A Hard Evening on Hardball

Recently I was a guest on Chris Matthew’s television show, Hardball. The topic for discussion on the show was whether or not the church should be involved in politics. It was expected to be a hot discussion, since the day before the Supreme Court had ruled that the display of the Ten Commandments in a Kentucky courtroom was a violation of the ruling of the first amendment of the Constitution.

There was much about the evening that concerned me. First of all, the show was broadcast from the sanctuary of one of those mega Southern Baptist churches located on the buckle of the Bible belt, with a live audience made up of fundamentalists. The guests on the show were, for the most part, spokespersons for politically active Evangelical organizations. It should be noted that I was one of them. This was hardly a neutral setting. The show was weighted towards the Religious Right.

As the program unfolded, the pastor of the church was asked if he ever used his position in the pulpit to sway his congregation’s voting choices. He said, “yes,” and made it clear that he was a Republican, and voted that way because he was sure that the Republican party was closest to the teachings of the Bible. That was his conviction given the position of the Republican party on abortion and gay marriage.

I wanted to question his certainty about that, but I never got the chance. Some of us might wonder if the commitment of the Republican Party to the poor was all that a sensitivity to Bible teachings would require. And then there’s the matter of tax policies that give huge breaks to the rich at the expense of such social programs as eliminating 50,000 after-school tutoring opportunities for poor inner city kids. I wondered how he would correlate Biblical Christianity with a federal budget that appropriated less than two tenths of one percent of our GNP to help the poor of the world, in spite of the fact that we consume 43% of the world’s resources, putting us dead last among the world’s twenty-two industrialized nations. Jesus did say that nations will be judged by how they responded to the needs of the poor. Since the Bible requires us to be caretakers of the earth. I wondered how this Godly admonition would be harmonized with this administration’s deregulations that now allow auto makers to increasingly pollute the atmosphere and its refusal to put the screws on industries that violate laws for regulating industrial waste. Did this pastor give consideration to what the Bible says about forgiving debts of oppressed people, especially in regards to how Bush changed the bankruptcy laws in a way that favors rich corporations and banks but makes it very hard for the poor to escape economic disaster? Most importantly, I wondered how this Baptist preacher could be so sure that the Iraqi war was the will of God.

It wasn’t as much the opinions of this affable preacher that bothered me, it was the legitimation that he seemed to be giving to his belief that, all things considered, the Republican party was the more Biblically based party.

After the show I shared a ride to a hotel with the MSNBC politically conservative commentator, Tucker Carlson. He readily acknowledged that the show had been a bit “over the top” in favor of Bush’s policies – especially on the war. While we talked he asked me what I thought of Billy Graham. I told him that what I appreciated about Billy was the way that he was sure about the gospel but stayed away from Biblically legitimating either political party. I explained that he spoke strongly on issues on which the Bible was clear, such as race relations, but made no declaration as to which party was best suited to serve His Jesus. Upon further consideration, I think we all, myself included, could learn a lot from Billy Graham. God is neither a Republican or a Democrat. Both parties could be negatively critiqued from scripture. And when it comes time to vote, every American must try to figure out what will help save our nation, in the words of scripture, “with fear and trembling.” In politics we have to be careful about declaring what is the will of God.