Article VI Blog

I am not sure people understand the transformation wrought in how people think about religion that was brought about by the colonization of North America and its eventual independence. I looked a while back at the Founding Fathers and their ideas about separation and I want to approach that from a slightly different angle.

My thinking here is sparked by three things. The first our post of 11/28 on the discussion about whether Mormons are Christians or not. We were trying to find out why the question even matters, and one of the reasons we struck upon was simply clubbiness. The second thing that sparks my thinking here is Andrew Sullivan's continued descent into irrelevancy as he rants against "Christianists" - creedal Christian and Mormon Christian. We have discussed this here and here. The third thing is this article from the BBC about "religious crime" in the UK. My wife and I spent Thanksgiving with a couple that grew up in Belfast, so such things were fresh on my mind.

In the Old World religion was not something you adopted, it was something you were born into, like race. Religion identified people groups and as always people groups liked to throw down with each other. Catholic/Protestant and Anglican/Puritan are divisions that rent the United Kingdom into civil war and as the article points out, remnants of that animosity remain to this day.

But America, settled by a variety of peoples, some of whom were these people groups leaving their places of oppression, arrived at a very different notion. In America, religion was transformed from a basis of political power into a matter of personal conviction and personal improvement. This transformation, by the way, accounts in large measure for the rise of Evangelicalism and the decline of the traditional denomination. With religion no longer being a political entity, the need for denominational structures to organize that power declined and in its place arose the independent congregation designed to meet the individual need.

The result is that religion in American has flouished like no where else in the world. Now given the political process we have established in this nation, like-minded people are encouraged to unite for political action. As Evangelicalism has grown it has created a large pool of like-minded people, it is only natural they would unite for political action when it suited their like-mindedness. But this political action on their part is quite different from the political activity of the church in the Old World sense. It is political action by people united by an idea and/or an issue, it is not a power grab for some eccelesiatical institution; no such institution exists today.

And yet it seems, our poltical opponents wish to paint us along Old World lines. Our opponents fight a fight they won centuries ago. They wish to paint us as a people group when we are no such thing. Similarly, extremists on the right would try and forge us into a people group in a desire to accumulate power unto themselves.

And now these well delineated, increasingly hostile battle lines are threatened. Into this volatile mix has stepped a candidate sharing the like-mindedness of the Evangelicals, and yet eccesiastically very distinct therefrom. This candidate threatens the left as he blows apart any possibility of their painting us with the Old World brush. This candidate also threatens the extreme right because without even an illusionary eccesiastical unity, power consolidation becomes well-nigh impossible.

What else could explain the increasingly shrill and vitriolic rhetoric that we have seen in the weeks since the mid-terms? The energy and volume of the discussion says to this observer that there is more at stake than merely the choice of who to nominate for the Presidency. The very structure of power within our political system appears to be threatened.

And thus, the candidacy of Mitt Romney strikes me as one of the best things to come along in a very great while. I think the discussion surrounding his religious affiliation has yet to peak, it will get worse before it gets better. But I do think it will peak before the campaign season gets deadly serious. Through it I think we will see a realignment of the power structure for the better. I think this realignment will come regardless of outcome, provided Romney maintains as a major player.

The shift will, I believe, be back in the direction the Founding Fathers intended, a move back towards religion not as a political base, but a personal one. Persons of faith will continue to be, and should continue to be politically active. But I think through this process such action will be less about religious identity and more about the issues, the way it is supposed to be.

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