All the Candidates’ Faith

Posted by: K.D. Hastings on April 4, 2008 Biblical Values •

In the run-up to Election Day 2008, is there a value in voters having some sort of religiosity meter to help them decide whom to support?

Does it matter if a candidate wears his or her faith on their shoulder? Can we discern if such pronouncements are genuine or only carefully calculated campaign-speak?

E.J. Dionne Jr., an op-ed columist with the Washington Post, wrote in his June 30, 2006 column: “Many Democrats discovered God in the 2004 exit polls.”

Both Democratic candidates have what has been described as significant faith components to the campaign. The party is committed to attracting at least some of the right-leaning evangelicals who helped usher George W. Bush into the White House—twice.

While the Senator from Illinois works to untangle himself from some of the now-public and strikingly racist comments made by his faith leader, it does not diminish the fact that, perhaps more than any other candidate, he has placed his faith at the center of this campaign.

Addressing his denomination’s convention last June, the senator said: “My faith teaches me that I can sit in church and pray all I want, but I won’t be fulfilling God’s will unless I go out and do the Lord’s work.”

The senator from New York has gone public with a faith she indicates she has practiced quietly for years. While her husband was president, she was an active participant in a D.C. women’s prayer group.

A story in the Christian Science Monitor claims that soon after Bush was reelected, Clinton said it was “a mistake for the Democrats not to engage evangelical Christians on their own turf – essentially ceding the vote to President Bush.”

Oddly enough, it is the Republican’s presumptive nominee that is quiet about his faith. Some commentators have speculated the senator from Arizona is a “throwback to an earlier generation when such matters were kept personal.”

When asked In an interview about his faith, the senator said, “I think it’s something between me and my creator. It’s primarily a private issue rather than a public one.”

Most candidates and their staffs search for ways to gain the support of different segments of society. Their campaign pitch changes dependent on the group to which they are speaking—union members, farmers, or college students, for example.

There is no harm in blending politics and religion, that is, until religion becomes the victim and is bruised in the pairing. The same concern exists for politics (the state.)

Yet should an individual’s particular faith be a criterion by which voters determine which candidate to support? It was clear that the candidacy of the former governor of Massachusetts was torpedoed primarily by his faith.

Or should voters instead examine how the candidates’ faith impacts their policy positions, i.e., how they put feet to their faith, such as their view on the preciousness of human life at all ages and stages? It seems the Bible is quite clear on that matter.

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