markjs
Banned
Sorry no source, but this is an editorial from some newspaper someplace in America.
Monday, November 15, 2004
God is not Republican
Attempts to align politics and religion aren't just glib - they're destructive
By Maribeth Ekey
Psychologist in Placentia
There is a widespread assumption that Republicans are the "party of God" and Democrats are "the party of secularism." These are CNN's words, based on stats that 58 percent of Bush's voters attend church weekly and 54 percent of Kerry's attend only rarely. Evangelical Christians too often have shared this assumption - greeting each other with hearty backslapping over Bush's win - without ever stopping to check how the other person actually voted.
I'm a Christian who votes Republican but am protesting this assumption.
I was glad for the voters' message that morality matters, but embarrassed by the simplistic conclusion that Republicans are moral and Democrats immoral.
Clearly Democrats have a moral mandate. I agree with pundits - they did not articulate it well. But many devoutly religious people voted Democratic impassioned by solid biblical belief. They voted for higher taxes toward social reform. Jesse Jackson, quoting Christ, nailed it: "Feed the poor" and "As you did it unto the least of my brethren, you did it unto Me." They voted against the greed of corporate America and its uncontested pillaging of rain forests and oil fields, because they were intelligently frightened - for the sake of unborn children - about the long-term effects on our environment. They voted against war, faintly echoing the stance of early Christians who were thrown to lions for refusing to fight for their country.
They voted Democratic although totally opposed to abortion, hating the limited choices on the ballot, wanting a viable third-party option, and stating honest statistics that although Bush is against abortion, abortion has actually gone up in his term. Faced with a quandary of no perfect choice, they voted Democratic from thoroughly Christian or religious motives. I disagree with their vote - but I affirm their godly motives and arduous struggling with the complexity of the issues.
There was no perfect choice on the ballot - and belonging to either party is not inherently ungodly. But there is an ungodly process rampant in both parties illustrated by a statement in a Christian magazine that prompted me to drop my subscription. One of its editors likened the Democratic Party to the Nazis. He did not flesh out how Democrats were like - and unlike - Nazis, but simply let the metaphor stand in all its inflammatory horror. The term "Nazi" stirs in us images and deep feelings about unimaginable cruelty, the rage of our helplessness before such cruelty and a knee-jerk response to level the enemy.
Carelessly or intentionally, this editor was inciting hatred. By "hatred," I mean categorizing groups of people in ways that oversimplify them and represent them as solely their (real or imagined) weaknesses or errors or evil - or some demeaned attribute - and then wishing them ill, or failing to give them their due. To engage in this inflammatory process of stirring hatred against the opposition is the height of ungodliness in a religion whose central mandate prohibits hating even legitimate enemies - let alone our Democratic brethren. But it's what we're doing when we frame Republicans as God's party and Democrats as the devil's.
Further, we grossly malign God whenwe confuse his kingdom with political parties and processes. God is perfect, ruling by uncontested decree. We are imperfect, ridden with poor motives and blind spots; and we need a two- (or three- or four-) party system to confront and compensate for our ignorance and self-interest. When we think we're the party of God - when our belief in the infallibility of God and Scriptures subtly perverts into a belief in our own infallibility - we adopt a totalitarian mind-set that is quite dangerous in human beings. This mind-set is also prideful and thus the antithesis of Christian.
As we become "citizens of heaven," our patriotism fades dramatically. Our central mandate is an impartial love that extends far beyond political aisles to break through even national boundaries. In a kingdom that demands not only loving neighbor as self but also loving our enemy, we find ourselves playing favorites with our own country less and less.
All of this may seem ridiculous, no way to run a country in the real world - as indeed may be the case. But it is Christianity 101; and every Christian knows it or should know it. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's.
I voted for George W. Bush on a straight Republican ballot. But I am not celebrating wildly the outcome of this election.
Rather, I'm deeply troubled about the distorted message the world is getting that God is Republican - the stumbling block that may create for liberal seekers; the arrogance it suggests in Republican believers; and the way it sadly diminishes an understanding of the grandeur and transcendence of God.
