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[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/08/opinion/08hart.html?oref=login

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
When the Personal Shouldn't Be Political
By GARY HART

Published: November 8, 2004

Kittredge, Colo. — If America has entered one of its periodic eras of 
religious revival and if that revival is having the profound impact on 
politics that is now presumed, to participate in a discussion of "faith" 
one must qualify oneself.
I was raised in the Church of the Nazarene, an evangelical denomination 
founded a century ago as an offshoot of American Methodism, which, the 
church founders believed, had become too liberal. I graduated from Bethany 
Nazarene College, where I met and married my wife, who was also brought up 
in the church. I then graduated from the Yale Divinity School as 
preparation for a life of teaching religion and philosophy.
The Nazarene Church abhorred drinking, smoking, dancing, movies and female 
adornment, believed in salvation through being "born again" and in 
sanctification as a second act of grace, and resisted most popular culture 
as the devil's work. In doctrine and practice, it was much more evangelical 
than fundamentalist.
A neglected thread of church doctrine was the social gospel of John and 
Charles Wesley, the great reformers of late 18th-century Methodism. The 
Wesley brothers preached salvation through grace but also preached the duty 
of Christians, based solidly on Jesus' teachings, to minister to those less 
fortunate. My political philosophy springs directly from Jesus' teachings 
and is the reason I became active in the Democratic Party. Finally, in the 
qualification-to-speak category, I will seek to pre-empt the ad hominem 
disqualifiers. I am a sinner. I only ask for the same degree of forgiveness 
from my many critics that they were willing to grant George W. Bush for his 
transgressions.
As a candidate for public office, I chose not to place my beliefs in the 
center of my appeal for support because I am also a Jeffersonian; that is 
to say, I believe that one's religious beliefs - though they will and 
should affect one's outlook on public policy and life - are personal and 
that America is a secular, not a theocratic, republic. Because of this, it 
should concern us that declarations of "faith" are quickly becoming a 
condition for seeking public office.
Declarations of "faith" are abstractions that permit both voters and 
candidates to fill in the blanks with their own religious beliefs. There 
are two dangers here. One is the merging of church and state. The other is 
rank hypocrisy. Having claimed moral authority to achieve political 
victory, religious conservatives should be very careful, in their 
administration of the public trust, to live up to the standards they have 
claimed for themselves. They should also be called upon to address the 
teachings of Jesus and the prophets concerning care for the poor, the 
barriers that wealth presents to entering heaven, the blessings on the 
peacemakers, and the belief that no person should be left behind.
If we are to insert "faith" into the public dialogue more directly and 
assertively, let's not be selective. Let's go all the way. Let's not just 
define "faith" in terms of the law and judgment; let's define it also in 
terms of love, caring, forgiveness. Compassionate conservatives can believe 
social ills should be addressed by charity and the private sector; liberals 
can believe that the government has a role to play in correcting social 
injustice. But both can agree that human need, poverty, homelessness, 
illiteracy and sickness must be addressed. Liberals are not against 
religion. They are against hypocrisy, exclusion and judgmentalism. They 
resist the notion that one side or the other possesses "the truth" to the 
exclusion of others. There is a great difference between Cotton Mather and 
John Wesley.
There is also the disturbing tendency to insert theocratic principles into 
the vision of America's role in the world. There is evil in the world. 
Nowhere in our Constitution or founding documents is there support for the 
proposition that the United States was given a special dispensation to 
eliminate it. Surely Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator. But there are 
quite a few of those still around and no one is advocating eliminating 
them. Neither Washington, Adams, Madison nor Jefferson saw America as the 
world's avenging angel. Any notion of going abroad seeking demons to 
destroy concerned them above all else. Mr. Bush's venture into crusaderism 
frightened not only Muslims, it also frightened a very large number of 
Americans with a sense of their own history.
The religions of Abraham all teach a sense of personal and collective 
humility. It was a note briefly struck very early by Mr. Bush and largely 
abandoned thereafter. It would be well for those in the second Bush term to 
ponder that attribute. Whether Bush supporters care or not, people around 
the world now see America as arrogant, self-righteous and superior. These 
are not qualities of any traditional faith I am aware of.
If faith now drives our politics, at the very least let's make it a faith 
of inclusion, genuine compassion, humility, justice and accountability. In 
the words of the prophet Micah: "He hath shown thee, O man, what is good. 
What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly and to love mercy, and 
to walk humbly with thy God?" And, instead of "O man," let's insert "O 
America."
Gary Hart, the former Democratic senator from Colorado, is the author, most 
recently, of"The Fourth Power: A Grand Strategy for the United States in 
the 21st Century.''