[RoBoBoy]

When the Personal Shouldn't Be Political
The New York Times
By GARY HART
November 8, 2004

Kittredge, Colo. — If America has entered one of its periodic eras of religious revival and if that revival is having the profound impact on politics that is now presumed, to participate in a discussion of "faith" one must qualify oneself. I was raised in the Church of the Nazarene, an evangelical denomination founded a century ago as an offshoot of American Methodism, which, the church founders believed, had become too liberal. I graduated from Bethany Nazarene College, where I met and
married my wife, who was also brought up in the church. I then
graduated from the Yale Divinity School as preparation for a life of
teaching religion and philosophy.
The Nazarene Church abhorred drinking, smoking, dancing, movies and
female adornment, believed in salvation through being "born again"
and in sanctification as a second act of grace, and resisted most
popular culture as the devil's work. In doctrine and practice, it
was much more evangelical than fundamentalist.
A neglected thread of church doctrine was the social gospel of John
and Charles Wesley, the great reformers of late 18th-century
Methodism. The Wesley brothers preached salvation through grace but
also preached the duty of Christians, based solidly on Jesus'
teachings, to minister to those less fortunate. My political
philosophy springs directly from Jesus' teachings and is the reason
I became active in the Democratic Party. Finally, in the
qualification-to-speak category, I will seek to pre-empt the ad
hominem disqualifiers. I am a sinner. I only ask for the same degree
of forgiveness from my many critics that they were willing to grant
George W. Bush for his transgressions.
As a candidate for public office, I chose not to place my beliefs in
the center of my appeal for support because I am also a
Jeffersonian; that is to say, I believe that one's religious beliefs
- though they will and should affect one's outlook on public policy
and life - are personal and that America is a secular, not a
theocratic, republic. Because of this, it should concern us that
declarations of "faith" are quickly becoming a condition for seeking
public office.
Declarations of "faith" are abstractions that permit both voters and
candidates to fill in the blanks with their own religious beliefs.
There are two dangers here. One is the merging of church and state.
The other is rank hypocrisy. Having claimed moral authority to
achieve political victory, religious conservatives should be very
careful, in their administration of the public trust, to live up to
the standards they have claimed for themselves. They should also be
called upon to address the teachings of Jesus and the prophets
concerning care for the poor, the barriers that wealth presents to
entering heaven, the blessings on the peacemakers, and the belief
that no person should be left behind.
If we are to insert "faith" into the public dialogue more directly
and assertively, let's not be selective. Let's go all the way. Let's
not just define "faith" in terms of the law and judgment; let's
define it also in terms of love, caring, forgiveness. Compassionate
conservatives can believe social ills should be addressed by charity
and the private sector; liberals can believe that the government has
a role to play in correcting social injustice. But both can agree
that human need, poverty, homelessness, illiteracy and sickness must
be addressed. Liberals are not against religion. They are against
hypocrisy, exclusion and judgmentalism. They resist the notion that
one side or the other possesses "the truth" to the exclusion of
others. There is a great difference between Cotton Mather and John
Wesley.
There is also the disturbing tendency to insert theocratic
principles into the vision of America's role in the world. There is
evil in the world. Nowhere in our Constitution or founding documents
is there support for the proposition that the United States was
given a special dispensation to eliminate it. Surely Saddam Hussein
was an evil dictator. But there are quite a few of those still
around and no one is advocating eliminating them. Neither
Washington, Adams, Madison nor Jefferson saw America as the world's
avenging angel. Any notion of going abroad seeking demons to destroy
concerned them above all else. Mr. Bush's venture into crusaderism
frightened not only Muslims, it also frightened a very large number
of Americans with a sense of their own history.
The religions of Abraham all teach a sense of personal and
collective humility. It was a note briefly struck very early by Mr.
Bush and largely abandoned thereafter. It would be well for those in
the second Bush term to ponder that attribute. Whether Bush
supporters care or not, people around the world now see America as
arrogant, self-righteous and superior. These are not qualities of
any traditional faith I am aware of.
If faith now drives our politics, at the very least let's make it a
faith of inclusion, genuine compassion, humility, justice and
accountability. In the words of the prophet Micah: "He hath shown
thee, O man, what is good. What doth the Lord require of thee, but
to do justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"
And, instead of "O man," let's insert "O America."
Gary Hart, the former Democratic senator from Colorado, is the
author, most recently, of"The Fourth Power: A Grand Strategy for the United States in the 21st Century.''

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