This is the completion of a series of articles that began June 1st with an article entitled “Separation of Religion and Politics“. The first part of this article appeared yesterday. This is the continuation of ministers and personalities causing problems for John McCain and the Republicans.

John McCain’s Problem Ministers (Pastor John Hagee and Pastor Rod Parsley):

While not being in the spiritual tradition of Pastor Hagee, I agree with his commentary on Hitler being sent by God to harm the Jews. According to my beliefs, this God that everyone talks so much about is actually the Devil sent to say he’s God, distract people, and cause us no end of harm. So, in my theological world view, it wasn’t God who did this, it was the Devil who has been influencing Hitler and many others of his ilk throughout history. Unfortunately, this isn’t what Hagee meant. Hagee believes in a God that is all-powerful, yet allows evil, in order to achieve his goals. That’s a tough one for me to get my head around, which is why I do not believe in the line of Christian thinking that people like Hagee and Parsley follow. It is comforting to know that Hagee acknowledges evil, but is disheartening that he condones it and advises others under his spiritual care to do so as well.

While I agree in a technical sense with Pastor Hagee’s acceptance of the existence of evil, I can’t agree with Pastor Parsley’s views that America’s purpose is to destroy Islam or that Islam is an inherently evil religion. I am of the mind that America, or as Pastor Parsley probably means, the American government should be on good terms with all nations. The American people have no inbred enmity with any nation. On Parsley’s second count, I have also found that the delineating of good and evil within Judaism, Christianity, or Islam (or within the shared traditions of “The People of the Book”) is silliness. There have always been those within each of those faiths who have advocated and endorsed the use of force and murder against others for the accomplishment of religious, social, and political ends. That is my definition of evil. So while there are those elements in Islam that endorse such actions and phrase it into a religious context, there are similar elements embracing evil who claim to be members of the Jewish and Christian faiths. Kind of like Pastor Parsley, right?

Not only does John McCain have his own problem ministers, but the Republican Presidential nomination also had a former minister seeking its nomination. Since Mike Huckabee has most recently been active as a politician, not a minister, he deserves a special honorable mention. And for this, I consider him somewhat of an apostate. No longer does he advocate “teach a man to fish” or “he who lives by the sword dies by the sword”. His goal is to get votes and contributions for political campaigns. If he can use the language of religion to do so, then he feels fine. Of course, having become a politician, he probably now feels he has the freedom to lie and twist the truth. While trying to out-conservative his primary opponents, he tried to convince Republican voters that he was the most fiscally conservative of the bunch. But in last week’s article in the Huffington Post shows, he has abandoned that tactic now that he needs to only impress John McCain enough to get the VP nod. Interestingly, he claims he’s attacking libertarianism, but only attacks the fiscal conservatism aspect, NOT the socially liberal aspect. Shame on you, Politician Mike Huckabee!

In concluding this series, while I tend to agree more with Obama’s problem ministers, what does this say about my view of the candidate? I’m definitely disappointed, since I had spent a great deal of time talking up Obama as one of the better Democratic contenders this election cycle (after Kucinich, Gravel, Dodd, and Biden were eliminated, of course). Unless there was some collusion between Rev. Wright and Barack Obama to distance each other, I cannot have faith in a man who would turn away from a mentor so easily in order to secure political power. Fortunately I’ve not impressed anyone enough to have become their person’s spiritual adviser. That sort of shit would be a chilipunk.

This is a continuation of yesterday’s article entitled “Separation of Religion and Politics” and Part I of a two part minister wrap-up.

I have had the honor of running for public office in my previous life. More than five hundred of my neighbors in my rural county trusted me enough to get things done in order to cast their vote for me. I have also had the joy of serving in a capacity, as I am now comfortable in introducing myself, as an ordained minister. With that, and my aforementioned status as an political and religious anarchist, it shouldn’t be a big surprise that I will err on the side of the minister in most of the cases of high-profile ministers in the recent political news. As part of my vain attempt at providing innovative, cutting-edge journalism and commentary (which so many others do so much better), I would like to offer a brief review of the take-aways from each of the major party’s candidates problem ministers:

Barack Obama’s Problem Ministers (Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Fr. Mike Pfleger):

The most important takeaway from Obama’s problem ministers was provided by Jeremiah Wright’s explanation of why what he was saying was different than what Obama was saying. It is completely true that ministers and politicians have different goals and different core audiences. Politicians are accountable to the people, both in terms of doing their business and in seeking to obtain their vote for political office. Ministers are accountable to whatever they conceive Divinity to be and to those whom they provide spiritual services. As a minister myself, I would like to be your friend, but even in the cold lonely evenings I know I will say things that might not get your vote, but what I understand to be the Gospel truth, so to speak. Ministers (as opposed to politicians) generally don’t get paid to lie, so it is in their best interest to speak truth and do things which are good for their souls and the souls of others. It is the minister’s duty and moral requirement to stand against someone, even a former friend or parishioner, if that person has been corrupted by evil and is in a position to spread this evil. If only George W. Bush’s spiritual advisers held to this belief during the last eight years.

In the case of Father Pfleger, he was also right in regard to the fact that there are are a number of angry black people in this country that want to do better. Don’t believe me? Find a black person to ask ten or one hundred other black people. You’ll get a more accurate picture than by asking as a white person. But more to the point, he was right in regard to the Clinton machine’s sense of entitlement to political power. Like the lower class entitlement to government-provided social services and the middle-classes complaints of minorities, immigrants, and foreigners, taking “our jobs”, such a sense can easily extend to those who have enjoyed political power, wealth, and fame for so long.

Tomorrow, we will address the plethora of preachers causing problems for John McCain and the Republicans.

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.