« Ipsos Poll: Clinton Leads Obama 7 Percent Among Democrats Nationally
Shoes on the Ground: Canvassing for Clinton in Indianapolis »
Praying for a Doubt-Based Presidency
“God wants me to be president,” George W. Bush told fellow believers before 2000. If the rest of us had known His intentions, we would have started building an ark.
After eight years of war and political plague from this faith-based presidency, most voters may be ready for some rational doubt and ambivalence in the White House. Yet the candidates still seem mesmerized by Bush’s breakdown between the separation of church and state.
After Barack Obama gaffed about “bitter” voters turning to God and guns, Hillary Clinton was quick to play the God card. “I grew up in a church-going family, a family that believed in the importance of living out and expressing our faith,” she is telling Indiana voters. “The people of faith I know don’t ‘cling to’ religion because they’re bitter. People embrace faith not because they are materially poor, but because they are spiritually rich.”
John McCain left it to a spokesman to do the piety pandering, decrying Obama’s elitism and disrespect for “the American traditions that have contributed to the identity and greatness of this country.”
Ironically, Obama may take his religion more seriously than either Clinton or McCain. What damaged him in the Jeremiah Wright affair was not rejecting his pastor quickly enough to suit otherwise pious voters who want a president with the “right” kind of religious belief.
In the century before Bush, politicians stopped having to “pour God over everything like ketchup,” as Gore Vidal put it during John F. Kennedy’s presidency.
JFK himself said it best: “I believe in a President whose views on religion are his own private affair, neither imposed upon him by the nation, nor imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office…
“I want a Chief Executive whose public acts are responsible to all and obligated to none…and whose fulfillment of his Presidential office is not limited or conditioned by any religious oath, ritual, or obligation.”
With that attitude, he couldn’t get elected today.
Cross-posted from my blog.
opinions powered by SendLove.to
5 Responses to “Praying for a Doubt-Based Presidency”
Excellent post Robert. I'm ready for an athiest president who realizes thye have no one to answer to but the American people and his/her self.
I couldn't agree more.
Ain't it the truth. All the god talk in the world well never be a substitute for reason. Interesting that we have to go back in time over 40 years to find a president who actually understood this.
Ironically, part of JFK's sentiment comes from his religious background. In the U.S., Protestants of certain denominations have a long history of very public, communal worship from tent revivals to public prayer ceremonies to the modern mega-churches (though the latter in particular are as much a reaction to modern social patterns of mobility as much as a religious choice), while, in general, Catholics have longer held religion to be a private matter not to be paraded in front of others.
I think traditions are changing for the Catholics, many of whom are now advocating the same kind of blurred line between church and state that some protestant evangelicals do.
The role of religion in the military is, in some ways, problematic too. Officers have openly talked about our forces being 'God's army'. That is really offensive to me,. Too much like the Crusades.
Pat Tillman's brother was upset when even those who praised him talked about Pat 'being 'with God', even though he was a free thinker.
Personal choice in the matter of religion doesn't seem to be taken seriously, and in some cases there is open hostility to non-Christians..