 |
| Post-modern America: Abortion at 20 Weeks (For starters) |
Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan: Religious World Views in Conflict
COMMENTARY
By David W. Virtue www.virtueonline.org
September 5, 2012
The diversity of their religious beliefs should not be overlooked in their decision-making or for millions who are about to vote for one president or the one who would replace him. It is said that it is all about the economy. The general wisdom is if the economy is moving up and unemployment is down, the Obama/Biden ticket will win. If not, the White House will go to the Romney/Ryan duo.
But it would be exceedingly foolish to overlook the Culture Wars raging in America and the theological underpinnings of those wars. How many Americans will vote on specific issues such as abortion and gay marriage?
One presidential candidate believes that Jesus visited America and then picked as his running mate a man who believes that he eats the body of Jesus in the form of a small white wafer each week. For most American Catholics and evangelicals, Mormonism is a bizarre made-in-America cult that defies human and theological logic forcing one to wonder how anyone with half a brain could imbibe the weird nonsense that came from a con man (Joseph Smith), a combined P.T. Barnum and Elmer Gantry figure, who claimed he found some golden tablets written in reformed Egyptian in upstate New York which he translated as the Book of Mormon after which he returned the plates to their angelic guardian. If you believe that, you'll believe the Borgia Popes were celibate.
We should remember that not so very long ago, Evangelicals in America, especially Bible Belt Christians, feared and hated Catholicism finding transubstantiation as repugnant as The Book of Mormon. Now evangelicals are embracing Paul Ryan (Romney's choice of VP) because he stands four-square against abortion and gay marriage.
Ryan is no "cafeteria catholic" like JFK, Teddy Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi or Joe Biden who pick at the smorgasbord of Catholic ethical and moral teachings. Ryan, in fact, is closer in faith to presidential hopeful Rick Santorum, another strict Catholic.
On the other side of the aisle is a black liberal Protestant (no he is not a Muslim) president who has been attending an Episcopal Church near the White House of late. Apparently, he has come to the conclusion (or was that an epiphany) that gay marriage is okay with God and presumably God has changed His mind to suit 21st century post-modern attitudes and views. Ironically, his V-P a Roman Catholic promptly agreed with him. The Catholic Church did not reprimand him.
Ryan, on the other hand, takes his Catholicism seriously whereas the aforementioned Catholics do not.
One commentator noted that Senator John Kerry and Joe Biden were expert at finessing their voting record on abortion so they could placate feminists while still queuing up to receive Communion during election campaigns.
By contrast, the congressman from Wisconsin has a rock-solid record of voting in line with Vatican teaching. Perhaps that explains why Romney introduced Ryan as a "faithful" Catholic. He could have done the same for Santorum as well.
UK Catholic newspaper columnist Damian Thompson wrote, "The GOP has become a natural home for devout cradle Catholics such as Paul Ryan. He draws many of his ideas from a flourishing of Right-wing Catholic thought whose seeds were sown in the Fifties by William F. Buckley. Ryan isn't an intellectual: no one who gushes about Ayn Rand fits into that category. But he's typical of Mass-going Catholics alienated by the Democrats' increasingly gruesome embracing of 'abortion rights'."
Wrote Thompson; "Meanwhile, the Catholic Church has become strangely attractive to educated conservative Protestants. One reason is that mainline denominations, such as the Episcopalians, have been infected by a feel-good liberalism that demonstrates all the intellectual rigor of sixth-formers sharing a spliff (cannabis). US Catholics were heading in that direction, too, but have been yanked back towards orthodoxy by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. This has impressed non-Catholics. The result has been a stream of conversions, not only by leading pastors such as the late Richard Neuhaus but also by politicians such as Jeb Bush and (embarrassingly) Newt Gingrich."
In the current culture wars, many Protestant evangelicals now believe that conservative Catholics are Christians as they share similar views on sexual morality. At the same time, they see "Cafeteria Catholics" as spiritually vacuous as liberal Protestants in their faith expression.
Progressive or revisionist religion of all varieties is heading down hill fast. Will anybody remember what Jack Spong did or didn't believe or the fey Affirming Catholicism of a Frank Griswold, the post-modernist liberal interfaith claptrap of a Katharine Jefferts Schori or the homoerotic narcissistic "spirituality" of a Gene Robinson five years from now?
Barack Obama has generic liberal Protestant religious beliefs, but his administration is truly secular more in keeping with that of Bill Clinton who attended a liberal Methodist church. Conversely, a born again Democratic, President Jimmy Carter was not afraid to wear his religion on his sleeve. He attended a Baptist church where he taught Sunday school.
Now Obama's administration is being tested by a Republican ticket headed by two men who sign up to everything their respective churches teach while a Democratic President and Vice President pick and choose from their church's ethical and moral teachings.
Apart from evangelical protestant concerns, (when Jack Kennedy, a Catholic, ran for president) this is arguably the first presidential election pitting religious against post-religious America.
It is said that the power of swing voters will determine the election; probably the economy will be the deciding issue. Even so, this is arguably an election in which religious views will not be excluded from the public square. While Jefferson cut out the supernatural parts of the New Testament many believe that the Religious Right is cutting out the social justice parts of the NT.
If Evangelicals and Catholics can be galvanized over abortion and gay marriage, especially among conservative minorities like Hispanics, the political blackboard will have changed. No presidential hopeful, now or in the future, will be able to ignore the deeply held religious beliefs of millions of Americans.
Sociologist Peter Berger once commented that if India is the most religious country in the world, and Sweden the least religious, then America is a nation of Indians ruled by Swedes.
Not anymore. With Romney and Ryan, the Indians may have found new leaders whose religious views approximate their own while the Swedes will have to rethink what role religion plays now and into an uncertain future and how they will align their political sails.
For a full analysis of Mormonism click here: http://tinyurl.com/9p3nxbz
No comments:
Post a Comment