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The Row Boat"Had we but world enough, and time..." *
Theological Electioneering11/08/2006 12:48:39I don't usually get into politics much here. Politics and religion are the two things you're not supposed to talk about in America with your neighbors, and since I'm always going on about one, I should probably leave the other one aside. God or Ceasar. We are still waiting on the two close Senate races to determine its leadership - whether the administration will have its hands tied for the next two years or not. I am on the edge of my seat, particularly as a Virginian who (like an idiot) didn't stay registered in my home state. Wouldn't it be fantastic if the race gets one by one vote and I can go through the rest of my life telling people that if I hadn't gone to graduate school whoever would have won the Senate. This election, it seems, may finally be a sign that the evangelical bloc is breaking. One-third of evangelicals are supposed to have voted Democratic. The party's appeals might just be working. Barack Obama has been visibly making the appeal to faith in his speeches and in a recent article in Sojourners. We'll see if Hillary Clinton can convince us that she's a down home religionist. I'm not sure. For the last twenty years we've seen in powerful ways how theology gets built by elections. Abortion, gay marriage, tax-breaks, and a host of other things not really of huge concern in the Bible have been pushed to the forefront of the American theological agenda, in many respects because of the circumstantial alignments of political parties and their strategies. If a change in party affiliation is occuring, we will certainly see a shift also in theological priorities. In this country, politicians are theologians too. My guess is that the Democrats are aware of this, and it makes them back off. The Republicans are certainly aware of it and it makes them jump in. Now, if Obama is the start of a trend and the Democrats join in too, theology will become a significant battleground in the struggle for political power, rather than a pawn to it. Maybe folk theologians like me will finally be able to get a job. Another tactic, of course, would be for the Democrats to try rebuilding the pre-Moral Majority quietism of the evangelicals. They could start by circulating tracts like this. I say this as a joke, of course, because it will never happen, not for a while. We are in a state where theology is politics and there ain't no separating them. Give it a few decades, though, a few more corrupt theocratic administrations, and they'll be flocking to the desert hermitages in droves. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
re:Theological Electioneering - 11/09/2006 16:58:38
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