Nick Jimenez

Sunday, March 5, 2000

Mixing religion and politics

My first brush with religion in politics must have come one Sunday morning when our teen class was given what was supposed to be astounding news: a bar had been installed in the White House.
   These were the Kennedy years and Mrs. Dresch, our Sunday School teacher, kept a close eye on the goings-on in the new administration. We held great store by Mrs. Dresch since she not only taught Sunday school, but also was the minister's wife, played the piano during church services, and was the chief organizer of the annual church picnic.
   So her announcement one morning that a bar - liquor right there where Lincoln had laid his head - was now in the White House was given out with great seriousness and even alarm. This nugget of news for Mrs. Dresch was a sure sign that the nation's demise was not far away now.
   If she were alive today, Mrs. Dresch would probably be described as part of the religious right, the activist faction of the Republican Party that has been much in the news lately.
   Sen. John McCain blasted the religious right's most visible leaders, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, for being intolerant. McCain being McCain, he had to add more gas to the fire by calling Robertson and Falwell "forces of evil." The Arizona senator said later that he was joking about the "forces of evil,'' but nobody was laughing.
   McCain's blast was another reminder of why it's so hard to disentangle politics from religion in American-style democracy. The fights over the Ten Commandants being placed in public places, the abortion issue, prayer in the schools, gay rights, and religious education in the public schools are only the most current religious issues that have arisen in a political context.
   Religion goes deep into American political thought. As Dr. Derek H. Davis, editor of The Journal of Church and State published by the J. M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies at Baylor University, notes that both those for and against slavery quoted the Bible as their authority. Prohibition had its roots in religion and Dr. Martin Luther King put civil rights for black Americans in a religious context.
   So what's the difference between those earlier religious voices participating in the American political debate and the religious right?
   "I think that a lot of people would agree with McCain when he says that people like Robertson and Falwell are extreme. They are not a help but a hindrance to the American democratic system," Davis said.
   What is missing in this debate, Davis says, is that there is no debate when it's comes to the religious right.
   "Part of the American democratic tradition is that when we come together to make public policy, we basically have learned we assert our views, but we must be willing to compromise," Davis says. "Most people have learned you don't always get your way. The religious right have sought to impose their will in a way that breaks the rules."
   Does that mean that there is no place for religion in politics?
   Not at all, says Davis. Faith-minded people, he says, bring valuable insights to life and to public policy. In fact, the great majority of the public might agree with the most basic tents of the religious right regarding the coarsening of society, the undermining of the institution of marriage and the decline of a spiritual element in common society.
   For instance, never has there been a greater need for prayer. Yet when the Supreme Court hears arguments later this month about prayer at Texas football games, the issues will revolve not around prayer but who controls the microphone over which the prayer will be said and who will give those prayers. Those are at heart political questions.
   The religious right, to me, in a large part denotes the demise of the art of compromise and negotiation. Davis talks about bringing ideas to the table "with modesty and a sense of humility." but I'm not sure that exists any more. Certainly you can't tell it by the gridlock government we so often wind up with.
   (Nick Jimenez can be reached at 886-3787 or by email at jimenezn@caller.com)
  
  

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