Religion And Politics Will Always Mix Liberals Are Idiots To Have Ever Denied That Reality

In addition to the idiotic atheist bromide discussed in my morning post, the insistence by atheists and others that religious people keep their religion out of politics is absurd unless you are prepared for rule by atheist despots instead of by The People.  The People giving government legitimacy in the only way that is possible, by voting it into office and agreeing to its rule insures that religious thinking will always be part of that.  And, as Richard McBrien pointed out, that's produced some of the best political action that has ever happened, as well as some far less good.  As he says, it all depends on which person's understanding of religion wins out in the end.  And, as I said a few days ago, if I have to take a chance on that, I'd rather take the chance on someone taking the words of Jesus seriously than I would leaving things to those who reject those to assert a modern version of Roman imperial paganism or, as bad, scientistic materialism.   The commandments given by Jesus would lead to egalitarian democracy, the others to unequal oligarcy, tyranny and death.   To cede the political ground to the fundamentalists, as liberals have been duped into by atheists since the 1960s, is to surrender liberal political success.   If you want to see what is possible in its absence, look at the corporatist Democrats we've managed to elect as president since then as compared with Jimmy Carter.

The Church and Politics

"Religion is a quare thing," Finley Peter Dunne's Mr. Dooley once said. "Be itself it's all right. But sprinkle a little pollyticks into it an' dinnymite is bran flour compared with it. Alone it prepares a man f'r a better life. Combined with pollyticks it hurries him to it."

Many people would say they agree with Mr. Dooley. "You mix religion and politics at your own peril," they insist.

I suppose there are some purists who really do hold to an absolute wall of separation between the two realms, but they're far outnumbered by those who seem to live by the motto, "Consistency is the hobgoblin of puny minds."

In my observation, most people who oppose the mixing of politics and religion are selective about their opposition.

For many right-wing Catholics, it's wrong for the bishops to appear before Congress on such matters as Salt-II, or the MX-missile, or U. S. policy in Central America, but it's right for them to use the same forum to argue for aid to parochial schools, or against pornography, or in support of a constitutional amendment on abortion.

For many left-wing Catholics, it's wrong for bishops like Cardinal Obando y Bravo to assume the role of an opposition leader to the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, but it's right for Cardinal Jaime Sin to have played a key role in the downfall of the Marcos regime in the Philippines.

For many right-wing Catholics, it was wrong for Father Drinan and Sister Agnes Mary Mansour to become involved in partisan politics through elective or appointive office, but it was right for Cardinal Krol to appear prominently at the 1972 Republican National Convention, in more than a praying role, and to host a campaign stop at Doylestown, Pennsylvania, for then-candidate-for-reelection, Ronald Reagan.

For many left-wing Catholics, it's wrong for fundamentalist televangelists like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson to try to influence the electoral and legislative processes, but it was right for Martin Luther King, Jr., the Berrigan brothers, and Jesse Jackson.

The 1984 Presidential campaign dealt a body blow to civilized and reasoned argument about the issue of religion-and-politics.

President Reagan and his supporters practically welded the two together. 

But give them credit. They were right. Religion has a lot to do with politics---for better or for worse.

The question is, however, which kind of religion?

Parson Thwackum in Henry Fielding's Tom Jones once declared, "When I say religion I mean the Christian religion, and when I say the Christian religion I mean the Church of England."

For all the talk about "Judeo-Christian values," when the President's supporters said "religion," they meant the Christian religion. And when they said Christian, they meant fundamentalist Protestant Christianity.

But that was no excuse for the Democratic nominees, Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro, to flee to the opposite extreme, insisting that religion is an entirely private affair.

It wasn't a private affair for Martin Luther King, Jr. On the contrary, it was the principal motivating force behind the whole civil rights movement.

The question, therefore, is not whether religion and politics mix, but how. 

There are many ways. The most obvious is through open and active support of, or opposition to, a particular regime or to candidates for public office.

In the United States, our bishops have explicitly rejected this option, even though there is nothing in the Constitution to prevent it.

Another way is through participation in the public debate over issues, relying, however, upon the force of arguments rather than upon appeals to divine authority. 

This is the path taken by the bishops, especially in their recent pastoral letters on nuclear war and their forthcoming letter on the economy.

In between these two ways lie a whole range of options, including public actions designed to call attention to deficiencies in the political system (the civil rights' sit-ins and marches were one example); or the founding of organizations and movements to pursue a particular agenda (Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority is a case in point).

Sometimes, of course, we indirectly do things which we say we're opposed to doing directly.

For example, the U. S. Catholic bishops emphasized during the 1984 campaign that they were not in the business of endorsing candidates, but the public statements of some high-ranking bishops were taken by many as a clear non-endorsement of some candidates and at least an indirect endorsement of others.

What the Catholic bishops, nuns, priests, and laity did in Haiti and the Philippines in recent weeks makes many of us proud. But we have to ask ourselves, "Why?"

And we shouldn't be too quick to scare away the hobgoblins of consistency. 

3 / 17 / 1986