You Shall Know Them By Their Lobbyists

Here's one thing for certain: Revs. Muthee and Wright did not lobby Sarah Palin and Barack Obama for political cover to avoid a financial investigation as Charles Keating (successfully) lobbied John McCain.

The question asks us to compare associations that are not comparable. Pastors and religious beliefs should be off-limits in a political campaign. Chairmen of banks that defraud their investors clearly are not off limits in regard to their association with political candidates as we try to decide that candidate's fitness to hold office.

Charles Keating, Chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, lobbied McCain as well as four other Senators, the so-called Keating Five, to get the Federal Home Loan Bank Board to back off an investigation of Lincoln. The FHLBB did back off taking action against Lincoln and it subsequently collapsed, eating up $2 billion of federal money and costing many elderly investors their savings. Keating also gave the "Five", including McCain, substantial political contributions, totaling $1.3 million. The Senate Ethics committee, after a lengthy investigation, criticized Senator McCain for "poor judgment."

McCain's poor judgment in the Keating Five debacle is plainly the stuff of which political decision-making needs to be made. Charles Keating was a bad guy.

Both Muthee and Wright, on the other hand, seem to be fine people in their own right who hold views, both of them, that are outside the mainstream of American religious knowledge and understanding. Wright preaches from the African American religious tradition, Muthee from the African Pentecostal. The worst you can say about Wright is that he preached from Malachi 6 and believes God judges the nations as well as blesses them; the worst we know about Muthee is that he prays to cast out witches. So what?

Furthermore, your religious affiliation, as a person of faith, is not to an individual pastor. Your affiliation is to a congregation and to a larger denomination of which you are a part. Pastors come and go in congregations and are often only one person in a multi-staff ministry; both Palin's and Obama's churches have several clergy on staff. I know more about the United Church of Christ tradition, in terms of personal experience of worship life, than I know about the Assemblies of God certainly. I can only tell you that in the UCC, the freedom of the pew, that is the freedom of the individual believer to reject what the pastor is saying and/or argue with it, is a huge part of the "free church" tradition. The other part is the freedom of the pulpit, where pastors can interpret scripture by the light given to them.

There is, by contrast, no freedom of the bank (despite current evidence to the contrary!) where bank managers are free to defraud or not defraud their customers as they see fit.

Thus I believe the affiliations given in the question are not comparable. For once and for all, let us leave people's pastors out of politics. Religious beliefs cannot be a test for political office. I believe that's in the Constitution. (It is, in Article VI, section 3, "...no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.")

What is a test for office is if you try to kill a fraud investigation for someone with whom you are associated. Then the voters need to know about that, ask you questions about it, and make their decisions accordingly.

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Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite

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You Shall Know Them By Their Lobbyists