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Bill Keezer and Kevin the Big Hominid both have good posts on the intersection of religion and politics.

In response to Kevin’s question about whether it’s possible to separate one’s religion from one’s political beliefs and actions, I’m inclined to say it’s not. If my conscience is well-formed by my tradition, how can I somehow turn that off when I enter the voting booth? But does this require that I attempt to legislate my religious beliefs?

I think it doesn’t require it, for a couple of different reasons. First off, it might be imprudent for me to attempt to legislate my religious beliefs, since the wheel of fortune will eventually turn and I might find myself as part of a religious minority. I think it was C. S. Lewis who said he wouldn’t want to legislate Christian marriage for all of England any more than he would want Muslims to outlaw alcohol!

Secondly, I think we can find embedded in our traditions reasons for not being quick to impose sectarian religious doctrines on others. Christians are called to be humble, and one aspect of this humility is epistemic humility. That is, we shouldn’t assume that we already posess the whole truth, and this ought to lead us to engage in respectful dialogue with those who hold different views. This is not a position rooted in skepticism, or Enlightenment rationalism, but one rooted in the virtues a Christian should exhibit. I suspect there are tendencies in other traditions that would point in a similar direction.

Finally, I would distinguish between a sectarian religious belief and a moral belief which may be shared widely across traditions (I realize this distinction can get fuzzy in practice). If I think abortion or the death penalty are wrong, I can seek to persuade my fellow citizens that those things are wrong based on premises that they accept from their own traditions. I can’t accept the Kerry line (if it is the Kerry line) that opposition to abortion is a matter of faith that must remain essentially private. Kerry clearly doesn’t think that care for the environment or economic justice must remain matters of “private” belief, even though those positions can be, and often are, rooted in faith.

If American conservatism is individualist social-contract theory combined with anti-statism, then it has very little in common with Christianity, according to James W. Skillen:

George F. Will, drawing from what he considers “the best political book in years” (John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge’s The Right Nation), writes in a recent column that “the emotions underlying conservatism’s long rise [in America] include a visceral individualism with religious roots and anti-statist consequences” (Washington Post, 10/10/04). According to Micklethwait and Wooldridge, religiosity is what “predisposes Americans to see the world in terms of individual virtue” and to be skeptical of government.

This is why American Christians ought to be conservatives, right? And doesn’t it also mean that in today’s culture Christians should vote for the evangelical and politically conservative George W. Bush rather than for the politically liberal John Kerry, who happens to be Catholic?

Regardless of how you choose to cast your vote on November 2, to presume that religiously political conservatism harmonizes with Christianity is a serious mistake….

More here.

(via Byzantine Calvinist)

This is a very powerful movie based on the experiences of Allied POWs in a Japanese prison camp during WWII. These men lived under horrific conditions and were forced to construct a railroad between Thailand and Burma.

The heart of the film, though, is in the prisoners’ struggle to maintain their dignity by studying philosophy, literature and music, and, ultimately, by forgiving their captors. The narrator is a young Scotsman who eventually went on to become dean of the chapel at Princeton University.

Highly recommended.

Via Michael Gilleland comes this sermon from Fr. Jim Tucker – “A Primer on Prayer.” I’ve found that many pastors seem averse to offering this kind of “nuts and bolts” advice on living the Christian life. But some of us are in great need of it!

Recently, I spoke to an audience of college kids. The subject was our president. For 20 minutes or so, I gave them my assessment of George W. Bush, that he is a spoiled rich kid who wasted his youth partying with his frat-boy buddies and then woke up one morning and decided to become president. I pointed out that his domestic policy has been disastrous and his foreign policy idiotic.



We came to the question-and- answer session. “So who are you voting for?” one of the students asked.

“Why, George Bush, of course.”

More here.



(link via The Corner)

Last week I attended a discussion at our church on “Christians and the Upcoming Election.” The featured speaker was Rev. Philip Krey, the president of the Lutheran Theological Seminary here in Philadelphia. The purpose of this gathering was not to decide on one candidate or the other, but to clarify the context in which Christians, specifically Lutheran Christians, understand politics and our role in the political process.

The discussion was good – it was civil, for the most part, and serious, substantive issues were discussed. The gist of Dr. Krey’s presentation was that a Lutheran understanding of politics is based on Luther’s doctrine of the “two kingdoms.” The idea being that politics is the sphere in which reason, prudence and compromise must hold sway rather than religious notions of right and wrong. This is similar two Augustine’s idea of the “two cities.” The essential functions of government are to defend from external attack, keep the internal peace, and protect the poor. (Luther would’ve agreed with G.K. Chesterton who quipped that the poor object to being governed badly, while the rich object to being governed at all.)

The role of the church, with respect to politics, is to hold political leaders accountable when they go astray. Luther was not shy about criticizing the German princes when he thought they were misgoverning (most infamously in his exhortation to the princes to put down the peasants’ revolt). However, the church, per se, doesn’t wield the sword, i.e. hold political power.

Dr. Krey is clearly a Kerry man. He criticized the Bush administration (and “Christian fundamentalists”) for trying to blur the distinction between the two kingdoms. He said that this is part of a movement to jettison our Enlightenment heritage and return to the model of the Middle Ages where the church held sway over political authorities. He also emphasized what he saw as the “arrogance” of the current administration’s attitude to the rule of international norms.

The question that I put to Dr. Krey was how we can simultaneously hold that it’s dangerous for the President to be swayed by religious beliefs in making policy, and that the church should criticize political leaders (since this assumes that we think political leaders should listen to the church)? In other words, how is the church supposed to “speak truth to power” as they say, without transgressing the very boundary that the doctrine of the two kingdoms is supposed to uphold?

His response was to tell a story about Bishop Mark Hanson’s (the presiding bishop of the ELCA) visit to the White House during the run-up to the war. According to Dr. Krey, Bp. Hanson warned President Bush that a pre-emptive war in Iraq was likely to unleash chaos and result in much suffering. This was an example of church leaders seeking to hold politicians accountable.

But in this case, I asked, was the Bishop speaking as a religious leader or as an amateur geopolitical analyst? If the former, then it looks like we’re back to square one with religion seeking to influence the President’s decisions. If the latter, then the Bishop is speaking with no special authority, since he wouldn’t have been any better informed about the likely outcome of a war than other sources of information at the President’s disposal (though, of course, Bp. Hanson turned out to be largely right). What do Christians have to bring to the political table if they’re not speaking as Christians?

All of which indicates, to me at least, the inadequacy of the “two kingdoms” view as applied to our modern (or post-modern) situation. It may be that Luther could allow “reason” to hold sway in the realm of politics because he thought natural justice was largely identical with the revealed moral law. Attempts to paint Luther as a proto-liberal have to reckon, it seems to me, with the fact that nearly everyone in his political milieu was Christian and would have had similar views about the common good. In this situation, it makes sense to think of clergymen criticizing political rulers on the basis of a shared morality.

But one of the most salient differences between our time and Luther’s is that not only is their wide disagreement about particular religious claims, there is also wide disagreement about what the natural law requires in the way of political and social justice. For that matter, there is wide disagreement about whether there even is a natural law! Alasdair MacIntyre’s question seems appropriate: Whose justice and which rationality will guide our political decisions?

Modern liberalism (and, in this sense, many “conservatives” are liberals) rests on the notion that we can bracket or indefinitely defer questions about the good life and the ultimate nature and destiny of human beings as far as politics is concerned. Is this the same thing that Luther had in mind when he delegated authority over the political realm to reason?

Various bloggers have weighed in on the issue of voting.

One of the more thoughtful is Tom at Disputations who has done a series of posts from his Catholic perspective (there are lots of good posts from Oct 7th to today).

Also, Among the Ruins has several worthwhile posts (here, here and here). Link via Camassia.

Not to get monomaniacal on the subject, but, hey, what’s a blog for if not to indulge in what preoccupies me at the moment?

Items of interest from various sources (note: linking does not necessarily imply agreement!)

Georgie Anne Geyer: Four More Years of War?

If the United States is to have another four years of this kind of foreign policy, it will come to be considered an outlaw in the world, most of its historical standards and principles in tatters and its future unknown.

In a first John Kerry administration, on the other hand, there would, at least at first, be few miracles. His would be the hard business of extricating us from Iraq without leaving behind a shameful period of history. His would be the formidable job of building up American stature and values in the current absence of them in the world.

But at least we’d have a chance.

From Nina Shea at Freedom House: The Plight of Iraqi Christians

An estimated 800,000 ChaldoAssyrians remain in Iraq and constitute the country’s largest non-Muslim minority. They have found the last two months especially traumatic. On Tuesday, according to the Catholic press outlet, Fides, Islamic fanatics broke into a Chaldean Catholic home near Mosul and killed a ten-year-old boy while shouting, “We’ve come to exterminate you. This is the end for you Christians!” In prior weeks, ChaldoAssyrian workers were murdered for “collaborating” with the United States. Three others were kidnapped and beheaded. Christian girls were assaulted with acid for not wearing the veil. A Chaldean Catholic priest was forced at gunpoint in his church to convert to Islam. Christian homes were targeted by mortar attacks that killed and injured children sleeping in their beds.

Jeff Jacoby: “Cranky Libertarian Conservative”

Call me a cranky libertarian conservative, but just once I would like to hear a candidate for president answer a question by saying, “Sorry, the Constitution limits the role of the federal government — the issue you’re asking about is one for the states or the private sector, not Washington.”

And:

I do wish Kerry would explain sometime why it is OK for his faith to shape his stands on social welfare programs and the environment when he vows never to let his stands on abortion and embryonic stem cells be shaped by that same faith.

Christianity Today: The Vanishing Church in Turkey

Many Greek and Armenian Christians in Turkey suffer the double ignominy of religious and ethnic marginalization. Though the government is officially secular and many Turks are only nominally Muslim, conversion to Christianity is considered a betrayal of heritage and homeland. Persecution stemming from this perspective has stunted church growth and crippled the small Christian community.

Godspy: ADD and the Multi-Tasker

When I found myself constantly desiring to multi-task at the office, it startled me.

When I sat back and started watching myself, discovering that I had an urge to fill every moment of the day with two or more functions, it disgusted me.

Then during those days when I was watching myself, I discovered that I was scarcely able to read a book for more than five minutes without looking up and checking my e-mail or favorite websites and message boards, or without calling to my children to see how they are doing, or without doing something to break up my reading. A favorite pastime had stealthily become arduous.

It scared me.

My power of attention had suffered a serious blow and I didn’t even see it coming. Looking back, I know my multi-tasking obsession with my Internet connection caused it (or at least contributed mightily to it). McLuhan would knowingly chuckle to hear my story.

But I wasn’t chuckling. The crippling of my power of attention was frightening. In addition, I recalled Simone Weil’s observation that, “In the intellectual order, the virtue of humility is nothing more nor less than the power of attention.” If multi-tasking cripples the power of attention, does it also cripple humility, the first of the virtues, and its close sibling, concern for the other?

Mark Gauvreau Judge on “Neutral Angels”

[P]erhaps the most tragic part of the Inferno is not any of the nine rings of hell, but the Vestibule that stands outside of hell’s entrance. It is here where the apathetic and undecided are. They are the humans and “neutral angels” who never took a side. Virgil tells Dante:

This wretched state of being

is the fate of those sad souls who lived a life

but lived it with no blame and with no praise.

They are mixed with that repulsive choir of angels

Neither faithful nor unfaithful to their God,

Who undecided stood but for themselves.

Heaven, to keep its beauty, cast them out,

But even Hell itself would not receive them,

for fear the damned might glory over them.

Dante translator Mark Musa observers, “In a sense they are the most loathsome sinners of all because in life they performed neither meritorious nor reprehensible acts… Appropriately, these souls are nameless, for their lack of any kinds of action had left them unworthy of mention.” None of these shades are identified, but there is speculation that one of them, a man whom Dante calls “the coward who made the great refusal,” is Pontius Pilate. Pilate was the king of irresolution; comparatively, Dante says the sinners going into hell are “eager.” They at least made a choice.

In my view, this pre-limbo limbo should be the fate of every journalist, politician, “undecided” voter and dinner table philosopher who complains that half the American population doesn’t vote because the politicians are all the same. We live in a country that is at war. It is also a country that allows partial-birth abortion, assault weapons and pornography. According to the National Geographic, the earth is frying due to the pollution we create, and it could destroy all life. If you can’t find a stance, a passionate stance, on one of those issues, check your pulse.

Here is a statement being circulated by Richard B. Hays of Duke Univeristy, George Hunsinger of Princeton, Glen Stassen of Fuller Theological Seminary and Jim Wallis of Sojourners magazine. They accuse the Bush administration of embracing a “theology of war” that threatens to turn the nation into an idol:

Faithfully confessing Christ is the church’s task, and never more so than when its confession is co-opted by militarism and nationalism.

* A “theology of war” is emanating from the highest circles of American government.

* The language of “righteous empire” is employed with growing frequency.

* The roles of God, church, and nation are confused by talk of an American “mission” and “divine appointment” to “rid the world of evil.”

The security issues before our nation allow no easy solutions. No one has a monopoly on the truth. But a policy that rejects the wisdom of international consultation should not be baptized by religiosity. The danger today is political idolatry exacerbated by the politics of fear.

In response they offer a five-point declaration, “Confessing Christ in a World of Violence”:

1. Jesus Christ, as attested in Holy Scripture, knows no national boundaries. Those who confess his name are found throughout the earth. Our allegiance to Christ takes priority over national identity. Whenever Christianity compromises with empire, the gospel of Christ is discredited.

We reject the false teaching that any nation-state can ever be described with the words, “the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.” These words, used in scripture, apply only to Christ. No political leader has the right to twist them in the service of war.

2. Christ commits Christians to a strong presumption against war. The wanton destructiveness of modern warfare strengthens this obligation. Standing in the shadow of the Cross, Christians have a responsibility to count the cost, speak out for the victims, and explore every alternative before a nation goes to war. We are committed to international cooperation rather than unilateral policies.

We reject the false teaching that a war on terrorism takes precedence over ethical and legal norms. Some things ought never be done — torture, the deliberate bombing of civilians, the use of indiscriminate weapons of mass destruction — regardless of the consequences.

3. Christ commands us to see not only the splinter in our adversary’s eye, but also the beam in our own. Alexander Solzhenitsyn observed that the distinction between good and evil does not run between one nation and another, or one group and another. It runs straight through every human heart.

We reject the false teaching that America is a “Christian nation,” representing only virtue, while its adversaries are nothing but vicious. We reject the belief that America has nothing to repent of, even as we reject that it represents most of the world’s evil. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23).

4. Christ shows us that enemy-love is the heart of the gospel. While we were yet enemies, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8, 10). We are to show love to our enemies even as we believe God in Christ has shown love to us and the whole world. Enemy-love does not mean capitulating to hostile agendas or domination. It does mean refusing to demonize any human being created in God’s image.

We reject the false teaching that any human being can be defined as outside the law’s protection. We reject the demonization of perceived enemies, which only paves the way to abuse; and we reject the mistreatment of prisoners, regardless of supposed benefits to their captors.

5. Christ teaches us that humility is the virtue befitting forgiven sinners. It tempers all political disagreements, and it allows that our own political perceptions, in a complex world, may be wrong.

We reject the false teaching that those who are not for our nation politically are against it or that those who fundamentally question American policies must be with the “evil-doers.” Such crude distinctions, especially when used by Christians, are expressions of the Manichaean heresy, in which the world is divided into forces of absolute good and absolute evil.

The Lord Jesus Christ is either authoritative for Christians, or he is not. His Lordship cannot be set aside by any earthly power. His words may not be distorted for propagandistic purposes. No nation-state may usurp the place of God.

We believe that acknowledging these truths is indispensable for followers of Christ. We urge them to remember these principles in making their decisions as citizens. Peacemaking is central to our vocation in a troubled world where Christ is Lord.

I wish they’d specified a bit more what they mean by a “theology of war” and confusion of the roles of God, church and state. Certainly President Bush has used grandiloquent speech about the USA’s “mission,” but is this really outside the mainstream of American speechifying?

As for the declaration itself, most of the positive points are, I think, unexceptionable. What I’m less sure about are the “false teachings” they reject. Not that those teachings aren’t false, but that anyone actually teaches them. For instance, has anyone in the Bush administration referred to those who question U.S. policy as “evil-doers”? As far as I can recall, that has only been applied to the terrorists and their supporters. And they certainly are evil-doers, one would think. Also, has anyone in the government advocated torture, the intentional killing of civilians or indiscriminate use of weapons of mass destruction? (All things to be rejected, certainly.)

Still, a salutary reminder to Christians that our primary loyalty can never be to any earthly kingdom.

I didn’t watch the debate last night (I was engrossed in this instead), but I can’t help but notice that all the liberal sites are declaring Kerry the winner, while all the conservative sites say Bush cleaned his clock.

To wit:

“Kerry Closes the Deal” by William Saletan at Slate (tagline: “Kerry Crushes Bush”)

“Strike Three!” by Tim Grieve at Salon (“Bush gets that sinking feeling as a steady and presidential Kerry sweeps the series”)

“Winner Take All” by Ryan Lizza at the New Republic (“Kerry won the third debate the same way he won the first two: by foiling Bush’s attempts to label him.”) (subscription req’d)

“On All Cylinders” by Fred Barnes at the Weekly Standard (“Bush does everything you want from a candidate in a debate”)

“Bush-Kerry III: Return of the King” by Jonathan Last also at the Weekly Standard

Jay Nordlinger at National Review: “That’s my boy. That’s my Bush. He a hoss — a debatin’ hoss. Last night, he was flat-out marvelous in debate. I said, following the second debate, that he had done well, but not his best. (Who does his best all the time? That’s why we call it ‘best.’) Last night, he did his best — and his best is superb. And I say this as an analyst, not a Bush partisan.”

You get the picture.

For what it’s worth, the polls seem to be showing a fairly decisive Kerry victory (see here for summary), whatever “victory” means in this context.