Jesus Is My Running Mate!

I don't know if Abraham Lincoln could have run for president in this environment.

And when I say environment, I mean the pious air of pandering that has been wafting through the air before this campaign season even began.

Although I consider myself a Christian I cringe every time a politician attempts to kiss up to the Christ in me. Saying that Jesus is your running mate does not garner any votes in my demographic of "nerdy black Christians for separation of church and state," and for most of my lifetime Democrats tried to appear more mainstream no matter what their religious beliefs. It was the Republicans who passed around the piety as potential nominees tripped over each other to kiss the ring of theocracy.

But in today's Democratic push to the center (and the constant murmurings of a certain meta Muslim rumor), the donkeys are donning fresh pressed robes to join the celestial chorus of the lowest common denominator, braying "Hallelujah" to the rhubarbs they hope are just misinformed enough to fall for this hog swaller.

The latest exercise in my God's bigger than your God was CNN's latest "faith" based debate held at Messiah College in Pennsylvania on Sunday. Dubbed the "Compassion Forum," Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were lobbed heavenly softballs of "what the hell." Moderator Campbell Brown whipped out zingers asking how faith would affect presidential decisions and "Senator, if one of your daughters asked you -- and maybe they already have -- "Daddy, did God really create the world in six days?" What would you say?"

When oh when will that one come up on the commander-in-chief test? Kim Jong Il will be playing Hillary Clinton in a game of baccarat for control of North Korea's nukes and that wily Jong Il will look Clinton in the eye and opine, "So, for all the weapons, riddle me this? Was Mary Magdalene merely a follower of Jesus Christ or was she in fact a common WHORE? Wrong answer and I nuke Tokyo right now!"

And Brown just kept going:

(To Clinton) Let's talk about your faith. And we warned people the questions tonight would be pretty personal. So I want to ask you. You said in an interview last year that you believe in the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. And you have actually felt the presence of the Holy Spirit on many occasions. Is this for real?

But she was kind enough, of sorts, to toss my cynicism a bone.

Senator, there are a lot of Americans who are uncomfortable with the conversation that we're having here tonight. That they believe religion already has way too much influence in political life and public life. How do you reassure them?

Um ... by NOT participating in this forum?

And if it weren't inane enough there was poor Barack Obama. Crammed between a malicious "secret jihadi" lie and the incendiary sermons of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the same man Obama used to bolster that "I'm a Christian. Really, I am" defense.

Now he's either "Obama Osama the America Hater" or "Obama the Black Nationalist 'Kill Whitey' Perpetrator."

Has it really come to this? Who are these people who will vote for a politician purely on John the Baptist talk rather some President John Adams action? Oh wait, they voted for George W. Bush after he said Jesus was his favorite philosopher. Never mind!

When will everyone, from the Rev. Al Sharptons to the "God Is Not Great" Christopher Hitchenses of the world let this crap go? None of it is germane to the presidency. Abraham Lincoln, considered by many to be our greatest president as he kept the country together in the midst of a brutal civil war was a deist. Do they even still have those? And if they do, the most certainly could not get elected president. Simply believing there is a creator is not enough. You have to wear the coat of many colors and twirl around in it to screaming "Hosannah in the highest" while you fleece America's voting sheep

There are so many theatrics. So much ass kissing. So much ass coverage. So much bowing and genuflecting and prayer in the public square. And it's all for show. It doesn't tell you whose heart is pure and it doesn't tell you whose is not. And if I didn't think it weren't all a merely mating dance of candidate and voter I wouldn't vote for anyone at all.

Thank God I'm a pragmatist.

Comments

[jazzman]

Look, democracy is an enlightenment concept. It assumes an informed and educated citizenry as the basis of forming a good government. We have gone in the opposite direction. The american people are incapable of selecting good leaders because they no longer are educated enough to discern what's important in an election. The more cynical politicians know this and therefore they know they can drive wedge issues into the election and get the citizens to vote against their economic self interests. It may be sad to admit but in George Bush we did have the government we deserved and most likely the people of this country will elect John McCain and continue the path to their own decline. They can't help it. They aren't smart enough to see through the manipulation and vote intelligently. Thus they will never get another Lincoln, FDR, or Kennedy. Those were the Presidents that the citizens of their time, most who could read and write and think, deserved.

[MajorKong]

I wonder how Jesus gets anything done these days seeing as he spends most of his time on the campaign trail. And that's just his day job! He also has to help people win high school football games and Grammie Awards.

[Nutcase]

Your points are well-taken and most welcome. I have a problem with your sense of direction, however. When speaking of moving towards the center, you are looking in the wrong place. There is, effectively, no representation of the left in this country. When you start from a position on the right and move further to the right you are not moving towards the center.

McCain, of course, has a staff composed almost entirely of lobbyists. He most commonly flies on corporate jets. His "Straight Talk Express" is just a stage prop that doesn't really go anywhere. Meanwhile, Obama gets approximately half of his contributions from corporate sources, despite his claims. He has staffers and state chairs who are lobbyists. Clinton's donations come somewhat more from the corporate sector and she employs lobbyists.

All three are bought and paid for corporatist candidates. For instance, the healthcare plans of both Obama and Clinton would ensure the health insurance companies greater income and profits. Doesn't it make sense that the health insurance companies would be among their largest contributors?

There is no candidate that can be labeled left, or progressive, or populist. There is really no viable left, or even center, in this country. Pragmatism would call for addressing the needs of the people. Does anyone remember 'of, by and for the people?' Electing people who have more sympathy for the welfare of Bear, Sterns' investors than the people losing their homes isn't really pragmatic.

Je pense, donc je suis populiste.

[angryhumanist]

Amen! Great post.

[audiodramatist]

Thanks so much for this Sister Danielle.

I really hadn't realized i was a deist (no capital, please) until i googled it after reading your piece.
Up until now i just believed myself to be one who sees/feels us all one with the universe.
...And no other one(s) should be in the way of my communing with the stardust, we are all connected to, in any way i choose; least of all folks who interpret through ever shifting misinterpretations or convenient self-serving understandings of translations of translated ancient texts.

Anyway, as i keep saying; this election cycle is "da bomb"; knowledge is dropping all over the place.
Did you catch the George Will 'Two Speeches on Race' - http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21290 - essay?

All this stuff going on is real home schooling.
What a great time to be on the planet.

Bless you, for this writing, my Sister.

By-the-by, i thank the Universe that i am also a pragmatist.

[Blacksnob]

Thanks.

I just don't like all the Churchy McChurch talk considering our nation was founded on the idea that you could believe whatever you wanted. Quite a few of our founding fathers were deists. But you wouldn't know that by listening to most people.

If you want to learn more about deism, read founding father Thomas Paine's "The Age of Reason." He sort of set the standard with that one.

I'm a Christian, but I don't like it that if you're an atheist or an agnostic or a deist and you want to run for public office everyone looks at you like you just ate a baby.

That's just wrong.

[MadFae]

And I think the prospect of having a Democrat who knows how to connect people's religious faith with real action for the social good (poverty, HIV/AIDS, etc.) is a good thing. We have no reason to believe that Obama is going to get all churchy on us if he wins the presidency. He's been the most sincere, consistent candidate we've had throughout the primary. I believe he'll be very much the same in the Oval Office. I sincerely believe he is the only person standing in this race who really does hold the people of this country up as the single most important charge of the President of the United States.

[MadFae]

I appreciate your opinion, and agree with the separation of church and state, but this is a primary, not the floor of the Senate. The Republicans have long held a monopoly on what they call "morals," and have cast the Dems as depraved long-hairs. The fact is, a LOT of Dems are very religious. They make up a majority of the Democratic Americans in this country, actually. I think it's a good thing to show everyone, the GOP and everyone else, that a person can be religious and proud of it, and speak about it in the public forum, withOUT being a rabid proselytizer. Obama is merely being who he is. His spirituality is very robust. Talking about religion is not a new thing for him. The only person pandering in this situation is Hillary Clinton, who can't remember the last time she went to church (oh yeah, Easter...she's one of "those" Christians, lol). Nothing has changed about Obama's religious life since he started running for president, other than that he has not been able to attend services as much as he would like.

[donandmarcy]

I thought I was alone! I couldn't wait to see the end of the "evangelical white house" and the damage caused to this nation. Bill Clinton, "the first black president", should have been the first to get out in front of the whole Rev. Wright issue. I am still stunned that the Democratic party leadership does not stand for the principles of Martin Luther King, does not tolerate freedom of religious expression or care enough to defend a man who served this county and his community for many years. I'm a 58 year old white Jewish woman and lifelong Democrat. The party no longer shares my values or my vision for this country whihc includes black people, young people and a progressive agenda.

[Blacksnob]

What? The same Bill Clinton who loved him some Jeremiah Wright before that "GD America" tape started floating around. Bill wants to win so bad if Barack was on fire I don't even think he'd piss on him.

And I LIKE Bill, yet I acknowledge this. Dude has no kind of shame.

And Dems have been cowardly for sometime. The Republicans say "Boo!" and they all scatter. It's pathetic.

[southsideirish]

Sigh. Yeah... I don't necessarily think it's sad they did it, but sad they HAD to do it. For too long, the Religious Right has injected faith into the campaign cycle and gotten away with it. Meanwhile, Democrats stood idly by and watched the rich, old, white guys, who could "relate" win everything. The fact is, if they didn't reach out to people of faith (and allowed the loudest, most secular voices to be their mouthpieces) it was going to keep looking like they were shunning them; and the GOP would keep its current powerbase. Perhaps, if we get a moderately religious Democrat in office, we can stop all this confluence of policy and faith. People will be less suspicious and we can put the policy back into politics and faith back into our souls.

[shreveportrose]

Bravo! Great column. You have articulated this phony-baloney religious pandering that the candidates have to indulge in so well. For those of us who have experienced even a glimmering of the real power of religion, it could almost make one despair . But your last sentence communicates the only (although unfortunate) response that makes any sense. We must all be pragmatists....

[RabidRightRebel]

There is a very slippery slope that is created when you eliminate the separation of church and state and that slope inevitably leads to the creation of a fascist theocracy. If you think that being called unpatriotic because you don"t support this ill-conceived war is offensive, wait until you are convicted of being a traitor for believing in Darwinian evolution and quantum physics.

Fortunately we are currently a long way off from that scenario. However there is no denying that a significant number of religious followers believe and accept that God is right to send someone to be tortured for eternity because they are a non-believer, (The fact that the same God created the person into a different religion only to send them to tortured for eternity suggest an incomprehensible amount of cruelty, but that is another issue). So just how hard can it be to get them to accept that the state should send non-believe to prison until they accept their religious beliefs?

For those that argue that this could never happen, please open history book. They are littered with examples of religious persecution and it is not in any way ancient history. Even today in a few Muslim countries abandoning the Muslim religion is an offence punishable by death.

In short you are quite right to be concerned about the pandering to the Religious right it is bound to result in a catastrophe for society.

[candyc]

I despise organized religion,and consider myself an atheist. Imagine how painful this religious crap is for people like me? We LITERALLY have no voice.

The whole world wastes all its resources and fights war after war over which imaginary being is better?

Its all just stupid.

PROVE IT, please?

[Vurz]

Agreed; although I always vote. The only thing I use faith-based stuff for is to decide who not to vote for.

[Blacksnob]

That's why it's soooo difficult for me this year. I always vote but, gah, the Jesus pandering has gotten so disgusting. I just keep reminding myself that it's only pandering and very few presidents (besides George W.) actually follow-through with this hooey.

[4wehttam]

No, I don't believe that Lincoln, Roosevelt and the Kennedy's would have survived today's political sprectrum. The internet alone is a dangerous proponent; one that even Bill Clinton in his heyday couldn't have slipped by unscathed.

The media also plays a huge role in how candidates are viewed and what's expected of them. If they make one wrong move............well, you get the gist.

[southsideirish]

4wehttam, spot on! I have a friend who says that perhaps we weren't ready for the internet, because "human beings aren't responsible." Add that to the 24 hour, "all soundbites all the time" media circus, and you get one hell of a firestorm. That isn't to say we don't need to be informed. In the Information Age, however, we might be becoming less informed. Because no one waits around to get the facts or the context anymore before they put on the Drudge Report or YouTube and let the sparks fly.

[Blacksnob]

People are easily sucked into the salacious dramas. It's been that way forever, only now the information is easier to pass around and catch fire. Back in the day, you could flub your way through some sniper fire and the press corps would just give you a pass, but YouTube has no heart. You cannot cajole it and promise it an exclusive on you at a to-be-determined date. You cannot take the YouTube out on a fancy lunch and wine and dine the YouTube at the correspondence dinner.

I'm sure all the politicians miss the good old days when you could chum it up with the press and tell a few big ones and they'd just let it slide. They did it for FDR, JFK and Reagan. I know folks today are like, "Why me? Dammit. Why can't I just lie about sniper fire and be left alone! That YouTube's gots no heart!"