4/18/08: Candidates' true faith can't be seen in forum

U.S. Sens. Clinton and Obama appeared at a "Compassion Forum" held at my alma mater, Messiah College, on Sunday. My connection with the school made me read the transcripts with interest -- and trepidation.

Messiah College does a good job, in my experience, helping students explore the complexities of how religious faith interacts with the secular world. Political campaigns, in my experience, do not.

Sunday's transcripts, unfortunately, tended to read more like a political campaign's attempt to deal with religion than like those of a theology class.

There were hot-topic questions: Each senator was asked about life beginning at conception, ad Obama was asked his view on evolution. These issues can serve as deal breakers for evangelicals who might otherwise wish to support a Democrat; along with gay marriage, they make up a three-issue litmus test for evangelical voters.

To end each senator's answer period, one of the hosts asked whether the candidates believed a discussion on personal religious convictions was appropriate for a political campaign.

The senators agreed the discussion was as relevant as a discussion of any other part of their personal lives. They both pointed to God as a source of guidance, as well, bringing up the question of how their beliefs would interact with potential decision-making as president.

I cringed.

The trouble with this, in my mind, is not that religion has no place in politics. I agree with both candidates -- that insofar as candidates' personal lives are relevant to their ability to govern, we should know all we can about them -- and I believe how people conduct their personal lives is a factor in judging character.

My problem with the forum is that it cannot do what it claims to do.

True faith can't be quantified or litmus-tested. It can't be spun. And it can only rarely be articulated.

This doesn't fit well with political campaigns, which tend to rely on simplification, spin and "staying on message" to prove one contender is better than the other. Instead of engaging in real, personal discussion on real, personal issues, candidates stay on guard, worried "the other guy" will go for the jugular at the first sign of vulnerability.

We can't really see who our candidates are, because they can't afford to show us.

In practical matters, this hardly makes a difference.

The public spotlight pointed at candidates during their run, and at the president after inauguration, provides -- or should provide -- a level of accountability in seeing that practical promises made are kept.

Either troops are withdrawn from Iraq or they aren't. The national deficit decreases, or it doesn't. We have universal health care, or lower taxes or stricter environmental regulations, or we don't. These are quantifiable results.

But turn that spotlight on matters of the heart, on the beliefs and motivations of a candidate, and we begin to see less clearly. If even our closest friends and relatives, if even aspects of ourselves, are a mystery to us, how could we expect to really know a presidential candidate?

Our criteria become reductive and simplified, turning what is and should be complex into a discrete, answerable series of questions. The answers to these questions do no more to tell us who a candidate really is or what she or he believes than the answers to what color socks she wears or what his first pet's name was -- and they may tell us less.