Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

Q: Religion and politics are two subjects themselves that are hard to reconcile. Have you been thinking about this your whole career?

A: For decades, I've been thinking about these two subjects, but not with the urgency of the past year and a half. This was triggered by the Terri Schiavo case; that was the specific tipping point in my own thinking. That was when I thought, "Something has gone very wrong here."

Q: But these signs have been around for at least a decade or so, haven't they?

A: Maybe I was obtuse. People like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell have been involved in Republican politics for a long time. Of course, abortion has been a political issue since 1973. But in my own mind, it didn't have the urgency until the Schiavo case. In the past year or so, what was maybe a general interest of Robertson and others in politics and one particular issue, namely abortion, has been transformed into something much more detailed and much more a full-fledged political agenda.

You have Terri Schiavo, the stem-cell issue, the gay marriage issue, the Ten Commandments in courthouses - all occurring about the same time.

But, I thought, particularly with Schiavo, something different had happened: Namely, basic Republican principles had been tossed overboard at the bidding of Christian conservatives

Raw Story has some excerpts:

Some people have asked me whether America is a Christian country. The answer must be no, for to call this a Christian country is to say that non-Christians are of some lesser order, not full fledged citizens of one nation.

I believe that homosexuality is a matter of sexual orientation rather than preference," he writes. "Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is, in my view, comparable to discrimination on other civil rights grounds. It is wrong, and it should be prohibited by law.

I think that the only purpose served by the campaign for the amendment is the humiliation of gay Americans, advocated by the Christian right and eagerly supported by its suitors in the Republican Party," he adds. "In reality, it is gay bashing."

Here are some more quotes from the book being distributed by the Associated Press:  

This is not a coalition of traditional Republicans and the Christian Right in the nature of a merger of equals. This is the takeover of the Republican Party by the Christian Right. That is the significance of the Terri Schiavo case. It was the total victory of Christian conservative activism over broadly shared Republican principles, a victory won with no resistance from traditional Republicans.

There is a difference between being a Christian in politics and having a Christian agenda for politics. There were times when I believed that on a particular issue, I was doing God's will. My attempts to address the hunger crises in Cambodia and Africa were times of such belief, but such times were very rare. For the overwhelming majority of my time in public life, I had no certainty that my side was God's side.

God calls us to be faithful without handing us a political agenda. At least that's how I see faith and politics, but it is not how everyone sees faith and politics. Christian conservatives believe that God's will can be reduced to a political program and that they have done so. In their minds, there is indeed a Christian agenda for America and in recent years, they have succeeded in pressing it upon the Republican Party. It is an agenda comprised of wedge issues, which, when hammered relentlessly in political forums, divide the American people.

Again, while I welcome Senator Danforth to the conversation, I just want to say that it has been going on for a long time without him, that is, while he was still obtuse.

[Crossposted from Talk to Action]