Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah), a Mormon, recently said:
I think there is increased hostility toward Christianity, toward organized religion in general in Washington.
I’ve started seeing a couple of things that are disturbing that I never thought I would see, just in the last few years.
I remember during the Trump administration, we started to see, for the first time ever, a couple of my Democratic colleagues, including some on the Judiciary Committee, who would say things like this: ‘I’m not comfortable with this nominee because I fear that the dogma lives loudly within her.
She was afraid that she was too Catholic and because the Catholic dogma, as she put it, ‘lives too loudly. I thought that was a little unsettling.
….
Relative to not just the founding generation, but pretty much all generations of Americans until very recently, those who are hostile toward Christian beliefs or toward any belief system when it comes to somebody’s worthiness to serve in government. That’s historically aberrational. That’s extreme.
Culturally also, throughout most of our history, we have been a religious nation. We are still a religious nation.
Whatever “hostility” there may be towards people of faith, it is mostly of their own doing. When you demand preferential treatment for your religion or demand that your beliefs be codified into law, you can expect pushback from people who reject your theocratic inclinations. Many of us know that joining church and state leads to loss of freedom and bloodshed. If we want to be the land of the free and the home of the brave, we must not permit theocrats to have their way. We do this by making sure they are never elected to office. I am not talking about religious people, in general. I am talking about Christians who demand everyone conform to their allegedly Bible-based moral, ethical, economic, and social beliefs, threatening punishment (including incarceration and execution) for those who refuse to bow a knee to Jesus, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
There was a time when I thought a politician’s religious beliefs were off-limits. I now realize how naive I was. If a person’s religion matters to them, then it is impossible for their beliefs and behaviors not to be shaped by their faith. Surely, most Christians think beliefs matter. And if they do, then it is fair game for people to critique their beliefs. If a politician is a rabid forced birther or thinks LGBTQ people should be rounded up and placed in internment camps, he is unfit to serve the American people.
Gone are the days when politicians such as President John F. Kennedy compartmentalized their religious beliefs.
Kennedy, in a speech given to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in September 1960, stated:
Because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected President, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured—perhaps deliberately, in some quarters less responsible than this. So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again—not what kind of church I believe in, for that should be important only to me—but what kind of America I believe in.
I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute—where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote—where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference—and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.
I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish—where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source—where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials—and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.
For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew—or a Quaker—or a Unitarian—or a Baptist. It was Virginia’s harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson’s statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim—but tomorrow it may be you—until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.
Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end—where all men and all churches are treated as equal—where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice—where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind—and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.
That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents the kind of Presidency in which I believe—a great office that must neither be humbled by making it the instrument of any one religious group nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its occupancy from the members of any one religious group. I believe in a President whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the Nation or imposed by the Nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.
We now have political leaders who think the United States is a sectarian Christian nation; and that the Bible should be the law of the land (except those pesky verses about adultery and greed). Their beliefs ARE relevant and they deserve scrutiny and critique. Some religious beliefs are so egregious that they should keep people from holding office. If a politician can’t separate their religious beliefs from their public duties and responsibilities, they have no business being an officeholder.
Evangelicals, in particular, have become so hostile towards secular values, that they can’t rule justly. They will continue to push their personal religious beliefs regardless of what their constituents want or what our laws demand. Unable or unwilling to compromise, how can such people rule well? If they don’t give a shit about what most Americans think, appealing only to their peculiar interpretations of the Bible, how can they possibly be good public leaders? This, by the way, applies to Democrats and Republicans alike. While it is primarily Evangelical Republicans who are in bed with Jesus and demand a theocratic state, Democratic politicians can and do invoke religious beliefs when they shouldn’t.
I understand this is a complex issue, but I refuse to give politicians a pass on their religious beliefs. Will I vote for people of faith? Absolutely. I just want to make sure that they can differentiate between their duties to God and duties to man. They were elected to serve the people, not God or the church. If they can’t separate the two, then I am of the opinion they are unfit to hold office.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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