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The problem with ideologues in politics is their attempt to make a science of something that is an art. Unlike Aristotle and Burke, ideologues forget that politics is inexact and that wisdom has been hard won over centuries of experience and thought. There is, really, no science of politics. Of course, the same difficulties apply to ethics.
Some people pick churches the way they pick clothing: based on personal comfort and style. Other people select their religious home for bad reasons: they hope to gain some personal or political advantage from it.
It is difficult to understand how Senator Obama could attend a church for twenty years, defend it in one of the most eloquent speeches I have heard, and then suddenly have an epiphany, in the heat of a political campaign, about the nature of the place where he trusted his own and his children’s spiritual well being. Miracles still do happen, so it is possible that God appeared to the Senator on the Road to Denver, but this miracle happened very conveniently for the Senator’s ambitions.
Nothing makes an ideologue madder than actual people.
People have the obstinate desire to live their own lives, refusing to fit into the neat little patterns of the ideologue. The rest of us know, as Aristotle taught, that all human institutions have to be left a bit messy at the edges or they become unbearable. One size does not fit all and for any society to work, especially a diverse society, there has to be room for different practices and perspectives.
Having ignored warning signs for so long, the culture's fascination, even delight, in the destruction of yet another political leader is sickening. I don't know if John Edwards is sorry for his sins, but I do know that only a fool or a saint can afford to be unmerciful or delight in his fall.
What are evangelicals looking for in a presidential candidate this year?
In my experience, most evangelicals, like most Americans, want four things from a candidate. First, they want a person with good character and the competence to govern well. Second, they long for a candidate who will defend traditional American ideas about faith and politics. Third, they want a compassionate man, but one who does not propose policies whose good intentions are swallowed up by bad consequences. Finally, they want a candidate who will defend the most fundamental God-given right: the right to life.
And lo it is a few days after the Saddleback Civil Forum and the republic is still safe. Extremists on both sides of religion and government issues are deeply disappointed.
If Vice-President Palin is fit to lead the nation, then why can't she be a priest in my church?
When traditional Christians vote for Palin, as I will, they are not being inconsistent. They are, in fact, being true to the best part of their heritage. This heritage helped liberate women without denying distinctions between the sexes.
Christianity favors justice to all without denying proper roles for the masculine and the feminine.
Historically women have led armies in Christian nations. (Read about Saint Joan in Mark Twain's luminous Joan of Arc!) They have led nations magnificently as did England's Elizabeth. Christians who attended churches with male clergy understood the difference between particular roles long before the modern era. They sometimes missed the point, as the horrid John Knox demonstrates, but the mainstream of Christian development soon saw that the role of head of state and government was not the same as representing the God-Man, Jesus Christ, at the altar.
Sarah Palin is busting glass ceilings, but with views drawn more from the Gospels than from the New York Times. Her opponents are aghast. It is not supposed to be this way!
She keeps committing Christianity in public . . . sending secular extremists off the deep edge.
They twist what she says because she frightens them. Her request for prayer for our war and, yes, even an Alaskan pipeline, is part of a long American tradition.
The Wall Street Journal (1/4/08) notes Franklin D. Roosevelt offered religious justifications for the New Deal. Was he a theocrat? Regarding his social programs, President Roosevelt said that "[the] object of all our striving . . . should be to help citizens realize the abundant life Christ said he came to bring."
This makes Palin sound downright moderate! We were not a theocracy in the nineteen thirties and forties and Franklin D. Roosevelt was no theocrat. The next pundit who hyperventilates about the perils of Palin prayers should produce nothing but laughter.
Every aborted baby looks alike, but every child allowed to live becomes absolutely unique. Abortion crushes liberty for the sake of a single choice--it ends possibility with the cruel actuality of murder.
Roe should be overturned because by judicial fiat it hallows killing the innocent as part of our Constitution. In a just society there can be no right to do evil. Not every evil should be illegal, but no evil action should be hallowed as a constitutional right.
If I could ask Senator Biden and Governor Palin a question on religion and politics, it would center on their acceptance or repudiation of unfair religious attacks on other candidates this election season.
This has not been a great year for religious tolerance or fair-minded examinations of other religious points of view.
Bigots attacked Governor Mitt Romney for his Mormon faith. Recently religiously ignorant opponents of Governor Palin have attacked the Assemblies of God. Even the good name of the Atlantic has been sullied by such know-nothing rants.
Of course, examining a person's religion to learn something about the candidate is not wrong.
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