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October 18, 2007

Politicians Pander to Majority Who Believe in Theocracy

For those naysayers who believe some of us are overly-paranoid about the prospects of a theocratic future for America, I point to a new poll by the First Amendment Center that finds the majority of Americans – 55% - believe the founders wrote Christianity into the Constitution – that is, that America was founded to be a Christian theocracy. And it doesn't help that most of the Presidential candidates are actively pandering to this belief. For instance, John McCain recently said, "The Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation." Never mind the facts. (Aussie Mistress could teach McCain a thing or two about Christianity and the Constitution.)

Mitt Romney is one-upping McCain, misrepresenting Mormonism as well as the secular nature of American government. "The values of my faith are much like, or are identical to, the values of other faiths that have a Judeo-Christian philosophical background," he said in New Hampshire. "They're American values, if you will."

Yesterday marked the opening of this year's Values Voters Summit, and speakers this year include John McCain, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Mike Huckabee, Sam Brownback, and Bill Richardson. Lest you think Richardson is the lone Christian-pandering Democratic Presidential candidate, note that Hillary Clinton has an "evangelical consultant" on the payroll and Barack Obama, who invokes religion more than any other Democratic candidate, is actively seeking to prove that Republicans don't "own" religion. Of course, being religious doesn't mean actively seeking a theocracy, but it does embolden those 55% who believe a Christian theocracy was the founders' intent.

The difficult part about this is discerning which candidates are sincere about their faith and which are pandering to the theocratists. David Kuo's revelations about the behind-the-scenes scorn of Christians in the Bush Administration should have woken Christians up to the realities of politicians pandering for votes. Mitt Romney is working hard to convince Christians that Mormonism isn't much different – in fact, it's basically the same. Yeah, that's the ticket. He's a Republican, so it just might work. On the other hand, Barack Obama, who appears to actually be a sincere Christian and, therefore, ought to be attracting Christian voters isn't – and never will - because he is a Democrat. Oh, and he has that unfortunate "Hussein" and "Obama-Osama" thing going (very bad luck on his part). The realities of his Democratic persuasion mean that Obama's pandering may ultimately cost him votes. As the Rev. Welton Gaddy of the Interfaith Alliance said upon hearing Obama's "Kingdom" comments to an evangelical church a couple of weeks ago, "in an evangelical church … that terminology has a very specific, indisputable definition that is exclusive rather than inclusive." (That's right – I wasn't the only one who was troubled by it.)

But sincere or not, we still have to address the fact that 55% of Americans do not understand or are unfamiliar with our own Constitution and our politicians are more than willing to take advantage of our ignorance. At this point, I find myself actually hoping that this crop of Presidential candidates is as insincere about Christianity as the Bush Administration has been (per Kuo) - in other words, that they're all lying to get votes and don't really mean what they're leading Christians to believe. How's that for depressing.

Posted by Becky at October 18, 2007 12:00 PM