This is bound to illicit some angry responses, from well, just about everyone

If you’ve ever wondered how it is that a movement calling itself the “christian right” could ever find itself so happily married to a political party so invested in supporting corporate interests and ignoring the poor, well, have your answer here.

So I was reading the political tracker on CNN.com the other day, getting my daily helping of the political gossip when I came across a quote that made me blink really hard. At first, I skimmed over it and kept on my merry scrolling way down the page when the message of the quote finally hit the part of my brain that processes meaning.

“Nah,” I thought.

He couldn’t have actually said that.

Thinking I must have misread, I scrolled back up the page only to find that there were no hiccups in the transfer of information from my occipital lobe to thalamus, or even from my thalamus to my frontal lobe. I’d read the quote right—

“Huckabee also said this: "What we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards, rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family." “
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/17/election08.gop/index.html?iref=newssearch

“What?!?” I thought.

He couldn’t possibly be serious. Wasn’t that the sort of thinking that sent the pilgrims packing in the first place? A government based on someone's interpretation of God’s message?

It was bad enough that Romney said “freedom needs religion,” but this Huckabee quote was flat out ridiculous.

Then I thought, well, he’s done it now, no person that knows anything about the history of this country or the importance of freedom of belief is ever going to vote for this person.

And then, I was wrong.

People actually voted for this imbecile. A lot of people. In fact, he flat out dominated in the so called “bible belt” states. I couldn’t understand it. How did he get votes when he had obviously moved so far away from one of the founding philosophies of this country—freedom of religion, or rather, freedom of belief?

Then I remembered two issues—abortion and gay marriage . . .

The very founding issues on which the “Christian Right” has made their rallying political cry across the country. But why these issues? Out of all of the life-council and commandments given in the bible why has the christian right chosen to rally around just these two?

Particularly when the most prominent figure in Christianity, Jesus himself, is quoted in the bible as having said that the two greatest commandments are “love God,” and then “love your neighbor” ?

The answer lies in this country's history. And not in its happy history either. It lies in the history of slavery.

Let’s put it this way. If you were a preacher in the south in the 1800’s and you wanted to be able to raise enough funds to support yourself and your family you probably wouldn’t last very long if you offended a large number of people. How then, do you preach a sermon about loving your neighbors when most of your congregation has enslaved many of their neighbors.

The answer?

You don’t. You find other things to focus on in your sermons so that you can keep food on the table.

Wendell Berry further explicates this phenomenon in his book “The Hidden Wound” —

“ . . . the churches, with their strong ties to the pocketbooks of racists, felt obliged to see it another way: the way to heaven was faith; one got there by believing. And to this day that continues to be the emphasis of such denominations as the Southern Baptist: to be saved, believe! The mystical aspects of Christianity completely overshadow the moral. But it is a bogus mysticism, mysticism as wishful magic, a recipe by which to secure the benefits of eternal bliss without having to give up the benefits of temporal vice: corrupt your soul and save it to! . . .
When the ministers of these churches turned their attention to the world, they did so with the puritanical passion of St. Paul, violently opposing such “sins” as drinking, failure to attend church, and “immorality”—sins of somewhat questionable status in the first place, and which the church found it easy enough both to condemn and to live with, and to the practice of which its condemnation added little more than certain spice. The great moral tasks of honesty and peace and neighborliness and brotherhood and the care of the earth have been left to be taken up on the streets by the “alienated” youth of the 1960s and the 1970s.
Detached from real issues and real evils, the language of religion became abstract, intensely (desperately?) pious, rhetorical, inflated with phony mysticism and joyless passion. The religious institutions became comfort stations for scribes and publicans and pharisees. Far from curing the wound of racism, the white man’s Christianity has been its soothing bandage—a bandage masquerading as Sunday clothes, for wearing of which one expects a certain moral credit “ - see pages 16-19.

Isn't it interesting that the so-called "Christian Right" seems to be made up only of members that happen to be white and upper middle class, while the black christian communities seem to have found other causes to support.

It’s not surprising then, that there seems to be such a marriage between white christian faiths and the republican party. The political platform of the republican party plays right into the modern dogma’s of these religions. It doesn’t matter that the republicans focus on sexual immorality and ignore the poor because that’s exactly the message these people are hearing from the pulpit every week, and its been the same message for the last two centuries.

What about economics you ask?

Why is it that so-called religious moral conservatives are so quick to embrace economic conservative policy as well?

For the faithful, their religion provides a roadmap which is a guiding light to them in an otherwise morally murky world. This roadmap often provides specific directions on how to navigate through difficult daily choices, however, when it comes to politics the roadmap becomes littered with windy crisscrossing roads with without arrows or robotic GPS voices directing the way.

In order for churches to maintain their tax exempt status in this country they cannot (and rightfully so) endorse any politician or political party. What they can do is speak out on issues that are important to them. Over the last 20 years or so the political concerns of these churches have largely been about preserving the morals that are most salient to them in their sunday church services. These concerns have not entered the realm of economic policy, but rather they have attacked what they see as the sinful acts of individuals.

Because religious people are so good at following their road maps, they are always looking for the “correct” direction to go in with their lives. This remains true with the political process.
They hear the message (whether overtly or covertly) from their religious leaders that gay marriage and abortion are the most salient issues facing this country and so they look for the political party which shares their values on these issues. In so doing, many of these individuals assume that because this political party shares “their” values that they must also share the remaining values of the political party.

So, they then adopt the other values of that party and fight for them as fervently as they would their own religion.

It is this sort of thinking that puts a man like Huckabee, who so clearly speaks out against freedoms which are fundamentally built into the political processes of this country, into political power.

We must remember however, that if not for people who wanted the freedom to believe in their own unique way, this country does not exist at all.

There is NO POLITICAL PARTY OR PHILOSOPHY which fully supports the ideology of any one religion or faith, at least not as that ideology is defined in scripture. All of them endorse policies which both support values from every belief system, and contradict values from every belief system.

Participation in the political process requires work. It requires work because there is no answer that is completely “right.” There is no such thing as political black and white. All aspects of politics are grey and should be carefully considered as such.

So the next time you think about checking the box next to someone like Mr. Huckabee, remember, there is more to him than just two issues. And if there is not, you probably should think about electing someone that has thought about more than two of the issues facing this country.