Religion and Politics

I stumbled on this post today and it sums up my thoughts on this matter more eloquently than I could state.

So often we are afraid to share our views politically because of church and state separation. I do not think believe we are to be mum on our beliefs as long as we are not militant and aggressively obnoxious. (Remind me sometime to tell you about the vitamin Nazi at my church.)

*Note - King of the Hill is my favorite TV show. Dale is a jerk and no one puts him down for being a Republic of Texas paranoid fanatic.

Read this post by Jim Shelton and chime in:

http://jimshelton.blogspot.com/

In reading a blog on the Internet recently, I came across an interesting statement from a man who is a Christian. He said,I've never been comfortable with mixing my religious beliefs with my politics. As I thought about that statement, I realized I was not comfortable with it. Why would he not be comfortable mixing them? Maybe his political beliefs did not mix too well with his religious beliefs. If there were apparent conflicts between the two, then that would certainly cause a little cognitive dissonance. My guess is that he made the statement more in the vein of the idea of the separation of church and state.

However, the statement got me thinking about the way we compartmentalize our religious beliefs off from other areas. I especially notice that every year when I walk into my business ethics classes. There are always students who seem to want to push right up to the edge ethically, but who appear to have deep religious convictions. In his book, When Choice Becomes God, LaGard Smith said, In the secular world of business, education, law, and politics, we regularly make crucial moral choices, believing all the while we have no right to consult even our personally chosen religious faith.

The recent nomination and subsequent withdrawal of Harriet Miers to the United States Supreme Court illustrated this discomfort with religious faith having any influence on a persons public life. One item that kept coming up was the fact that Miers was an evangelical Christian who attended a fundamentalist church. Miers was a member of the Valley View Christian Church. However, in the media reports of this, you could almost see through the newsprint to the sneer on the reporters faces who wrote it. Reading between the lines was the obvious message that Miers faith might influence her actions as a jurist.

It is amazing that such a phobia exists among the luminaries of modern American thought. Just this week Mrs. Rosa Parks died. She was the black lady who refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white man. That action helped to spark an entire generation to action in removing racial bigotry masquerading as public policy in some places. However, that movement was informed, more than anything else, by religious belief. It is ironic that many politicians who lionize that movement today shrink back in fear at the thought of anyone acting on their religious beliefs in public. Today the attitude seems to be, both in government and business, that one should check their religious beliefs at the door.

If that attitude continues to prevail, we can expect more political and business scandals as well as an increasing descent into moral depravity. The idea that religion (read Christianity) will be tolerated as long as it is secluded out of sight in the church buildings will only lead to decline of civilized society. The development of Western civilization was formed and informed by Christian thought. Society will continue to be formed by some philosophy. The only question is will that be Christian thought or secular thought (or some other worldview). If Christians themselves do not allow all areas of their lives to be informed by their religious beliefs, then the answer to that question becomes obvious.
posted by Jim Shelton at 11/03/2005 09:03:00 AM