Before reading David’s book Tempting Faith, I suspected my non-liberal, Republican friends were being manipulated by insincere “religious” right-wing Bushies. No big surprise there. But wow! Democrats do the same thing! Help! Let’s just take religion out of the equation. I’m voting for the first candidate who when asked about his or her religion says, “That’s a private matter and none of your business.”

“Karl Rove made religion sexy for every politician and political strategist”. That has to be the funniest thing David has ever said.
Religion has become a joke because of him- it is no longer sexy.
Adding religion to politics has ruined it for everyone.
Guiliani has said, “bite me”, when asked about his religion and I am not voting for him.
Great if a politician has a good,solid faith they will need it. I would be happy for a person who can lead this country out of the mess Rove, and all in the WH have put us in. Their faith can be as private as they want if they have a conscience, ethics and a sense of humanity. You don’t need religion for that.

Appeal to certain religious segments of the population is not a good long-term political strategy. It can bring you a quick victory, but it carries a bad after taste with people outside the religious group. The tried and true method of getting elected in America is appealing to pragmatic arguments. Pragmatism is the hidden, but predominant philosophy of political campaigning in this nation.
Non-pragmatic politicians may experience a season of success (such as Reagan) but eventually the population will trend back to pragmatic norms. Karl Popper’s version of pragmatism is most closely allied with modern American political dogma. Basically, Popper put an emphasis on the power of negation, and emphasized, “Don’t do what has been shown not to work.” Non-pragmatic politicians like Barry Goldwater, Jimmy Carter, and now George Bush, usually face overwhelming rejection.

Interestingly, on the Bnet U.S. Politics Forum, there seems to be much more concern about Obama’s “liberation theology” minister than there does about Romney’s LDS membership (let alone Brownback’s connections to Opus Dei, Huckabee being a Baptist preacher, etc.).
Hmmm …

I would love to hear a politician say that their religious beliefs are nobody’s business but that obvious in the way they live their live.
Unfortunately as long as religion is used by voters a a gauge, politician will use it as a pandering tool.

David – I don’t know how many times you can play this card, but think about the political qualities you adhere to. For me, it’s pro-life, family values, promotion of individual charity, etc. Now tell me why you adhere to these Political principles. For me it’s because my religion influences just about everything about me. Please, please, please, please tell me why this is a bad thing? I don’t even personally think a denomination or sect matters – I’m closer in line with Joe Lieberman than, say, John Kerry (like me, a Catholic).
Faith is an important aspect that influences the positions I hold in the secular, political world. I KNOW there are far more important parts of my faith than determining political positions, but that is still a part of it. For you to deny that to people, to suggest that there is something wrong with religious faith influencing political positions is inherently unfair. I simply cannot separate the two. That doesn’t mean I consider the political side to be the most important part of my religion, or even a moderately important part – but it is still part of it nonetheless, and it influences how I think, act, etc. I am getting really tired of this notion that I should be ashamed of that, or that my faith is somehow superficial because of that.
Now you might argue that your experience has shown that the faith based initiatives program was primarily, or even completely political. Fine, maybe it was. But as a religious person, I found far more to like in this administration than I did in the Clinton administration. And that is why I will continue to consider a candidate’s faith. Not because I think a Republican is going to come into office and immediately ban abortions, all embryonic stem cell research and ban gay marriage. But I know by his actions, say naming John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Court, things will not regress like they might in a different administration, and might even make a little forward progress.

What Bush, Rove, Olasky, and the so-called ‘Christian Right’ did was pretend to the legitimacy and superiority of occultically corrupted Christianity. They ran three successful campaigns in a row, each one themed on blatantly evangelizing one of the three core doctrines of occultism of Eliphas Lévi. Watch the major 2004 Republican Convention speeches and tell me that it’s not about the doctrine of Omnipotence of the Will.
That told me all I need to know about the understanding of historical Christianity, integrity, and interests of the theological establishments of ‘conservative’ Christianity. For all their scholar credentials they see no historical heresies recapitulated, they hear no heresy, and it’s all handwringing and chinstroking about just why ‘conservative’ Christianity has so little public or private character of Christ and allies itself with the forces of Mammon and Moloch and Ashtaroth.
Occultism is the resort of people and societies engaged in morally unjustifiable conquest, oppression, and destruction (i.e. immoralism), or people and societies who see their demise as an domination-based endeavor within history looming ahead of them. Often situational superiority and inevitable historical decline/doom are true at the same time. It was for American slaveholders in the 1850s, the Nazis in 1940, the white colonists/farmers of Rhodesia in the 1970s, the white apartheidists of South Africa the the 1980s, the Soviet hegemony over eastern Europe in the 1980s.
The white supremacist and ‘Christian Nation’ (which is a white superiority movement) pretensions in the western and southern US are also in decline in the same way.

Well, if indeed Rove was “Bushs’Brain” then he whored out Christianity for political gain. Nothing breeds success like success, so I’m not to terribly surprised to see several of the Democrats getting all weepy about their faith as well. Don’t think that any of them practice what they preach, but then that will be for the public to decide come election day.
A while back I was discussing my votes for Bill Clinton with a Christian friend, and she asked who I could have done that given his low “moral standard”. I replied, like it or not, that the moral standard is going to be different from person to person. To some abortion is murder, but executing prisoners is okay. So, if all life is sacred, why the distinction? I look at a presidential candidate for the tools and abilities they bring to the job. If they practice good, upstanding character, it’s a bonus. Jimmy Carter, by most standards was a good, moral man, liberal leanings not withstanding, but is considered one of the most ineffective presidents of the modern era. Nixon was morally bankrupt, but still seems to be considered a man of prayer. At least from my perspective, I don’t expect my presidents to be saints, so I can be pleased when one (or a candidate) actually exhibits a little character. Needless to say, I don’t expect to be pleased anytime soon….
Phil

Dan– note that there is a higher percentage of people and families in poverty now than there were in 2000, after a decline in the 1990s.
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/histpov/hstpov2.html
Family values and effective charity have not been anything resembling a priority for this administration.

David,
Have you ever read Kingdom of the Cults by Walter Martin? Christians have been at this for a long time.
You seem completely unaware that the issues of religion and society have been debated and preached about for a very, very long time. Well before Karl Rove used his brains for political purposes.
And also, where is Rove’s use of religion to decide moral social issues incorrect? If Christians sit back and wait for Progressives and Liberals to do the right thing “politically,” their children will be completely debauched.
BTW,
Have you ever heard of Reverend Peter Marshall?
(Reverend Dr. Peter Marshall (27 May 1902 – January 26, 1949) twice served as Chaplain of the United States Senate.)
Get a hold of the movie A Man Called Peter (1955)
The actor Richard Todd playing Marshall, delivers Marshall’s sermons in a way that will rocket your faith and break your heart. Keep a box of Kleenex close at hand.
The movie is one that should be shown every week.
Christianity has always been political. Why deny that?

Jillian,
How interesting that you mention the gods that literally define the behaviors of “The Left.”
“. . . and it’s all handwringing and chinstroking about just why ‘conservative’ Christianity has so little public or private character of Christ and allies itself with the forces of Mammon and Moloch and Ashtaroth.”
Let’s see . . . “mammon,” Hollywood and Liberal Elites. Not many “conservatives” in that libidinous throng.
And “Moloch,” sacrificing innocent children for the betterment of their parent’ lives. Sounds exactly like the unquechable thirst for the blood of aborted children by “The Left.” Hmm, what do we have, about 98% or 99% of Democrats pro-abortion?
And speaking of licentious lascivious . . . dear ol’ Ashtoreth. Astarte, Aphrodite, Venus etc., etc., etc.. The goddess of sexually unrestrained behavior. Of course we know what group most resembles that huh?
Ashtorth, literally the god (or goddess) of the Liberal, Progressive culture and community as we have it today 2007. Of course not much changed as it was “back in the day.”
Jillian, you definately need to bone up on your history. You’re about as wrong as it gets.

I think Rove is possble a servent of the devil. I do not think he did any good for people other than rich. He seem to be fake and i hope other felt this way to over the years. Obama 09 wake up people

To add slightly to my previous comment: the reason the Democratic candidates have to talk religion and prove themselves proper in that regard is not to prove themselves ‘religious’. They do it, though they may not be fully aware of it, to prove that they are not part of the highly debased and morally discredited denominations.
Their professions of moderate faith won’t persuade any of the selfprofessing ‘conservative’ Christians who have slipped or jumped into the Right Wing Christian moral and theological sewer to vote for them, nor is it intended to, David. It is for the future, in two or three years, when these average people start taking their reactionary blinders off and feel betrayed by their resentment-guided leaders and directionless. Then they can look up and see that their President is an informed churchgoer who has humility and no superiority, a soul who was not fooled or led astray by worldly resentments and misjudgments pretended to be the essence of Christianity.

So then according to the last post, Mr Huckabee will be the next President. “If” America is looking for another good man to put into the White House.
Vitriol towards Christians that do not compromise Christ for degenerates to be be momentarily sated, is noted, but at least some people recognize the inherent worth of a real Christian that does not trade the Gospel for a place at Hollywood parties. If only the Dems had people that didn’t look at Christianity as another group of socialist slaves to dupe.

Are we taking the name of the Lord in vain when we use it for personal or political gain? Should we not proclaim His name for the sake of his Kingdom-a spiritual rather than an earthly one? When we show mercy and love to those who are less fortunate, do we do it for His sake or do we do it to elevate ourselves and our own agendas? Do we do it publically, so all can see it as the Pharisees did? Or worse yet, do we do it for our own selfish purposes and misrepresent it as the Lord’s? Do we delude ourselves (and others) by procaiming we are serving God and proclaiming His name as well as His blessing and imprimatur for our actions? Do we end up prostituting our faith?
These are questions for Republicans and Democrats alike. I am a Christian who happens to be an independent that agrees with most of the Republican social agenda. However, I have not hesitated to vote for a Democrat when I have concerns about competency as I did in the last two Presidential elections. Nonetheless, I initially was very attracted by the public confession of faith by our President, his sprinkling of “Christian cathchwords” in his speeches which I thought were a public witness of Christ, and his vision of “compassionate conservatism.” However, like many others, I feel very betrayed by the poor ethical conduct, lack of moral leadership, and yes, lack of comapssion for those who are less fortunate (think Katrina and Iraq) practiced by many in this administration who call themselves Christians and were given a special opportunity by our Lord to serve Him-not the Republican party. I have found that when I tell non-Christians that I am a practicing Christian I need to distance myself from many of the Rove/Bush policies and actions. Sadly, my non-Christian friends cannnot, nor should they, see Christ when these men have used Christ to promote their own agenda.
Christ asked us to follow Him-even to take up our cross for Him. Another poster previously said faith and politics are inextricably intertwined. This should true be true for all parts of our lives even for those who serve in our government whehther they be civil servants or elected officials. However, serving Christ does not necessarily mean serving a particular political party. The converse is even more true. Both Fascists and Communists have used blind party allegiance to lead citizens and governments astray as we have witnessed in Germany, Russia, and China in the 20th century. James has said that faith without works is dead. Authentic faith thus leads to authentic action. I have trouble seeing the authentic faith of someone like a Peter Marshall when I look at the actions of Karl Rove and President Bush. It may be there somewhere, but it seems to be covered by a veil of ambition and pride.

To Donny: oh, I’m so reminded of the parable of the splinter and the fence post in the eye!
About Mammon, the leader of your fine Party declared the wealthiest and the CEOs the people he is most loyal to. Have a look at a notorious clip at a dinner for CEOs in New York in 2000:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mn4daYJzyls You can sadly predict the future of “compassionate conservatism” from that clip. “Some call you elite. I call you my base.”
The rest of your claims are quite laughable- the Waltons, the Coors, and a hundred other reactionary, mostly Anglosaxon, wealthy corporate-owning families are aligned with the Republican Party, with between three and ten times as much of American wealth locked up between them as between the Democratic upper middle class, the few New England Brahmin families, and “Hollywood” aka the Jewish-American wealth you allude to in a coded anti-Semitic fashion. Bush and Cheney are from the corporate-owning class in Dallas, from Enron and Halliburton and Williams and El Paso, the people who gouged generally the most deregulated, i.e. Republican, regions of California for $10 billion for electricity in 2001. Who do you think Bush and Cheney golf with? (Cheney has been identified as telling the Republican Federal Energy Commission chairman to stop an FEC report that showed Williams Energy was starting to create artificial electricity shortages at the time.)
About Moloch…your side is the one of killing in the name of the state, and sometimes not even that. Executions of criminals are gratuitous, but it’s always Republicans insisting on more of them. Under Reagan and Bush Sr. the Department of Justice investigated not a single lynching or murder of black people in the South during or before the Civil Rights times- that was license for murderers. It’s your side that cheerled into war in Iraq for imaginary reasons. It’s your side that revels in weapons fetishism and battlefield pornography. It’s your side that loves counts of enemy fighters (sic) killed, that loves overkilling methods, and then suppresses the count of civilians killed by American actions. Death is an honored deity on your side, greatly worshipped by fantasies of bloody revenge and apocalypticism, by fervent dreams of Rapture and destruction, by existential fear that various Third World peoples will take one-for-one (or worse) revenge for all of themselves killed by Americans during the Cold War.
One thing that was noted about the Christian Right in 2004 was that not one group had a policy platform mentioning torture. Efforts to get policy statements out of them were unsuccessful. There is also the interesting fact that “waterboarding” was declared a war crime by American courts in 1946/47, when performed by Japanese military men on American servicemen (i.e. captured Doolittle Raid airmen) in United States v Sawada. It was punished by 5 years imprisonment up the military command chain, to General Sawada, and stopped there only because his higherups were no longer alive. In our times, by the same logic we would have to imprison Rumsfeld at least, and probably Bush and Cheney, 5 years per incident….
I’m happy to discuss abortion. We’ll start with who is the Party of abortion, who is a hypocrite, and compare actual rates of equal groups. I’ll start with George Walker Bush and the abortion that his then-girlfriend Robin Lowman had in 1971. If you do assume every voter not for a complete abortion ban is a Democratic voter, I hate to inform you that the Republican Party has only 25% of voters with it. In fact, Democrats split 60/40 on the present abortion laws, Republicans 40/60. Independents split 60/40, the national split on Roe v Wade is 55/~35-40 and trending farther in favor of upholding it.
It was a 45/45 tie nationally since the late Seventies until Sandra Day O’Connor handed in her offer of resignation almost exactly two years ago. The 10% wavering voters swung in favor of upholding Roe then. When Alito was confirmed the 45% in favor of overturning Roe softened further. Hard polling says that the proportion of people seriously in favor of a complete abortion ban is now about 25%. Another 10% say they want a complete ban less convincingly, and on more questioning they do want, err, wiggle room in cases of rape, incest, and unwanted or problem pregnancies their own family members. About 10% want abortions made harder to get, but not much change in who should be permitted to get them. The piquant Democratic short version on Republican polling and talking and abortions of Republican women is “No abortion should be permitted…except mine.”
I’ll be happy to give you a link to a thread on that Evil Website, DailyKos, where clinic workers describe how many anti-abortion activists and protesters they’ve seen get abortions (in some cases multiple times) and go right back to running their National Right To Life chapter or the picket lines at the clinic. There’s a reason many fervent “pro-life” activists are not greatly in favor of opening all the medical records on abortion. It’s also remarkable how many of the frontline anti-abortion activists are said to view themselves as unwanted children who believe their mother intended to abort them, a paranoia which is claimed to constitute their most fundamental motivation. It is true for a friend of mine. (By the way, considering your lurid imagination, does an pinhead-sized embryo of say a few hundred or thousand cells have any perceptible blood? I don’t believe so.)
The part most relevant to your critique, Donny, and view of paganism is the American ‘pro-life’ theory of the human fetus. It is construed to be perfect in the ‘pro-life’ view, embued with the properties of consciousness and soul. Of course, the consciousness doesn’t actually exist before a certain point in development, and evidence of soul is only found through consciousness. Imputing such completion to e.g. a one cell zygote is a pagan carry-over from plant fertility cultism. In agrarian plant fertility cultism, the seed is a perfect object and venerated. The adult plant is important to the point that it carries matured fruit/seed, then the purpose of its life is achieved and its life no longer of value, so that killing it (for food or straw) is reasonable. Likewise, the ‘pro-life’ side in its internal teachings and beliefs treats the life of the fetus as all-important (as seed it contains all useful life) and life of the woman carrying it as no longer of particular value (as adult plant her only importance is to create fruit/seed). Thus the ‘pro-life’ side fetishizes pictures of developed foeti and never shows pictures of the women. It is not a Christian theology at heart, it’s a pre-Christian one. Famously it has no element of real compassion for either the women or children once they are born.
As fertility and its worship goes, exceedingly large families seem generally on your side of the fence. The excuses for it seem to revolve around creating or maintaining superiority of race, tribe, and/or religion, though when crude parental egotism and incapacity involved is accounted for these claims are often hard to take seriously. The children, sensible as they are to bad parenting and decrepit ideals, tend to walk away from such foolishness. I find it quite amusing whenever fervent Republicans- invariably older male white ones- claim they will prevail by outpopulating us few-child Liberals. Their wives, children, and grandchildren apparently treat such talk as we once did: with an eyeroll and a knowing little smile.
As for objectionable or unusual sexual behavior, Donny, your side is winning hands down. Whether it’s David Vitter in diapers with prostitutes, Rudi Giuliani’s WTC nest for adultery, Mark Foley hunting down teen boys under legal age, Young Republican leader Glenn Murphy attacking sleeping young men (he has a record of multiple occurences) in ways that Republican state Representative Bob Allen would gladly pay consenting ones to do, or Young Republican leader Michael Flory convicted of rape at a Young Republican convention, it’s making headlines. Or should we point to Mary Cheney, who has both sex and a child out of wedlock, whose partner is accepted in private by her eminent (ugh) parents, to nary a whisper of notice or objection out of the Republican propaganda outlets. There’s the known homosexual Bill Kristol making the rounds as a Republican, talking up the Republican war in Iraq, to no comment. There’s the known homosexual Grover Norquist, still making the rounds as a Republican talking up tax cuts, to no comment. There’s the known homosexual Ken Mehlman, quietly vanished as RNC Chair iirc since the big debacle of the ’06 elections, to no comment. Phil English, Jim McCrery, and Larry Craig are still Republicans in Congress and known to be gay. Where is your outrage at all the hypocrisy? I’m not sure how much of the selfdescribed gay vote Republicans will require before admitting to gay Republicans being one of their voting blocs, but 23% of a supposed 6-8 million votes in the November 2004 elections – i.e. easily more than a million votes, perhaps closer to two million- went to Bush. They were very largely those of gay men, btw; lesbian women voted almost exclusively Democratic.
There are some interesting rumors floating around about your political comrade-in-arms Brian Camenker (“MassResistance”), by the way. It’s been noticed that when he thinks no one’s watching he stares at and then quickly looks away from handsome young men in public places. He wouldn’t be the first or the last….
But I should say I’m not here merely to cross swords with you, Donny. I feel you deserve to be shown that your easy certainties and a variety of righteousness you claim are not well founded, that your attacks on what you fear and dislike are too lacking of compassion and information. That is not to say I hold the side I take for perfection or believe I am in the right on all things, nor have I shown you enough kindness due you or others here, and I regret that. Perhaps it is time for me to step back somewhat.

Karl Rove does not have any religious beliefs–he is atheist and has said so publicly. But he walks around mouthing what he has cleverly figured out are the codewords for automated response from Bush’s religious base, like he’s saying an incantation.
Doesn’t it feel icky to know that he managed to pull the wool over the eyes of so many of you out there, simply by using the “Bible-Believ’in-Christian-Values-Voter” brand of faith’s deepest fears and prejudices to get your vote?
Didn’t Jesus say something about “beware false prophets”?

Some of the comments posted here are so angry and full of contempt that they really seem to miss Christ’s message. I am amazed, but not surprised.

Paul,
If we, as brothers and sisters in Christ with Rove and Bush, feel this way about their actions, can you imagine how those, who do not share a common faith and value system, must feel? I forgive (with difficulty) but I do not condone hypocricy, arrogance, misrepresentation,injustice,cruelty, and torture.

Paul of Potomac: The anger and contempt to which I was referring is reflected in statments like this: “Vitriol towards Christians that do not compromise Christ for degenerates to be be momentarily sated, is noted, but at least some people recognize the inherent worth of a real Christian that does not trade the Gospel for a place at Hollywood parties.” This seems like a most un-Christian thought. It leaves me thinking that the author is the true degenerate. Luckily we have him to usurp God’s place and judge others.

Thanks Paul for the clarification. Agree with you that we need to have a more Christ-like discourse on these discussions. I am reminded by the saying of a German theologian, Peter Meiderlin, who wrote after the Thirty Years War in the 16th Century “In Essentials, Unity; in Non-essentials, Liberty; in All Things, Charity.”

Paul, Jillian, et al
Reacting to the kind of stuff that some posters routinely write certainly helps clear the old sinuses – like a sniff of hot peppers – but it doesn’t help. Such people cannot – for reasons we do not understand – look beyond their narrow certainty. I recall someone saying that the most dangerous people in the world are those that think they are absolutely right about God – it gives them power they do not possess. I find myself reacting with anger and then I usually – but not always – erase the post. Jillian – wow – that was some answer – I could see those fingers flying on that one. Remember – never talk down to a really smart woman – it’ll bite you in the butt later. At least that’s what I told my sons.
Charity requires that we forget ourselves. That Jesus asks so much of us!!

Thinker: Thank you. I agree that the most dangerous people are those that think they are absolutely right about God. Unfortunately we see that in many of the public faces of Christianity (think Dobson). They scare people that might otherwise be receptive to Christ’s teachings. They take unto themselves the right (or obligation) to judge others, and otherwise seem to value the institution of the Church over the Christ’s teaching.

Thank you for clarifying who/when/why this “who-is-a-real-Christian political leader” thing started! I am 72-years-young with a American Baptist/Presbyterian/Methodist background and I cannot recall when this became such an issue. I thought after the ’50′s search for “commies” and electing a Catholic in the ’60s, we had grown past such thinking. It looks like “not in my lifetime”! –Barbara, Phoenix

There is absolutely nothing Christian about Karl Rove. In fact, he is the antithesis of all that Christ stood and died for. Anyone who doesn’t realize that has a very twisted idea of our Lord and should get spiritual counseling from a real Christian. I would suggest someone who is actually doing Christian work such as those helping the sick, hungry, or poor. I would not suggest getting couseling from a “Christian” whose actions produced the sick, the hungry, and the poor. Karl Rove has done more to lline the pockets of his rich friends at the expense of the poor than anyone in my memory. If that runs counter to your beliefs, then I’d have to say you are deluding yourself and you should examine why you feel you need to do so. I’d ask, “How are you hurting or helping your fellow man?” Karl Rove gave Christians a bad name and I resent it beyond words.

Will Hirsch is absolutely right!
Is David Kuo condemning or praising Rowe? Or is he sitting on the fence? In any case, he seems very confused and self-contradictory.
There is nothing “spiritual” about a president and an administration that ends up killing more than 100,000 people (including nearly 4,000 American citizens), that spends hundreds of billions of dollars for destruction and death, that plunges the world’s richest nation into abysmal debt, and that ignores the crying needs of its own people.
I am appalled that Beliefnet would publish this rubbish.

Jillian,
That was a fantastic write-up re: the demonology of the right.

Without justifying some of the more lurid rumors above, I’d prefer to focus back on Rove.
What is it with you and Michael Gerson (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/16/AR2007081601685.html) portraying Rove as a Hubert Humphrey “Happy Warrior”? If that’s how he genuinely seemed to you in the White House, why did he come across as such a lying, scheming … well, b*stard to Democrats and, by the end, many Republicans as well?
Unless he’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in disguise (possible), either you and Gerson or the American public is wrong. I think you know who I’m betting on (sorry) …

According to Christopher Hitchens, Karl Rove is a professed atheist so perhaps you can see his cynical manipulation of religious faithful.

A man as cynical and ruthless in his pursuit of power as Karl Rove is not a believer, even if he claims to be.
But it seems he doesn’t claim to be.
He’s just happy to use religious folks to achieve his ends, which is not righteousness but power.
Bush may claim to be a believer in his heart, but his “brain” turns out to have a different set of values.