“I don’t want to see religion for any candidate become an un-elected co-president when they get in office.”
Our culture shies away from asking our politicians about their faith, but we have a responsibility to raise questions about the man or woman who would lead our country. In his book , author Stephen Mansfield encourages us to wrestle with a candidate’s beliefs instead of accept the label they’ve given themselves.
“The fact is that we have allowed our candidates to get away with pious mush… the cast-off sentence, ‘God bless America’ at the end of a speech, maybe video of them carrying a Bible into church. But we rarely get around to asking the specific question.”
It may seem intrusive but when a presidential candidate – or any political leader – claims to be driven by some measure of religion, we have the freedom to ask, “What do you mean by that? What’s that going to mean when you get into office?”
If we take a candidate at his word without digging further, we may end up with a leader whose views we don’t fully understand.
This has played out in recent years in our country. President Barack Obama completely reversed his views about same-sex marriage, saying it was based on his reading of the Sermon on the Mount. Other politicians have claimed their faith has guided them into certain policies and laws. To claim a gap between religion and politics doesn’t make sense, and neither does ignoring a candidate’s closely-held beliefs.
Stephen uses himself as an example to illustrate the point.
“To put it humorously, it’s as though I ran for president. And I said ‘Look, there’s a guy over here in the wings; his name is Bob. And Bob’s going to influence everything that I do in office. But I’m not really going to tell you much about Bob. I’ll tell you about him once I get into office; then I’ll introduce him to you just vote for me anyway.’ Well I wouldn’t get one vote! Nobody would send me to the White House based on that silliness. But that’s exactly what we do with religion.”
If a candidate is driven by a certain worldview, we should take the steps to understand that worldview before they’re voted into public service.
How does the media affect the dialogue about religion and politics? Stephen points out that a number of reporters ignore a candidate’s religion altogether except to speculate from a distance, which muddies the water. Clarity is always the better route, especially in matters of faith.
“The media tends to treat a candidate’s religion like an oddity, like some kind of weirdness about them. Like, they like peanut butter and cereal. They tend to treat it as though religion is a wart on a candidate’s nose; something not to be talked about for polite reasons, but certainly to be gossiped about. And I think that we need to go further.”
Key Scriptures: Colossians 1:16-17
Featured Songs: Made New by Lincoln Brewster; Same Power by Jeremy Camp; Feel It by Toby Mac
