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"