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Faith affects our political landscape

By ANDREW SKERRITT
Published September 24, 2006

How we view God certainly says more about us than we're willing to admit. It also says a lot about the way this country is being run and how we address problems, real and imagined.

Whether we see God as benevolent or authoritarian goes a long way toward shaping the way we view the world politically, socially and otherwise, according to a recently published study by Baylor University.

The timing of this report is interesting. It seems that every week a new dispute erupts between Muslims of the Middle East and Christians of the Western world, two groups with distinctly different views of God.

Closer to home, we're in the fall campaign season. Religion and politics make a potent mix. Whether we favor the status quo or want change depends largely on our religious lens.

For example, according to the survey, a majority of those who attend church weekly believe that the Iraq war is justified. That's a very different view to the one held by most of those who prefer to sleep in on Sunday mornings. For the record, as a person of faith who attends church regularly, I always thought the war was a bad idea.

Regular churchgoers are twice as likely as nonchurchgoers to believe Saddam Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, despite facts to the contrary and despite repeated disclaimers from President Bush. It's hard to explain this phenomenon, except to say that faith is about believing stuff you can't prove scientifically.

The survey also reveals an intriguing church-state dynamic in our fear-filled age. While this group is pretty fearful of government curtailing religious freedoms, it has no such qualms when it comes to the global war on terror. A sizable majority of regular churchgoers support an expansion of the government's authority to fight terrorism.

Some would argue that you shouldn't be afraid of the government if you're not doing anything wrong. But that's being shortsighted or forgetting the name J. Edgar Hoover - among others.

Unanswered is how much more power are they willing to give Washington? Are they comfortable with more wiretaps without warrants and those "alternate methods" of interrogation? I'm not.

Not surprisingly, those who attend church weekly are four times more likely to trust President Bush "a lot." This is clearly a "faith-based" approach to politics.

Those results make me wonder. Would these Christians be as supportive of the campaign in Iraq if the occupant in the White House were, say, Hillary or Bill Clinton?

Would the church folks be able to sleep at night knowing that John Kerry had the power to make our enemies disappear? Does this mean the faithful are comfortable with torture?

Unfortunately, we have not heard those who promote a culture of life argue that this war on terror be tempered with compassion. That sounds too wimpy for the kind of faith now in vogue.

Many of these same people want an activist Christian government that advances issues of faith in the laws passed and the way money is spent on social policy. They are also more likely to believe that God doesn't just love America but favors it above all other countries. Perhaps that is the fundamental article of American faith. We are God's chosen people.

This attitude may feel good during the saying of the Pledge of Allegiance and the singing of The Star-Spangled Banner, but we risk abandoning a faith of peacemakers in exchange for a muscle-flexing, stand-your-ground, gun-toting kind of religion. The result is neither a good reflection of God nor of America.

Andrew Skerritt can be reached at (813) 909-4602 or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 4602. His e-mail address is askerritt@sptimes.com.

[Last modified September 23, 2006, 21:14:48]