Damn. A Secular Humanist? All this time, I thought Hillary Clinton called herself a Methodist.

I've been reading a book called God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It, by Rev. Jim Wallis, founder of the Sojourners Christian social justice lobby.

Wallis claims that

President George Bush uses religious language more than any president in U.S. history, and some of his key speechwriters come right out of the evangelical community. He draws on biblical language and old gospel hymns that, while unknown to many Americans, immediately cause deep resonance among the faithful in his own electoral base. The problem is that the quotes from the Bible and the hymns are too often either taken out of context or worse yet, employed in ways quite different from their original meaning.

Wallis quotes Bush's 2003 State of the Union address: "Yet there's power, wonder-working power, in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people." The hymn says the power is in the blood of the Lamb, and has nothing to do with American patriotism.

Wallis quotes Bush's Ellis Island speech on the first anniversary of the World Trade Center attack: "This ideal of America is the hope of all mankind...That hope still lights our way. And the light shines in the darkness. And the darkness has not overcome it." Those last two sentences about light and darkness refer to the Word of God, not to America. To an honest Christian, political misuse of a Gospel verse like that is nothing less than blasphemy.

Wallis says, "Bush seems to make this mistake over and over again of confusing nation, church, and God. The resulting theology is more an American civil religion than Christian faith."

One more quote:

In our own American history, religion has been lifted up for public life in two different ways, as we discussed earlier. One invokes the name of God and faith in order to hold us accountable to God's intentions - to call us to justice, compassion, humility, repentance, and reconciliation. Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and Martin Luther King best exemplify that way. The other way wrongly invokes God's blessing on our activities, agendas, and purposes. Many presidents and political leaders have used hte language of religion in such ways, and George W. Bush is falling into that same temptation.

If we elect a religious person as a national leader, I would expect that person's religious beliefs to play a part in his decisions for the country - and I think it would be dishonest of a leader to never speak of his/her faith and to hide the effect those beliefs have on the leader's actions. I would certainly hope that those beliefs would guide the leader to justice and compassion.

That's not what George W. is doing, however; and it's not how Ronald Reagan used religion, either - their idea is that religion is a tool to be used to enforce their own agenda. George W. seems to follow Reagan in seeing himself as "saved," and therefore sinless and infallible - and therefore, God must bless their every action and damn those who oppose them.

I think that's a perversion of religious faith - but it's a perversion that's very common nowadays, and it gives all religion a bad name. Like the prophets of the Old Testament, truly faithful people often find themselves obliged to oppose or at least question those in power. Faith is not supposed to be merely a validation of those who hold political and economic power.

My point? I can't agree with the ultra-secularists that all reference to religious faith must be purged from the speech of our national leaders; but I do believe it is horribly wrong for Bush and Reagan and many others to have abused and perverted religious speech to further their own agendas. The agenda of Bush and Reagan may appeal to fundamentalist Christians - but it is incompatible with the beliefs and values of many other Christians.

-Joe Offer-