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 PrintableVersion Letter from AmericaGod's got no politicsSo here’s the kind of question I most commonly get asked about our church. Not ‘what do you believe?’, not ‘what is your vision for the church?’, not even ‘what kind of programmes do you have for our children?’ No, the question I most commonly get asked — by outsiders, you understand — is ‘who do people vote for?’ The election is still a year away (November 2008…), but already positioning is going on for the religious vote. Rudy Giuliani, famed former mayor of New York City, is trying to deal with the possible negative repercussions of his well-known pro-abortion stance. Conservatives, it is felt, will not possibly support him for that single reason. And, in fact, an influential group called The Council for National Policy, has voted that if Giuliani is nominated as the Republican presidential candidate they will seek to form a Third Party. That’s fighting talk. Christian nation?For those Brits who cannot imagine a party more right-wing than America’s Republican Party (except perhaps in a former fascist regime), there are those among the so-called ‘Christian right’, and others among the more general conservative political movement, who feel betrayed by the Republican party on a number of issues, government spending being one. So Giuliani, as popular as he is with some, needs to tread carefully to court the moral majority folks. Then there’s former lone wolf John McCain, who seems to be attempting to court the religious vote by claiming in an interview on beliefnet.com that America is, and always has been a ‘Christian nation’, and that, ‘speaking personally’, he wouldn’t be happy with a president who didn’t share his Christian beliefs. Later, in an apparent move to damage control accusation of anti-Jewish or other religious sentiments, he broadened his categories to ‘the Judeo-Christian heritage’. Historians, of course, have long argued and engaged in the ideological debate as to exactly how ‘Christian’ was the intention of the founding fathers and the constitution, the extent to which separation of church and state are non-religious as opposed to merely non-institutional religious phenomenon. But McCain is positioning himself one moment as a voice for those with a distinctly religious vision of American identity, and the next modifying it to try and not narrow his support base prematurely. Or maybe he just ‘mis-spoke’. What’s the point?What relevance does all this have to evangelicals, you say? Tons, I say. I have the great advantage as a minister here of being inevitably a non-political animal. I can’t vote. I have no stake in the political regime. I do pay my taxes (and I earnestly try not to make jokes to my American friends about ‘no taxation without representation…’). Every now and then I aim to say from the pulpit that you can be a Christian and be a Democrat. That usually gets a laugh. I then say and you can be a Christian and a Republican. The surprise of that gets a bigger laugh. The point is that there are people out there — I know — who are driven away from the preaching of the gospel because they favour environmental policies over pro-life policies, death penalty issues over small government principles, or at least think that they should both be in balance. Or they just can’t stand hearing party politics from the pulpit. Public vision of churchIs it not deeply ironic that all this is happening in the country of ‘separation of church and state’? Do we really have to learn the lesson of ‘render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s’ all over again? Of course the church needs a public vision, and a prophetic moral tone, but sermons around election time in thinly-disguised language urging the support of one or other party seems a basic betrayal of the church’s transcendent mission to let Christ and the cross be the stumbling block, not the red or blue of party tribal colours. But then I’m just an ignorant Brit. What do I know? Josh Moody,
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