With the political season in full swing and into extra innings, I find the topic of religion coming up entirely too often. Our president isn't the president of the church, isn't the president of our morality, isn't the president of god or god’s representative to this country. He or she is the president of a multi-religious society and that includes people with no religion at all. Why do we not question our candidates on what they don't believe in as well? To narrowly focus on specific mainstream ideas of religion and to hold our candidates to rigid ideals of accepted beliefs only reinforces the relationship between government and religion that is supposed to not exist in this country. Candidates should answer any questions that have to do with religion with one answer, "That is not relevant to my campaign nor the interests of this country" end of story. Religion creeps into politics and becomes an acceptable part of the conversation in this country as if it belonged. I’m sure that religiously motivated people prefer this relationship because it hoists them and their beliefs into prominence well outside of their normal sphere of influence. The only way we can prevent them from asserting undue influence over our political system is to force them from the spotlight by refusing to engage in their concerns. We just need a candidate that has the courage to stand up and banish them from their self-promoting pedestal and sequester them back inside of the confines of the sanctuaries from which they have escaped. To use a metaphor, the genie needs to be put back in the bottle and cork firmly affixed.
Of course the opposit could also hold if you elect someone whos religious views you dont know about and they turn into a zelot!!
Our Declaration of Independance starts with pointing our rights givin to us by our Creator, and ends with our reliance on Devine Providence Our Constitution declares that Congress shall make no laws ESTABLISHING a religion or PROHIBITING the free excersise of religion George Washingtons address at Valley Forge during the Revolutionary War began with these words, or something like them: Our Almight Lord God, and father of Jesus, look at me with pity and compassion............... Religion has played a part in our country from the inception. The seperation of church and state so often spoken of is designed to prevent a government established or mandated religion, not the prevention of religion, you are free to choose. With the vast majority of Americans being of the Christian faith, it is important that a leader be chosen that has similar ideals as us and similar moral and ethical values, thus the questions regarding religion are valid. To narrowly focus on religion would be wrong, I agree, but to consider it is reasonable to the majority of Americans. The confines and sancturaries from which we ( America ) escaped , was a government that you just described, The Church of England. Just a short history lesson.
It's also worth noting that if I believe that something is right and good and true for me, I am a hypocrite unless I believe that same thing is right and good and true for all. So if I believe that Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Light, for me, then I am duty bound to believe he is the Way, the Truth, and the Light for all. That will influence EVERYTHING I do, from which car I buy, to how I do my laundry, to which job I take, and to whom I vote for. That being said, what I believe about the God who self-revealed in Jesus expects that I will convince, rather than force, people to the truth. It's also worth noting that the very first freedom guaranteed by the Constitution - not a power enumerated, but a freedom guaranteed - is religion. Not speech, press, guns, unreasonable search and seizure, abolishment of slavery, or equal protection. Religion. Because the Founding Fathers knew, and what we in our modern/post-modern age seem to have forgotten, is that what we believe about religion informs what we believe about everything else. This isn't a statement about Christianity, because there are non-Christian nations that are free, and there are Christian ones that aren't. Without an understanding like the one presented in the Constitution - which says government cannot influence religion, but fails to say religion cannot influence government - we eventually end up introducing some sort of state religion, even if it's a religion that bows the knee to the almighty dollar (euro?), or opinion polls, or to new political/philosophical/sociological fads.
