Using Religion for Partisan Political Purposes

Several posts on the Mirror of Justice in recent months appropriately have questioned the overzealous tendency of some to make religious faith subservient to partisan politics, to which I recently replied with some thoughts from our three most recent popes about the primary salvific mission of the Church and the vital independence of the Church’s religious witness.

The recent series of posts almost invariably have suggested that those on the right are peculiarly guilty of this abuse, too-readily connecting Christian faith to Republican Party politics. The following remarks by a prominent figure on the political and religious left demonstrates that those on the other side of the divide are at least as facile in the ability to caricature political adversaries and to hijack a religious venue for partisan political purposes.

The following interview remarks by a former president have been widely distributed and the subject of considerable attention elsewhere in the blogosphere. The excerpt I post below is accompanied by pithy commentary from Rev. Richard John Neuhaus in the “Public Square” section of the most recent issue (Aug.-Sept. 2006) of First Things:

Former president Jimmy Carter has written another book on American values. He is deeply saddened by the way the “religious right” uses religion for partisan political purposes. In an interview with an Atlanta magazine, he explains his concern: “Carter fittingly used a parable to illustrate how he’d like to see the political/religious debate unfold. ‘I was teaching a Sunday school class two weeks ago,’ he recalls. ‘A girl, she was about 16 years old from Panama City [Fla.], asked me about the differences between Democrats and Republicans. ‘I asked her, “Are you for peace, or do you want more war?” Then I asked her, “Do you favor government helping the rich, or should it seek to help the poorest members of society? Do you want to preserve the environment, or do you want to destroy it? Do you believe this nation should engage in torture, or should we condemn it? Do you think each child today should start life responsible for $28,000 in [federal government] debt, or do you think we should be fiscally responsible?” ‘I told her that if she answered all of those questions, that she believed in peace, aiding the poor and weak, saving the environment, opposing torture . . . then I told her, ‘You should be a Democrat.’” Jimmy Carter is deeply saddened by the way religion is used for partisan political purposes.

Greg Sisk