5/2/08: Bring logic, not faith, to political valuations

Two weeks ago, I wrote a column on how political forums were not capable of revealing the true beliefs — particularly religious beliefs — or motivations of political candidates.

This week, I’d like to discuss why that’s fine with me.

The concern with candidates’ motivations, besides encouraging a reductive approach to religion, leads voters who feel they “really know” a candidate to value loyalty over critical judgment, and to trust rather than question.

We’ve seen the effects of this unquestioning trust during President Bush’s time in office. Evangelicals, especially, have associated Bush with evangelical Christianity. They have labeled him “a man of God,” citing his relatively frequent statements of, or allusions to, faith. From the beginning, the president has peppered his speeches with references to Christian traditional hymns and theology, purposefully linking himself and the Judeo-Christian God in the minds of Christians.

Associating oneself with the divine is a large claim, and one to which Bush may have no right. But my concern is less with the president’s intentions, or his own theoretical belief in himself as a man of God, than with the public’s reactions to the claim.

The main problem with associating a certain political candidate — or president — with God is not theological; it’s political. America is a democratic republic, where people are free to make choices about what to say, whether to own a gun, how or whom to worship. Citizens are not only free to make these choices: They’re required to.

But evangelical Christianity, like many religious traditions, puts an emphasis on submitting to the will of God, even when life, or God, doesn’t seem to make sense. The mystery of the divine expands to encompass the good and bad circumstances of life. We may credit God when we get a raise at work, or when the Red Sox win the World Series, or when we find a $20 bill on the street. We may question the will or goodness of God when we are stricken with illness, or the Patriots lose the Super Bowl, or when we misplace our keys. The work of the believer is to make sense of these events in a way that sustains faith in the essential goodness of God and to submit to the divine will.

The work of the American citizen, on the other hand, is to critically evaluate the actions and policies of political representatives and to demand change when those actions and policies don’t reflect the will of the people. We submit to laws, but we also influence them through the people we elect to legislate and execute them. There is no place in American democracy for the idea that any politician has a “divine right” to power. They answer to us.

The claim that any politician has a divine mandate confuses this issue, encouraging religious believers to abdicate their responsibility to think critically about the value or effects of the choices being made. Being a “man of God” allowed Bush to escape blame for many of the destructive environmental, economic and foreign-diplomatic policies his administration has enacted. He has not been held accountable to us in part because some assumed he was being held accountable to God.

Bush’s incorporation of religion into his speeches and public image has been more or less dismissed by the irreligious as simply another political gaff on his part. This is just as dangerous as ceding our duty to “divine right” thinking.

It’s our responsibility — and no one else’s — to hold our politicians accountable for their decisions.