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On the road recently in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I was doing another book store event and signing for God’s Politics. In the question and answer time, two young men said that they were quite “secular” and “even agnostic.”
My goodness. No, Thanksgiving is not a religious holiday! And of course, “non-believers” can celebrate it. Just yesterday on our God’s Politics blog, a Native American leader talked about how they can even find ways to celebrate Thanksgiving, despite the dubious origins of the holiday between early settlers and American Indians. And if our indigenous citizens, whom we almost made extinct after the first Thanksgiving dinner, can find a way to re-interpret and redeem the holiday, certainly the rest of us can. My English wife says that her fellow citizens sometimes celebrate July 4 as their “Thanksgiving,” the day they got rid of us!
As a Christian, and an evangelical Christian at that, I want to say emphatically that America is not, and should not be, a “Christian nation.”
That Jesus called us to non-violence and not to “just wars” is painfully clear. And the fact that Jesus said the peacemakers, not the war-makers, are the ones who will be blessed; and that when he commanded us to love our enemies he really meant it—is also quite evident.
I have said and written many times that I think a good and fair discussion of how a candidate’s faith shapes his or her political values should be viewed as an appropriate and positive thing—it’s as relevant as any other fact about a politician’s background, convictions, and experience for public office.
Yes, I pray. But there are many misunderstandings about prayer. For many, prayer is talking to God, sometimes with a great list of requests and needs—sort of like children’s Christmas lists mailed to Santa Claus.
Yes, I pray. But there are many misunderstandings about prayer. For many, prayer is talking to God, sometimes with a great list of requests and needs—sort of like children’s Christmas lists mailed to Santa Claus.
It already is. The “greening” of the Evangelicals, in particular is the major new development.
Well, that’s a funny way to put the question: Is sex sacred or sin? In the Bible, and most religious traditions, sex can, of course, be either.
On Monday night, we saw the three Democratic front-runners for the Presidential nomination deal with questions about faith in a comfortable way. They showed that faith is both personal and real for them.
When John Edwards spoke of how he and his wife Elizabeth were actually “dysfunctional” for a time after the tragic death of their son and that only “the Lord” got him through that—nobody on either side of the political aisle could have doubted the authenticity. After what many thought was an inappropriate question about Hillary Clinton’s marriage, the Senator responded with a spiritual depth and maturity that deeply impressed everyone who was watching—even her political enemies. The questions about faith, as they often do, ended up revealing more of the honest humanity of these candidates than we often see, and took them off their stump speeches.
When we invited Senator Obama to speak at our annual Pentecost conference in 2006, he used the opportunity to frame his views on the role of faith in politics. It was an extraordinary speech where he said: “[B]because I do not believe that religious people have a monopoly on morality, I would rather have someone who is grounded in morality and ethics, and who is also secular, affirm their morality and ethics and values without pretending that they're something they're not. They don't need to do that. None of us need to do that.”
I agree with that statement. I have frequently said that no candidate's theology or doctrine should be a factor in voting, but rather the focus should be on their moral compass – what shapes their political values, leadership, and policies. What a candidate's moral compass is should be more important than his/her theology or the doctrines of his/her religious tradition. What kind of leader will a candidate be, what are his/her guiding personal and social values, and what is his/her strength of character?
The races so far have given some indication of the values of the remaining candidates. Hillary Clinton frequently speaks of her history as a committed lay person in her Methodist Church; and Barack Obama sometimes sounds like a public theologian with his theme of hope. Both have explicitly connected their faith to a broad range of issues from poverty to health care, criminal justice, HIV/AIDS, human rights, and to war and peace.
In several Republican debates, both Mike Huckabee and John McCain defended the humanity of undocumented people in the midst of an extended attack on "illegal aliens" by other candidates. In the face of some of the most heated rhetoric, John McCain asked his colleagues to remember that the people they were all talking about were "also the children of God." And in defending his inclusion of the children of the undocumented in his state's scholarship programs, Mike Huckabee stood his ground and said the U.S. was not the kind of country that punished children for the mistakes of their parents.
Morality and moral values will be a key criteria for religious and "values voters" this election season; but that the definition and range of those moral values will be much wider and deeper than ever before. This time, more than any election in many years, the votes of many in the faith community are still undecided and will be influenced by whoever can win their support with a genuine moral discourse on politics and an agenda of both social and political transformation.
What Islam Really Says About Violence, Rights and Other Religions
Gomaa, Fadlallah, Mubarak, Khan, Siddiqi, Ellison, others | On Faith
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