As politicians such as Tony Blair found out, mention God while in office and people start sniggering and thinking you have gone soft in the head but in America it is actively encouraged to name drop the big guy every chance you get but this seems to be causing a few sticky moments for two of the Presidential candidates.
First came Barack Obama's pastor, Jeremiah Wright, with his interesting take on Aids and his call for God to damn America. Now it emerges that a pastor with links to John McCain, John Hagee, who has some interesting views of his own.
Senator McCain sought the endorsement of Rev Hagee but it didn't take long to throw up remarks he had made claiming that Hitler was doing Gods work and described the Catholic Church as The Great Whore.
To his credit and aware of the damage suffered by a dithering Obama over the Rev Wright affair, Mr McCain quickly described the comments as "crazy and unacceptable".
To those of us outside of America, the rantings of a televangelist are used only to make the point about just how destructive religion can be in America, when an Arch-Bishop sticks his oar in over political matters in the UK he is patronisingly told to sit down, shut up and go back to counting his candles.
The relationship between religion and politics is fraught with danger, it can also place in the spotlight the beliefs of the candidates and as Obama and now McCain are finding out, you really can be judged by the company you keep and they would both do well to keep the God fearing community at arms length.
9 comments:
Generally speaking, I'd say that both extremes of the religious question are equally as dangerous.
True but haven't read of any atheists causing either of them problems yet.
Makes you wonder how much Church and State REALLY are separated at times...
All these nutters coming out of the woodwork - it's almost funny!
In the states a politician is really forced into some kind of declaration of faith. That's not new, but the whole thing has been so ratcheted up by the Republican dependence on the Religious Right as their voting base. That's newer. It's gotten real ugly. The McCain called people who were less extreme than Hagee (at least in public) "agents of intolerance" a few years ago and won the hearts of a lot of indepents. Now he has to crawl back to them for their GOTV efforts.
Since when has Republican reliance, in part, on religious people been new? It's been like that since all those people gave up on the Democratic Party and voted for Reagan over Carter.
Perhaps bible-bashing is America's main underlying problem?
Perhaps if they gave up believing in 'incarnations of childish superstitions' (as Einstein described all religions), they might emerge from the Dark Ages wherein they currently reside!
Cheers!
effay, the Reagan era is when it really got going. That still seems new to me. Anything that happened after, say, 1975 seems recent. There are still movies from the 80's that I haven't gotten around to seeing yet.
Lucy,
I'm know you aren't saying that atheists like Stalin, Lenin, Mao and Ziopang have been harmless in their governing... so I'm guessing you forgot about them?
Q
Would be news indeed if Stalin, Lenin, Mao or Xiaoping began causing problems for either of them Q.
Not forgotten, just not anything to do with this post concerning who is causing problems for Obama or McCain.
Post a Comment