Knee Jerk God Baiting

by digby

Amy Sullivan writes:

…Brownback is about as extreme as they come in the Christian Right world. Finally, a religious candidate who actually deserves the scorn of the knee-jerk left.

I wonder who all the religious candidates we’ve unfairly scorned in the past would be? Jimmy Carter? Bill Clinton? (and no, having affairs does not mean you are not religious, just a sinner.) Al Gore? John Kerry? They all go to church and profess to be believers. Are they just not religious enough? Now, it’s true that the knee-jerk left doesn’t much care for Joe Lieberman but that’s not because he’s a religious man. It’s because he is disloyal and enables the right wing. (We knee-jerk left wingers do tend to be dismissive of right wingers, that’s true.)

I recall scorning both Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon and neither one of them were particularly religious. Bobby Kennedy was a youthful hero and he was as catholic as they come. In fact, I’m having a hard time coming up with any consistent views on either side toward religious politicians at all. It would seem to me that this entire argument is nothing but a political football used to shut down criticism and advance a particular agenda without having to debate the issues on their own merits.

I hesitate to call this kind of lazy observation “religious correctness” because that gives the impression of an objection to rude derisive language about religion. This is something else. It’s “God-baiting” designed to put any critic on the defensive if the person they are criticizing is religious. (The right, interestingly enough, is using this and its close cousin, race-baiting, very effectively these days. Nice to see people on “our side” helping them out — again.)

Every secular “knee jerk liberal” has voted for religious candidates their whole lives. Indeed, it is impossible not to. You cannot get elected in this country if you do not profess religious belief. We have enthusiastically backed candidates who are from every religious tradition and from every region. Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were both born again, southern evangelicals. We do not scorn religious candidates, period.

Many of us knee-jerk leftists are hostile to those who want to use the state to dictate the proper social attitudes of its citizens and interfere in their most personal, private decisions, that’s true. I would scorn Pat Robertson and Sam Brownback’s ideas no less if they were secular. It’s the lack of respect for the division of influence between the private and public sphere’s that is causing the problem.

And as for hostility, let’s not forget that it was back in 1988 that a future president of the United States said this:

President George H. W. Bush: I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.

Who scorns who again? Perhaps some of these religious politicans could speak to the flock about giving some respect to the non-faithful. It’s the Christian thing to do.

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