in Congress now connects itself with intrigues, and there is great danger that the whole government will degenerate into a struggle of cabals."
"The laws of man may bind him in chains or may put him to death, but they never can make him wise, virtuous, or happy."
"The highest glory of the American Revolution was this; it connected, in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christiani
"Law logic -- an artificial system of reasoning, exclusively used in courts of justice, but good for nothing anywhere else."
Don't think so! John QUINCY Adams was a spoiled and mean little snitz that was viewed by most historians as worthless as our current preznutz, and for similar reasons.
Word on the street was that he was a greedy LITTLE lying monkey that sold-out the principles of his enlightened and reasoned Deist 'founding' father.
I'd always heard he got elected on name recognition alone and was almost tarred and feathered out of office, because people HATED him.
Sounds kind of familiar to someone current, even if it might only be half true. I've read it IS TRUE he was nowhere near as popular as his father and was elected largely on name.
Also, he had NOTHING to do with the enlightened founding fathers who wrote The Constitution and the Bill of Rights that were NOT christians
You might as well have quoted Howard Taft.
"when i do good i feel good... when i do bad, i feel bad. that is my religion ~abe lincoln
Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be deprecated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society.
~George Washington
. . . I beg you be persuaded that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution.
~George Washington, to United Baptists Churches of Virginia, May, 1789
When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.
~Benjamin Franklin
John Adams (the second President of the United States)
Adams signed the Treaty of Tripoli (June 7, 1797). Article 11 states:
"The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion."
From a letter to Charles Cushing (October 19, 1756):
"Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, 'this would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.'"
From a letter to Thomas Jefferson:
"I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved -- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!"
Additional quotes from John Adams:
"Where do we find a precept in the Bible for Creeds, Confessions, Doctrines and Oaths, and whole carloads of trumpery that we find religion encumbered with in these days?"
"The Doctrine of the divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity.
"...Thirte
Thomas Jefferson (the third President of the United States)
Jefferson's interpretation of the first amendment in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association (January 1, 1802):
"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State."
From Jefferson's biography:
"...an amendment was proposed by inserting the words, 'Jesus Christ...t
Jefferson's "The Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom":
"Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, more than on our opinions in physics and geometry..
From Thomas Jefferson's Bible:
"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."
Jefferson's Notes on Virginia:
"Reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these free inquiry must be indulged; how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse ourselves? But every state, says an inquisitor, has established some religion. No two, say I, have established the same. Is this a proof of the infallibility of establishments?"
Well they're already doing it, when it comes to Gay & Lesbian Taxpaying Americans! Using Religious Dogma as arguments against "EQUAL PROTECTIONS" ie: ENDA, Marriage Equality, DADT...in over 39 states in the USA (The land of Liberty & Justice for All) you can be denied housing,be fired from a job etc...all on the premise of being Gay...that
If it helps any, some practitioners of Buddhism, especially these particular monks, do not consider it a religion. They consider it a "way of liberation".
There's a story about the Dalai Lama's reaction to the Tienamen Square incident- he got angry, and he suspended diplomatic talks with the Chinese.
Cautious,
Right you are, sir/madam. And as I pointed out to Purple Girl, since they consider it a way of liberation (or life-philosophy), they instruct others thusly: "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him". In other words, one who claims to be a Messiah cannot possibly be one, as he/she still possess ego, and extinction of that big ugly 800lb gorilla is a prerequisite to attianing enlightenment in the first place. And there's no such thing as an UN-enlightened 'Buddha'!!
If the candidates talked about their religious views, Arianna, they might be forced to confront their hypocricy. It's all just for show to convince voters they are moral people while making their millions and billions on the backs of the poor, and also from foreign peoples that they tell themselves do not matter.
It's like the rumor about the preznutz that after losing an election in Texas, he said that he'd never be 'out-Jesused' again.
Greedy moneychanging hypocrites like those that Jesus so hated have led OUR country to dishonor and shame, by using the people's religion against them, and taking their support and their money in an attempt to conquer the energy world.
In doing so, to the eyes of the world, they have turned an enitre nation of loving, giving, caring people...
...into common thieves.
A real religion lifts people. Areal religion does not need constant re interpetation. A real religion does not need to be pushed or reign over it's masses. A real religion is a philosophy about mans interaction with all that has been given to us ( by god or nature) a real religion never has a need to convert or crusade- for the truth of it is simple. and does not condemn every person until proven good.Nor does a real religion reside in a house of gold while the world starves around them. A real religion rejoices and encourages human diversity and acceptance. A real religion is not dependent on the words in a book- a real religion comes from within and spreads outward to all that there is- regardless of profitablity.
You ever notice how the Big Religions still revere Buddhists- because they are unjaded by money and power . those who do, are the work of the 'devil' - they despise man and despise what is truely beautiful about the human species and all we are steward for.
So as for Mr. McCain and all the other 'Christians', "Muslim" and "Jews" your religion is important to me- it tells me more about you than you know.
As abasic Atheist- I'm praying for the Monks. As for the Big 3- i'm praying about them too- but not for their salvation. For they have been the Antichrist for far too many millinum. A true savior to mankind will topple their reigns or terror. Beware of wht you wish for Armageddon seekers- you just might get what you deserve. Should a person come they deem as the Anti Christ- I'm going to be one of the first Apostles. Because anything these religions deem as 'evil' must truely be Holy.
Excellent understanding you have there! Evangelical Christianity has lost it's way and absorbed many other denominations into it's insanity. Bringing an understanding of God to people who have no previous experience is not the same as trying to convert away from their traditional way of understanding and forcing them to accept your way as truth. We see the results of sowing the seeds of ignorance in nearly every third world country that was doing fine until we interfered.
purple girl, you speak the truth very well. Maybe Atheism is the way to go.
Purple Girl,
Sorry to break it to you, but the Anti-Christ is here already. He's disguised as Dick Chenney! As for your comment about Buddhism, I agree with your assessment completely. And even they will advise: "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him".
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