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.''
[Homestead] View on religion and politics,
Gene GeRue, 11/08/2004