There’s been a lot of names in the political news lately of people who make their living, not in politics, but in religion. Wright, Hagee, Parsley, Pfleger. In most of these cases, political figures such as Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and Republican presidential candidate John McCain have repudiated and divorced themselves from the comments of these men. I can only hope that this is a trend that will eventually lead to a complete separation of religion and politics. Knowing what I know about human nature, I doubt this will be the case. I have wanted to see this type of movement since leaving the Republican Party in the mid-90s during a personal spiritual crisis in which I realized I could no longer walk the party-line so to speak on the church end of things. If you can’t deliver the sound byte of your Christian religious conservatism, a lot of Republicans tend to consider you to be persona non grata, so out the door I went to find a political point of view that was in harmony with my burgeoning spiritual interests.

Of particular note, I am not calling for the separation of church and state, which is a totally separate, yet totally awesome idea. As both a libertarian and an anarcho-gnostic Christian, I wholeheartedly agree that the state and any manifestation of the state’s institutions will screw it up, either by watering down the spiritual message, subverting the purpose of religious bodies, or stifling worship through government involvement and regulation of the process. Such thoughts are why those involved in the founding of the United States skipped declaring an official religion and passed on requiring a religious test before an individual may hold public office. While the Bill of Rights opposes government establishment of religion and the Constitution opposes religious tests, such things most certainly do exist in a de facto sense due to media influences and individual decisions regarding a particular candidate’s qualifications.

As far as religion and politics go, religion does not yield itself to the crafting of policy that everyone can get on board with. If I were to know something and attribute this knowledge to Scripture or divine experience or some similar way to religiously know something, those not sharing my spiritual belief system will more than likely never agree with such policies or be able to provide debate and discourse over these issues in a common language. It’s similar to the debate over whether to teach creationism or evolution in schools. Creationism doesn’t give you any predictive power in determining what new species God will make out of thin air (or dirt, ribs, ruach, or whatever). Evolution allows for a paradigm that is sometimes applicable to science and other fields. The discussion of religiosity of candidates distracts from the development of concrete solutions applicable to problems associated with crime, poverty, healthcare, and economic policy.

In addition to its separation from issues of policy, religiosity also doesn’t guarantee superiority in decision making, wisdom, and the like. We all make mistakes. Belief in a system that contains the concept of sin does not preclude one from taking part in sin, as we frequently see in those who taunt the virtues of their own spiritual fortitude. Furthermore, religiosity (that is following either this religion or that religion) doesn’t really impact any other area, except of course in matters of church leadership and proper representation and understanding of a particular theology within that setting.

With that, I hope to complete this discourse in tomorrow’s post with a look at the truth and theological content of each of the ministers who’ve made their appearances in recent political news.