Monday 5 November 2012

op/ed/presidential candidates and religious convictions

As a relative neophyte to social media,this is my first real experience of an American election on Facebook.Of course,like most users,the comments posted on my timeline ranged from mildly amusing to downright side splitting,from irreverent to irrelevant,from missing the mark to striking a blow straight through the heart.Many,if not most were obviously partisan,but that did little,in most cases to change the quality of the actual commentary.Nor did they do a great deal to convince me,if I were a member of the American electorate,which I am not,to change my political worldview.

Among the many posts that I received was one of an individual,presumed to be Barack Obama,holding a book called "The Post American World."This book is alleged to be a Muslim view of the world after the defeat of America,but,having not actually read this book,I cannot vouch for that.Rest assured,though,it will soon be on my reading list.The whole point to this post though seems to be to imply that which I've heard spoken nearly continually since Obama first appeared on the scene.That Barack Obama is a Muslim.And,in fact the photo above goes one step further and attempts to connect that fact with liberal politics in a non sequiter fashion.Moreover,there is a real question in my mind as to whether or not the person pictured here is actually Obama.But I suppose that a lot of the sort of persons who post things such as this,preaching to a choir of those who are predisposed to believe such drivel whenever they see that hated word"liberal",believe that all black people look alike.Not that it really matters,especially to rank and file ignoramuses,but I'm not buying into it.

While there is plenty intellectually wrong about this post that I could point out,I wish to use it to the purpose of asking some questions we really should be thinking about.Namely,do we have the right to know everything about the religious beliefs of presidential candidates,in this case Barack Obama and Mitt Romney?More to the point,is this information at all useful,or is it extraneous and distracting?Should I be concerned if I were to see Romney holding,carrying or reading a Book Of Mormon.

As those of you who read my posts might suspect,I have a particular worldview that informs such matters for me.As an Evangelical Christian and also a liberal,I have an opinion as to whether I want to see the free world intrusted to a Muslim,a Mormon,a Christian,an Atheist,a Nhilist or any other given type of believer.It goes without saying,perhaps that I would prefer to have leadership that is open to being guided by God.That,essentially is the Christian point of view.

The question,however is not so much about what any given qualified candidate believes,what he reads or how he chooses to worship God,though again,as a Christian I have my obvious preferences.Preferences which I hasten to note,don't seem to be available among the current group of presidential candidates.The question is more a matter of how,and to what extent any given candidate's religious views can be expected to inform his politics.And to that end,America seems to do rather well on the whole.While many presidents,perhaps all of them, have had particular religious views,zealotry hardly ever rules the day.It should also be noted that it is the few among religious believers that can be labeled zealots.Moreover,not all members of a particular faith believe exactly the same things.But it is interesting to view past candidates,or potential candidates and note the names of those who were either not nominated or not elected.Even as an Evangelical Christian,when I see names like Pat Robertson and Jesse Jackson on that list,I believe I'm looking at a system that gets it right enough most of the time.

Should I be concerned if indeed Obama were shown to be a Muslim?Perhaps,though I make note of the fact that it was under his administration that Bin Laden was killed,in fulfillment of foreign policy initiated by a previous Republican government.While determining the intricacies of how Obama's faith may have played out in this matter,I think it is safe to think that it was only incidentally informative to the matter at hand.The right actions were taken.That is the bottom line.Religion of any stripe did not prevent Obama from doing the right thing.

Should I be concerned that the Republican candidate believes in a religion that is based on gold tablets,written in ancient Egyptian and revealed to a man called Joseph Smith,before they were sucked back up into heaven before their very existence could ever be verified.Perhaps.In truth ,Mormonism seems a totally illogical form of belief to me.But that does not mean that I think Romney would be likely to put his convictions ahead of his oath of office.It is far more likely,in my mind that he would be informed by Mormon belief,perhaps guided by it,but not apt to impose the totality of that belief on his politics in general.And really,it is his political views,not his religious ones that cause me the greatest concern.

On the whole,I think that it serves us very little to know the exact details of each candidates religious beliefs.It really just muddles things,at least in my head,to the point that I'm less likely to make a good choice between the two.Voters,in my estimation are far better off knowing and having confidence in the fact that America has a healthy enough political ecology,a strong enough constitution and an informed enough electorate to ensure that it's system actually works to the point of keeping the ground level and correcting it's own mistakes over the course of history,at least for the most part.

Having said that,religious belief might well be something to consider in rendering a vote.But it should be far from the only thing.A politician's past record and known political beliefs,integrity and stated policy bears much closer consideration and examination.

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