Well, as things have turned out, Barack Obama seems to have brewed the perfect politico-religious storm. Our email and comments, and even leftie commentators, albeit in an entirely different fashion, seem to want to draw great distinctions between the religious perils that have fallen on Obama and those that fell on Mitt Romney.

There are distinctions to be very sure, but do those distinctions truly make a difference?  With the very notable exception of what we mentioned on Friday, the storm that currently surrounds Obama is about what his pastor, not he, said. Now, his pastor was an official part of his campaign, but name a campaign yet where someone has not been booted for saying something egregiously stupid. You fire them, you move on (think John McCain and the John Hagee endorsement), but that does not seem to be happening here. Yes, it’s true that Obama, contrary to Romney, invited religion into his campaign instead of simply campaigned as a religious man, but most candidates invoke religion in the course of the campaign. Circumstances forced Romney to be hyper-sensitive; Obama’s statements are standard fare  (save those we cited Friday, which amazingly do not seem to be at the center of this storm); Romney was the exception - and what is happening to Obama proves Romney’s wisdom on that account.

I have a real problem with the guilt-by-religious-association aspects of what is happening to Obama right now.  Now, understand something, Obama is the last man I want to be president of the United States, but this blog is about the proper role of religion in politics, and that is a bi-partisan thing.  The presumption is that because Obama’s long-time pastor said these things, Obama must be like that.  Now, I have no idea what Obama is like in these fields, I am not paying that much attention, but I do want evidence of what Obama thinks - not his pastor.  Heck, I disagree with my pastor about 65% of the time; my denomination, taken as a whole, is on the almost opposite end of the political spectrum from me - that is one of the great things about religion in American.

We cannot condemn a candidate for something one of his associates said, or on the basis of religious affiliation - it is about the candidate, simple as that.  If there were statements of Obama agreeing, we would be in a different situation, but so far, I have not seen that evidence.

The second point I want to make is this:  Remember in the old days when everybody thought this was going to some down to Mitt v. Hillary?  We spent a lot of time wondering what the general was going to look like on the religious front.  Lowell and I both felt that it was going to be very, very ugly in comparison to the primary.   I think this incident is proving our point for us.  This whole thing stinks to me of the Clinton smear machine.  Obama’s pastor’s beliefs have been out there in public since this whole thing started.  We mentioned the radically near-racist nature of the church more than a year ago.  The timing, the way the story is staying alive after the pastors resignation from the campaign, all of it, smells of manipulation of the press, and nobody does that better than the Clintons.

If this attack is allowed to stand, whether the Clintons are behind it or not, though I strongly suspect they are,  it will become a legitimate weapon in future political arsenals.  No one, Evangelical, Protestant, Mormon, Catholic, or otherwise, will want that to be the case.  There is not a single religion that cannot be dug into without unearthing something that can be used to smear a candidate.

The nation does not need this, and might become something else altogether if it goes unchallenged.

Lowell adds:  Very briefly, we have stated on this blog since Day 1 that we don’t think a candidate’s religion should matter, except in the most extreme circumstances.  I think the three-point test advanced by John Mark Reynolds in August 2006 can be useful here: 

First, the religious beliefs of the candidate should be held by a significant number of people and by a group willing to defend them (even if unsuccessfully) in a rational manner.

Second, the group in question should not have religious claims that will naturally lead to horrific, or at least far out, public policy.

Third, the group should have a long track record of generally playing by republican rules in areas where it is dominant. No group is perfect, but the Presidency is too powerful a prize to trust to a new group that might have secret authoritarian leanings.

We don’t know enough to know whether Obama’s church meets these tests, but I have a strong hunch it does.  The key is that Prof. Reynolds is talking about the religious beliefs of a candidate, not the statements of others who are members or leaders of the candidate’s church. 

On the first test, the Trinity United Church of Christ to which Obama belongs is “the largest congregation in the whole United Church of Christ.“  Yes, Obama’s particular congregation does appear to be very afro-centric, which is disturbing or off-putting to many (including me), but it is no small, whacky sect.

I think it passes the second test easily.  This is from the Trinity mission statement:

Trinity United Church of Christ has been called by God to be a congregation that is not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ and that does not apologize for its African roots! As a congregation of baptized believers, we are called to be agents of liberation not only for the oppressed, but for all of God’s family. We, as a church family, acknowledge, that we will, building on this affirmation of “who we are” and “whose we are,” call men, women, boys and girls to the liberating love of Jesus Christ, inviting them to become a part of the church universal, responding to Jesus’ command that we go into all the world and make disciples!

I don’t see any “horrific” or “far out” public policy coming from that.

As for the third test, I don’t see any “secret authoritarian leanings.”  People might not like the tone of the church’s mission statement, but that is unrelated to Obama’s fitness for the presidency.

Yes, we as voters can ask all the questions we want about Jeremiah Wright’s outrageous anti-American statements, and whether Obama agrees with those rantings — but who really thinks he does?  Absent any evidence to the contrary, once Obama repudiates Wright’s statements, I think the matter is over.  Similarly, once McCain repudiated Hagee, that question went away.  And , all Romney had to do about the LDS Church’s former policy on African-Americans was to make it clear he did not agree with the policy and was overjoyed when it ended.  End of questions.  As John says, we need to view religious guilt by association with a very jaundiced eye.
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Posted in Candidate Qualifications, Doctrinal Obedience, Political Strategy, Religious Bigotry, Understanding Religion | 4 Comments » |  Print this post |  Email This Post

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