The Spectacle of Campaign Religion

by Joseph Wakelee-Lynch

A candidate should be expected to be able to articulate the reason for religion's influence, or lack of it, on his or her life. And voters should care about that. It's a spectacle, rather, because a candidate's utterances about faith. . . are only a potential club with which to bash him or her.

The presidential election cycle is starting to resemble TV's fall preview season. Like television, it's a bit of a spectacle. Why? Is it because candidates' religious views are private matters, and parading their religious values as in a cattle show is demeaning? No. A candidate's moral system should reveal his or her core values, upon which policies are constructed. A candidate should be expected to be able to articulate the reason for religion's influence, or lack of it, on his or her life. And voters should care about that. It's a spectacle, rather, because a candidate's utterances about faith, which may be quite personal and, one hopes, inspiring, are only a potential club with which to bash him or her.

It has long been clear from polls that most Americans consider themselves deeply religious. Recent polls suggest that when asked if they prefer a president who is religious and doing a good job to a non-religious president who is doing a good job, they prefer the first. When entering a voting booth, most citizens want to feel they are being responsible, and casting a vote for a candidate who is or effectively poses at being religious -- because he or she will likely be more virtuous -- could be one of those very subtle, almost unconscious small decisions that go into the mix of casting a vote.

Nonetheless, a baptismal certificate or a current membership card is no free pass to elected office. Americans in great numbers elected Ronald Reagan, a man who hardly went to church. They also elected Jimmy Carter, who not only went to church but who famously taught Sunday school there. They elected Bill Clinton, whose personal sexual ethics probably repulsed most religious people, and they elected George W. Bush, who called Jesus his favorite philosopher.

My guess is that American Christians do not consider religion a presidential candidate's most important characteristic. They want a president who will do a good job, as they define it: in practical, non-religious, political terms. Religiosity will never hurt a presidential candidate. A non-threatening, non-specific personal piety will actually help. But to be zealous for the faith, any faith? That candidate doesn't have a prayer.

Most American Christians believe in patriotism more than in the teachings of Jesus Christ. One can say that's good for a country because it tempers religious divisiveness. It also makes the religion of most Americans tame, if not subservient.

Like most Americans themselves, that president, preferably, will be someone who melds their own religious piety with the needs of the nation-state. Almost every candidate who speaks on the question, and President John F. Kennedy remains the most memorable of all, point out that despite their own religious belief they will not decide matters of state based on their personal faith. Most American Christians would completely agree. They, too, reach their own conclusions about national security, foreign policy, or even law and order issues by subordinating their religious, ethical views to the political ethical needs of the nation-state. In other words, most American Christians believe in patriotism more than in the teachings of Jesus Christ. One can say that's good for a country because it tempers religious divisiveness. It also makes the religion of most Americans tame, if not subservient.

The question of the religion of voters has always been more interesting to me than the faith of our candidates. Some religious leaders recently have offered advice to the Democratic Party in particular about how to compete with the Republicans in speaking religiously to America's believers. Most of our politicians need to be reminded that some of this country's greatest accomplishments -- ending slavery, passing women' suffrage, enacting Civil Rights legislation -- were partly the result of progressive Christian and religious activism. But campaign advisors have been studying the breakdown of the religious vote for at least a few decades. They know where the votes are, and they are better headcounters than we are. In fact, I suspect that most Democrats are uncomfortable with God-language because they know it unsettles some of their key constituencies.

I would venture that what is more needed, among America's Christians at any rate, is religious leaders using the campaign season to speak to religious voters, instead of the candidates and their handlers, about deeper political allegiances. Few American Christians want a president who will conduct the country's business based on the Sermon on the Mount; but they don't even want to conduct the business of their own lives based on the Sermon on the Mount. In being staunch and patriotic citizens of this land, America's Christians seem to view "that heavenly country" as a land they like to visit, perhaps on Sunday, but wouldn't want to live in.

Joseph Wakelee-Lynch is a Witness contributing editor, and his regular online column is The View from Sardis. He lives in Berkeley, California, and may be reached by email at wakeleelynch@earthlink.net