Faith and Politics: Contrastive Perspectives

 Faith and Politics: Contrastive Perspectives

A few weeks ago, the Gazette published a letter written by a self-identified Christian who expressed his views on the critical issues that established his political values in determining which candidate best supported his positions. I am grateful for this writer for identifying the importance of public issues in shaping his faith and in their significance in relation to the political climate of our times. I also admire the writer’s civility in expressing his views and in honoring the confidentiality of the local politicians he contacted to obtain their perspective on his views.

The writer identified three central issues that formed his public theology: abortion, homosexuality, and “religious freedom.” All these topics can be debated within Christianity, as well as throughout US society through a more pluralistic set of perspectives. The positions argued for by the writer contain considerable cultural force because of their central role within the religious right as a powerful social movement, rooted in a morally absolutist frame of reference, which I believe are not central to the primary teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, as reflected in the Sermon on the Mount.

An adequate discussion of the letter writer’s position requires more space than I can respond to here. On abortion, I can only acknowledge that a fetus, even at the earliest stages, is, in some respect, a form of human life. Five matters remain disputable: whether a fetus is an “unborn child,” whether the legal status of a human being starts at birth or conception, whether the legal elimination of abortion is the best and only legitimate way of addressing this issue, whether one can personally oppose abortion while accepting choice as legally legitimate, and whether legal priority should be granted to a woman’s right to establish her own reproductive freedom.

My point is that these issues are under debate across the faith-based sector, in which there is no singular Christian perspective on them. As with abortion, so it is a similarly complex matter regarding homosexuality and what is referred to as “religious freedom,” the specifics of which I leave for another discussion. I do not reject, so much, the validity underlying a given stance on any of these issues—though I question some of these points of view more than others—than the intellectual certainty and moral absolutism on which they are typically held.

I view these public stances as ultimately secondary matters, which require considerable probing from a variety of ethical, legal, and theological perspectives when contrasted to the primary ones of faith on the core relationship between God, Christ, and humanity in regard to matters of temporal and eternal destiny.  When such secondary matters as these are so held as primary, they are given a false power they do not merit. To be clear, it is not so much a particular view that concerns me—even ones with which I heartily disagree—as to the unconditional manner in which they are held, which I view as an attempt to attribute divine authority for positions that are not meant to bear that much baggage. As implied above, the views expressed by the writer are at the center of an ideological framework grounded in the merger between a political and religious fundamentalism of an extreme conservative ideology extending back to the early Reagan era, which has linked faithfulness to Christ with allegiance to the Republican Party.

My own political beliefs are based on a different set of values, focusing on social and economic justice, racial equality, the importance of responsible governmental regulation to offset the undue influence of an unregulated corporate sector, the need for an effective long-range response to the environmental crisis, and immigration reform. To this last issue, I include a robust refugee policy reflective of the vast financial and geographic resources of the US, our historical legacy as a nation of immigrants, and as one reasoned response to the crisis that millions of people face throughout the world provoking them to leave their homelands amid much turmoil and oppression.

The formation of my political beliefs was rooted in an educational framework that developed before my conversion to Christianity in 1972. These views were largely reinforced by my religious values, as reflected in certain gospel teachings in support of the poor and the outcast, as well as to themes related to loving the world and social justice pervasive throughout the Bible.  Like those of the letter writer, my views are also contestable.  Also, like him, I maintain that the political beliefs expressed by the various constituencies throughout the household of faith are worthy of public scrutiny given their potential influence throughout the body politic, even if they cannot carry the theological weight certain advocates on both sides of the political terrain would like to attribute to them.