Working across the aisle and pulpit - how religion can inform political participation?
By: Megan Finnegan | Published Friday, December 21, 2012, 3:23 PM | Updated Friday, December 21, 2012, 3:23 PM
It's looking like we're all in for a fight here in the United States after the midterm elections. If you're a Republican, the fight is to
repeal everything Obama and the Democratic Congress
achieved since 2008. If you're a Democrat, the fight is against the Republicans who see it as their job to stonewall any efforts to move the agenda forward in the next two years. If you are on neither side, consider yourself lucky.
I've been thinking about how religion can inform political participation, beyond the seemingly obvious issues that religious organizations rally around (abortion, mostly).
There are many similarities between extreme political views and extreme (or simply strict, depending on how you interpret them) religious views. By default, a hardcore Republican believes that a Democrat is wrong about many things - the size and role of government, fiscal policy, many social issues, etc. And vice versa. A strict Catholic must believe that Muslims (or Jews or Buddhists or Sikhs or Protestants) are fundamentally wrong in many of their beliefs. And vice versa.
Yet most responsible and serious religious leaders preach tolerance and interfaith understanding. Even the Pope promotes dialogue and learning about other faiths. There are ugly moments of name-calling, for sure, but the better natures of our religious leaders usually call for working together, especially when it comes to solving social problems. The glaring exceptions to this policy - Israel, Iraq - result in nothing less than war.
Why then, aren't more politicians calling for their constituents to understand and talk to those opposed to their views? The Tea Party foams at the mouth and mocks the president and makes claims about the "real America," denigrating Democrats and vowing to oppose them outright, without even the pretense of compromise. The Democratic party, even despite Obama's cries for middle ground, isn't innocent of this strategy either.
The Tea Party, which I cite simply because it the latest and most glaring example of extremism in politics, talks a lot about Christian values but encourages people to oppose a new mosque in New York and declines to have civil dialogue with "the other side." I'm certainly not the first person to call for sanity in politics (thanks Jon Stewart).
Maybe the first step we need to take to insure that the next two years aren't hopelessly mired in politic gridlock and hateful attacks is to show our elected representatives that we the normal people can work with those who oppose us. I'd like to see a Catholic organization reach out to Muslims in their neighborhoods, to promote understanding of a religion many see as foreign and dangerous. Maybe these kinds of steps could show our politicians how it's done. They do, after all, speak for us. Let's make sure we can be proud of what we're all saying.
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Switch to the desktop site to post a comment.Monsoonman | Nov 24, 2010, 12:22 PM EST
Is swamp pig the same as long pig?
eiriamach | Nov 24, 2010, 06:52 AM EST
"Swamped," like an alligator at home, yes. You'll find "allegory" several lines above "alligator" in a dictionary. Having breakfasted on swamp pig, I hung around a while to see whether there'd be any scraps of bacon left for lunch. I've had enough now.
Monsoonman | Nov 23, 2010, 08:43 PM EST
Two steps forward, one back I see eirimach.. you got swamped, metaphorically speaking
eiriamach | Nov 21, 2010, 04:56 PM EST
I'm still working on "pigs in a swamp," and you hit me with parachutes and swamp gas with teleprompters? I can figure out pigs in a blanket because I breakfast at truck stops when I drive cross-country, but pigs in a swamp puts an image in my mind of raw bacon floating on pea soup, with a well-fed alligator lurking somewhere nearby. As I said, Jesus knew how to avoid mixed metaphors. And it always helps to begin with what they call--metaphorically--a "concrete fact."
Monsoonman | Nov 21, 2010, 01:31 PM EST
Ah, the Adlerian/Jesus style seems to be working with you, so I'll take another baby step: A mind, like a parachute, only works when it is opened...So pull the rip cord and smell the swamp gas: Your messiah is a smooth talking teleprompter reading, corrupt, Chicago thug. You will know him by the company he keeps.
eiriamach | Nov 21, 2010, 10:04 AM EST
Jesus spoke in parables and kept the metaphors to a minimum lest those who most needed edification became confused by a hopeless mixing of metaphors. Pigs in a swamp? "Faint sparks of id" and sunlight penetrating concrete? Cheap perfume poured on swamp creatures? Criminal muppets? Aahhrrgh! It's an English teacher's nightmare! Whatever can it MEAN? It's time for a seasonal quotation. As Francis Church might have written to Virginia O'Hanlon in 1897, "VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong.... They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge. Yes, VIRGINIA, there is [MEANING. It] exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion [to truth] exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy." And you will find meaning if begin with clarity and courage and open-mindedness to comprehend plain FACTS in the world around you. You CAN shed the skepticism of a skeptical age and give integrity a chance to manifest itself even in these benighted times.
Monsoonman | Nov 20, 2010, 03:23 PM EST
Lad, Jesus spoke to us in metaphors in order for the least edified to finally understand....I hope my pig/swamp creature/concrete metaphors finally made it through.
Monsoonman | Nov 20, 2010, 01:56 PM EST
Actually em: "It takes a long time for sunlight to penetrate concrete". Maybe in the deepest recess of your id a faint spark just flickered. Something spawned in a swamp will always be a swamp creature, no matter how much cheap perfume you pour over it.
eiriamach | Nov 20, 2010, 03:23 AM EST
Quoting from Lincoln this time. . . He was running for office, campaigning at county fairs, and during a speech he put this question to his audience: "If I call a horse's tail a leg, how many legs does the horse then have?" One young man who was anxious to show everyone that he could count shouted out, "Five legs, Mr. Lincoln. That horse has five legs!" "But sir," Lincoln replied, "Calling a horse's tail a leg don't make it one!" Calling Obama corrupt don't make him corrupt. Go and try to gather some facts, Monsoonman. Come back when you can tell the difference between guilt by association and real corruption.
Monsoonman | Nov 19, 2010, 07:40 PM EST
You acknowledge your cheap shot, then proceed to tell me/us you weary of trying to make us think with our brains? Your superior pseudo intellectualism, I suppose is showing us the way? If it oinks like a pig, smells like a pig and wallows in corruption like a pig, it is a corrupt pig no matter how much lipstick you put on it. Obama came from the simmering corrupt cauldron of chicago, with close friends like convicted felon, tony rezko, the murderer bill ayers, the reverends wright and pfleger, the convicted criminal/muppet blagojevich, his employment with the corrupt organization ACORN. Yes how unintellectual of us to notice those associations. So find another shade of lipstick for your pig, this one doesn't work.
eiriamach | Nov 19, 2010, 01:23 PM EST
You're right, Monsoonman; I took what another commenter calls a "cheap shot." but I do weary of trying to get you guys to think with your brains. None the less, I'll give it one more try: here's what you did. Like Joe McCarthy, you made the unAmerican charge of guilt by association against Obama. If you were to mug a pensioner on a dark street corner, we would not send your pastor to prison with you, or your family or friends. Guilt and virtue are individual in the American ethos. You'd take that trip up the river alone, with no one else guilty by association with you. When Senator McCarthy's demi-demagogues helped him out with another tactic, fear mongering, they created an environment in which the weak-minded and the malcontents bought into the guilt by association, and soon suspicions and charges of "fellow-traveler" and "communist" and "subversive" and "enemy of the state" filled the land. You're doing the same now with your fear-mongering about Obama. You've taken Finnegan's solid point about reaching across the church aisle and used it to try to worry people about Obama's past association with Reverend Wright. It's a transparently fallacious piece of (non) reasoning, and I grow weary of pointing out such tactics, so I just took a short cut and quoted Olbermann instead. 'Sorry. Thje UAW took a hit in the GM reorganization along with everyone else. Why not an equal hit? They had little to do with the company taking wild risks with its financial marketings. Those were the doings of admins and managers; UAW folks would rather just build cars. It looks like they're doing that again now, a Motor Car car of the year included. Like Fast Eddy at the pool table, they're back!
Monsoonman | Nov 19, 2010, 11:20 AM EST
So puerile with the "hate speech" name calling, the "scare tactics" accusations, now the playing with poop card. Pitiful....Yes please enlighten us as to how bailing out the uaw pension funds with tax payer money and bondholders money was so important to the obama administration? Why didn't the unions take an equal hit along with the rest of the GM bagholders?
eiriamach | Nov 19, 2010, 06:47 AM EST
"Ye shall know them by their fruits." Turning GM around to profitability was not a Marxist scheme but a "score one more" for capitalism. Still, I am concerned about the "company" I'm keeping here. As Keith Olbermann said recently, One side sticks to the facts, and the other side is close to playing with its poop." He was talking about Ailes of FOX News, but if the shoe fits, . . . .
maloney | Nov 18, 2010, 10:59 PM EST
Whether you like it or not & you won't admit it until it's to late. America & obama are in the same place that Germany & hitler were in, in the beginning. Only difference is more people are on to obama. No hate involved, well maybe some, but still the truth.
Monsoonman | Nov 18, 2010, 01:18 PM EST
"You will be known by the company you keep" Anybody that sits his arse in a pew of a racist church for twenty years listening to hate sermons and says that he does not agree with the sermons spoken is either a liar or a fool for wasting his time, take your pick....Yes you and many others swooned over the obama who was sold to you, you didn't know or didn't want to know about reverend wright and many other aspects of the community organizers past. But you "felt" good about him, that's all that matters to you....BTW: Since when did speaking the truth become hate speech around here?..and when did the truth become "scare tactics"? What are YOU afraid of?
eiriamach | Nov 18, 2010, 09:37 AM EST
But when we voted Obama into office, we did not vote Jeremiah Wright into office, and Obama has not held meetings of the "black . . . Ku Klux Klan" in the Oval Office, nor is there any evidence of Marxist . . . religion" emanating from the White House. So why do we hear hate speech and scare tactics from Monsoonman? What is Monsoonman afraid of?
Monsoonman | Nov 17, 2010, 10:27 AM EST
I think it is good to know where political candidates attend church and know what their religious doctrine is. If we had a free & independent press in the United States they would have focused in on the church that obama attended for 20 years before he was elected. I think if america would have been more informed about obamas "reverend" and church he atteneded they would not have voted for him. Look up reverend jeremiah wright and black liberation theology. Prepare yourself for a hate filled, incendiary ride....It is a black version of a ku klux klan meeting, except it is hate whitey....Don't want to believe it? Spend some time and see where your president came from. A marxist based religion that advocates using violence in overthrowing those they perceive to be oppressing them, even acts of murder have been defended by followers of liberation theology.
eiriamach | Nov 16, 2010, 05:26 AM EST
At the core of American political life is tolerance, allowing others with whom we disagree to have their say and to practice their beliefs in freedom. Americans put freedom before conformity to any one religion's idea of the right way to live. It's a system that has worked well except when extremism masquerading as patriotism has gained the upper hand, as when Sen. Joe McCarthy or Fr. Coughlan won millions of followers with fiery hate speech against communism or Judaism. We are in another such era now with the far right screaming about "socialism" and worse. It's good that you ask Catholics to reach out to others, but the RC church itself must also back down on its insistence that Catholics have a duty to vote according to Catholic doctrine on hot issues such as abortion and stem cell research and barrier contraceptives to prevent the spread of HIV. As long as we have religious leaders telling their congregations to vote for or against particular candidates, we have religion undermining political freedom, and we have media filled with hate speech against the perceived enemies of the one-and-only "truth." It's time to wake up and learn from our own history. This kind of power play has happened before, and it takes a long time for the nation to recover from the rise of religious extremists. So instead of asking how religion informs political participation, we should be insisting that it is completely irrelevant where we as Americans get our political and social values from (religion, ethnic heritage, education, etc.). In the USA, every political agenda is debatable on its own merits; its origin in one religious doctrine or another gives it no special privileges whatever. It's called separation of church and state, and it's still the best way of preserving freedom.