With Republicans and Democrats turning to churches and religious leaders for political support, which platform does God support?
Consider a typical election season in the United States: Candidates run for office and publicly embrace religion. They visit Sunday church services, singing hymns and shaking hands with ministers and parishioners-the perfect "photo op."
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They solemnly invoke the name of God and Jesus, and give political testimony of how the Bible's teachings and principles relate to the social issues of the day-as if to say, "God is on my side-a vote for me is a vote for God!"
Despite the increasing secular outcry for total separation of Church and State, religion has been an influential force in the U.S. political scene since the nation's birth.
The 1970s saw the disgraceful exit of an American President and the fall of Saigon; the rise of oil shortages, runaway inflation and job layoffs nationwide. It also saw a pro-Washington ally, the Shah of Iran, replaced by an anti-American theocracy that held U.S. citizens hostage 444 days. The American people wanted a change, a return to the national resolve and optimism of the 1940s and 50s.
Enter the Reagan Revolution, largely made possible by the voting power of the Christian Right. The 1980s saw optimism return to the nation, as well as a robust economy, the growth of small businesses and the corporate sector, the expansion of the middle class, and undaunted U.S. military strength in the final years of the Cold War.
But all this waned by the end of the decade and into the 1990s, as the secularist movement gained momentum, strength-and a national voice.
In reaction to the rising tide of secularist agendas and the gains these achieved, political-minded Evangelical Christians called for other changes: "no" to abortion; "yes" to prayer in public schools; display the Ten Commandments at government facilities; limit the legal definition of marriage to "one man, one woman"; teach public school children to abstain from premarital sex. Standing on the platform of family values, the Christian Right was influential in helping the Republican Party capture the U.S. House of Representatives in 1994 and the White House in 2000 and 2004.
Moderate and liberal Democrats took note. Today, politicians on the left and center-to-left are just as willing to campaign for votes from the churches and denominations of professing Christianity as are their conservative counterparts.
Yet rather than wave the political banner of "traditional family values," the Liberal Left campaigns under a much different
set of values-one that trumpets, "A family can be defined as anything." Here, abortion is called "being responsible." Teaching young minds "safe sex" over abstinence is considered more practical. Any display of religion or religious beliefs in public schools or government buildings must be suppressed. Denying same-sex couples the right to marry and/or adopt is viewed as intolerant and judgmental.
Speaking about the U.S. presidential campaign, author Paul Kengor expressed the following in an interview with Frontpage Magazine: "Hillary Clinton realizes that if she is to win in 2008, she needs more than the atheist vote. She needs to win a sizable enough sliver of those 2000 and 2004 moral-religious 'values voters' who twice elected George W. Bush. Those who attend church weekly or more went overwhelming for Bush, by two-to-one ratios, and each time provided him with an absolutely decisive vote margin of about five million ballots.
"It became clear in the immediate days after the November 2004 vote…that [presidential candidate Hillary Clinton] was going to go after that values voter. She angrily complained that it was a sign of 'such disrespect' to think that liberal Democrats who believe in God cannot be attractive to these religious voters. Ever since, she has pursued a strategy to win them over in 2008."
"[Senator Clinton] is also part of a long tradition of 'social justice' Christians. These are the folks who have concluded that when Jesus calls on them to help the poor-which He did quite clearly, of course-that He favored a system of collectivism and forced wealth redistribution, including 50-plus percent upper-income tax rates, an estate tax, a capital gains tax, sales taxes, taxes on fuel, taxes on cigarettes, property taxes, government-subsidized healthcare, daycare, $5,000-bonds for newborns, and so on; and that's just a starter. They rightly understand that God wants all of us to be good stewards of the environment, but can be downright dogmatic in insisting that if the Almighty were here today He would cast into a lake of fire all those who don't support the Kyoto Treaty."
Since both the Conservative Right and now the Liberal Left, in effect, claim that the God of the Bible is on their side, this naturally begs the question, "Is God liberal or conservative?" In other words, what "social issues" and positions does He support? Enditem
