November 11, 2004 6:16 AM

So much for the separation of Church and State

Evangelicals Say They Led Charge for GOP

Liberal Christians Challenge ‘Values Vote’

One of the things a few of us are talking about is a reassessment of how the Democrats deal with an issue like abortion — could there be a more moderate ground, where even if they retained their pro-choice stance, they talked about uniting pro-choice people together to actually do something about the abortion rate?

  • Jim Wallis

pope.gif I am not a Christian, so the whole “Jesus Votes Rpublican” mindset is something I don’t much care about, except insofar as it impacts ths poltical climate in this country. Unfortunately, as the results of last week’s election would seem to indicate, that impact is substantial.

There are those out there who want us to know that all Christians are NOT narrow-minded Republican Social Conservatives who would have us turn the clock back to the 50s. The problem is that the ones beating their chests about their Christianity (and their political primacy) are the Social Conservatives.

Liberal Christian leaders argued yesterday that the moral values held by most Americans are much broader than the handful of issues emphasized by religious conservatives in the 2004 presidential campaign.

Battling the notion that “values voters” swept President Bush to victory because of opposition to gay marriage and abortion, three liberal groups released a post-election poll in which 33 percent of voters said the nation’s most urgent moral problem was “greed and materialism” and 31 percent said it was “poverty and economic justice.” Sixteen percent cited abortion, and 12 percent named same-sex marriage.

But the religious leaders acknowledged that the Christian right had reached more voters than the Christian left. Some said it was time for “moderate and progressive” religious groups, as well as the Democratic Party, to rethink their positions.

Christianity is not the private playground of the Religious Right. What they have done, however, is to organize themselves into a formidable political force. Those Christians on the Left are not nearly so organized, perhaps because their religion is not necessarily a politically activist belief system.

Like any other segment of the population, Christians do not neatly fall into any one narrow political or philosophical segment of the spectrum. Social Conservatives may be the most vocal and organized at this time, but they are NOT a majority. Of course, you’d never know that if you listen to the way these folks have been beating their chests over the past week.

Social Conservatives have as much right as anyone else to organize and campaign for candidates that reflect their beliefs. That they have been quite successful at it speaks to their dedication and commitment. Still, for them to claim to be the reason for George Bush’s victory is somewhat disingenuous. Certainly they contributed, but they cannot reasonably claim that they but Bush over the top.

In the end, though, I would offer a question for these folks: How would Jesus vote? If you really think that he would vote one way or another, I would suggest that you need to get back to your beliefs. Perhaps if you devoted more time to living those beliefs, you’d understand that politics is not an extension of a religious philosophy. Perhaps this is why the Founding Fathers insisted on the separation of Church and State.

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on November 11, 2004 6:16 AM.

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