Religion and Politics in Presidential Elections: The Toxic Influence of Religion in Recent Presidential Elections

By Victor Wan-Tatah

My frustration and disappointment with the media coverage of the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections prompted me to write this book. I feel strongly about correcting the misinformation, the presentation of fabrications as truth, and the blatant demonizing of the experiences and perspectives of others. I made up my mind that I wanted to address these issues the best way that I know how. Politics involving religion and moral issues, particularly in the areas of Christianity, African American religion, and Black Liberation Theologyare my areas of interest and expertise. At different times, I have taught classes at the university level involving these topics, and with the encouragement of my students, I wish to address them in this book. Drilling down to the root cause of the anti-Obama rhetoric coming from Republicans and Christian conservatives not only provided useful talking points for my introductory course in Africana Studies, but the issue became personal and convinced me to embark on this project.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 14, 2012
• ISBN: 9781479704026

Victor Wan-Tatah

Dr. Victor Wan-Tatah is Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Youngstown State University, and Director of the Africana Studies Program. He is a two-time recipient of the Distinguished Professor Award and former President of the Youngstown State University Chapter of the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society, former President of the Black faculty and staff Association(BFSA) of the University, and recipient of the Mary Bethune Award by the Youngstown Chapter of the Association of Negro Women. He is currently a Board member of the Ohio North East Health System, where he served as Board chair., and is a member of the University Diversity Council.

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RELIGION AND POLITICS

IN PRESIDENTIAL

ELECTIONS

The Toxic Influence of Religion in Recent Presidential Elections

Victor Wan-Tatah

Copyright © 2012 by Victor Wan-Tatah.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2012915624

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4797-0401-9

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4797-0400-2

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4797-0402-6

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Contents

PREFACE

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1       THE TAP-ROOT OF AFRICAN AMERICAN RELIGION

CHAPTER 2       ATTACKERS OF OBAMA AS THE ANTITHESIS OF CHRISTIAN AMERICA

CHAPTER 3       DEMAGOGUES AND FALSE PROPHETS

CHAPTER 4       THE MORMON FACTOR

CHAPTER 5       THE DELUSIONARY PACKAGING OF GLENN BECK

CHAPTER 6       THE HOLISTIC MINISTRY OF TRINITY UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST

CHAPTER 7       RE-APPRAISAL OF BLACK POWER AND BLACK LIBERATION THEOLOGY

CONCLUSION

ENDNOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PREFACE

M Y FRUSTRATION AND disappointment with the media coverage of the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections prompted me to write this book. I feel strongly about correcting the misinformation, the presentation of fabrications as truth, and the blatant demonizing of the experiences and perspectives of others. I made up my mind that I wanted to address these issues the best way that I know how. Politics involving religion and moral issues, particularly in the areas of Christianity, African American religion, and Black Liberation Theology—are my areas of interest and expertise. At different times, I have taught classes at the university level involving these topics, and with the encouragement of my students, I wish to address them in this book. Drilling down to the root cause of the anti-Obama rhetoric coming from Republicans and Christian conservatives not only provided useful talking points for my introductory course in Africana Studies, but the issue became personal and convinced me to embark on this project.

I received a great deal of encouragement as well as assistance from a number of colleagues and friends eager to contribute to my research. I owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Bruce Waller, Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religions Studies who was both a source of constant encouragement and knowledge; Dr. Mark C. Vopat whose timely intervention at different times helped me to save and compress the manuscript; and Dr. Julia M. Gergits and Benita Pearson, Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, who offered critical and helpful suggestions. Sociology professor Dr. Denise Narcisse at Youngstown State University not only contributed by her willingness to be interviewed for Chapter six but also helped me to see a new perspective on the quality of faith at Trinity United Church of Christ. And most importantly, I thank Kimberley Graves for editing the manuscript under a tight deadline. I would also like to commend Ms. Goldie Dawson of Xlibris and her corrections team for their patience and dedication during the production stage of the book. Last, but not least, I am grateful to Youngstown State University for the Faculty Improvement Leave of Fall 2011, which enabled me to begin work on my research.

I sincerely hope that this book will help to clarify and educate the general audience and specialists in related disciplines about some of the contentious issues that might have made them wonder or doubt where the truth was, or whether there was another side to be heard. Regardless of one’s particular faith or party affiliation, we must always be reminded that no one owns the truth, and that no one political party has any entitlement to the knowledge of God than the other.

Victor Wan-Tatah

Youngstown, Ohio

FOREWORD

O NE OF THE most fascinating facets in the history of interpretations of American democracy is that outsiders often do it better than we do ourselves. The most dramatic example, of course, is that of a sophisticated young French aristocrat who journeyed here in the early 19th century and wrote a book that still contains insights about our society and its curious (to Europeans) interweaving of politics and religion that have never been surpassed. I refer of course to a gentleman who bore the striking name Alexis-Charles-Henri Clerel de Toqueville. His classic Democracy in America, which was first published in two volumes in 1835 and 1840 recounts his travels through America and his astonishingly lucid insights into American culture and politics. His observations were so pertinent that when I studied at Harvard in the 1960’s under that luminous interpreter of American society David Riesman (author of The Lonely Crowd), Toqueville’s book was one of the mainstays of the course. Nothing really important, Reisman suggested, despite wars and immigrations and economic cycles had changed since then in the underlying fabric of our way of life since that young Frenchman’s travels here.

I am not suggesting here that Victor Wan-Tatah is a 21st century Toqueville. History will make that distinction. Nor am I implying that Wan-Tatah is either an aristocrat or a foreign visitor. He is neither. A native of Africa, he is now an American citizen who has lived here for twenty-five years. He is presently the director of the Africana Studies Program and Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Youngstown State University. Still, he has the advantage of looking at America through eyes that belong to something of an acute observer who has not been embedded in what he sees from childhood. But Wan-Tatah has more than that to offer. He was my student during his doctoral studies at Harvard where he specialized in analyzing the intricate interaction of religion, politics and culture. Consequently, in this well researched and readable book he combines both the advantageous perspective of a participant-observer with the analytic skills of a trained scholar of the phenomenon he is describing. The result, as the reader will see, is a volume that will bring a light from a fresh perspective on a subject that has already suffered from an overabundance of analysis, some of it excellent but much of it superficial and biased. Wan-Tatah combines both the long view and a close-up. He can spot both fundamental trends and passing trivia and knows how to distinguish between the two. His topic could not be timelier.

We have just lived through a series of two hectic presidential campaigns in which religion became an unavoidable subject. From Barack Obama’s wrenching decision about how to handle his relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, to Mitt Romney’s equally vexing problem of how to interpret his Mormon faith in a country where many people are still skeptical about it, religion was constantly on view as a factor. When the moderator of the Vice Presidential debate mentioned that for the first time in history there were two contenders for the position both of whom were Roman Catholics, she then went on to ask each of them how, or whether, their faith influenced their thinking about the divisive question of abortion. But in addition to this hot button issue, other religious issues lurked just below the surface. Questions about the poor, about peace-making and about immigrants all evoke responses that draw on faith traditions.

The presidency, of course, is only an aspect of the immense and complicated thing we call American politics.But Wan-Tatah knows that focusing on the presidency can tell us a lot about all the rest. He also knows that in order to make sense of this current scene, one must see it in the long context of an American history in which politics, despite denials to the contrary, have always played an important role. Here again the comparison with Toqueville comes to mind. The young Frenchman came to the conclusion that it is simply impossible to understand American politics unless one understands American religion. He was deeply impressed by the way Americans organize their religious life in a free congregational form without state support, a form that requires them to participate in making vital decisions and that therefore serves as a kind of school for democracy in the larger society. He also sagely noted that participating in these congregations implanted in the American people certain habits of the heart without which democracy could not hope to survive.

Has America changed much since Toqueville wrote? The religion he observed was almost entirely the congregationally organized Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists and others. This year, however (2012) the census reported that for the first time in American history, Protestants are now a minority of 49%. Currently every Supreme Court judge is either Jewish or Roman Catholic. Not a single Protestant sits on the bench of the highest court in the land. Besides, we now have the mosque around the corner, the Hindu temple in the suburb and the Buddhist monastery a few miles away. At this level, at least, the profile of American religion has been radically altered. But somehow waves of immigrants have not seemed to alter the fundamentals of how religion, now we should probably say religions, impact American democracy.

The story of the dynamic dialectic of politics and religion in America is an ongoing narrative, and watching how future presidential contests will unfold will be fascinating. When will we have our first Muslim, Jewish or Buddhist president? Will we ever elect an atheist to the White House? Whatever happens in the decades to come at that level, we will be better prepared to understand it if we have a firm grasp of what has brought us here. In this respect Victor Wan-Tatah’s engaging book will serve us well.

Harvey Cox is Hollis Research Professor of Divinity at

Harvard University and the author of The Future of Faith.

Introduction

R ELIGION HAS BEEN understood in the West as a private affair that has little or nothing to do with other aspects of life. This is partly due to a lack of understanding of, or exposure to, the diverse religions of the World. Another reason may be the bias of scientifically-minded people who relegate religious phenomena or experience to silly superstition. In most cultures, religion is a subject that is not in dispute as it is in the West, perhaps because of Americans’ distinctive affirmation of its volatile nature. Therefore, when religion has been brought into close contact with another potentially inflammatory topic, politics, there is the increased likelihood of an explosion of emotion, of close friends becoming enemies, over seemingly trivial or significant matters that cannot be easily resolved. In American Democracy, we affirm the importance of keeping these two potential enemies apart through a clear separation of Church and State as laid out in the Constitution. However, a crossing of the boundary between the two still frequently occurs. The experiences of the first settlers in the New World, the Puritans, influenced the precise clause in the Constitution of the United States that spells out the separation of the spheres. Who were they? The Puritans were highly religious people who could not bear state mandated religions.

They sought to escape persecution in Europe and a find a place where they could exercise their religious faith freely, but that did not mean that religion would be excluded from the public square altogether. The First Amendment of the Constitution makes it quite clear Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Furthermore, in Article VI, it states no religious test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any public Office or public Trust under the United States.

The general consensus of the discussion that preceded the framing of the Amendment June 7 through September 25, 1789, appears to be that the Founders did not want any denomination to be singled out as the National Church, as was the Anglican Church in England. However, they never intended for Christian principles to be entirely excluded from the new government. The notion of the Wall separating Church and State, which is most commonly cited to emphasize the secular nature of the State by some secular thinkers, misses the point of the declaration first introduced by Thomas Jefferson. In other words, his statement meant to stave off the dangers of religious exclusivity and encourage vigorous debate from the public square about how best to apply moral principles that stem from a variety of faiths. During the Danbury Baptist Association of 1801, a rumor circulated that the Congressionalist denomination was considered as the nationally recognized religion. This caught the attention of President Jefferson who wrote to the Baptist Church assuring them The First Amendment has erected a wall of separation between Church and State. The idea of separation, however, was put forth in 1644 by Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island.

Robert Bellah who is among the most influential commentators on religion and American public life best articulated the accommodation of religion in the public square in his introduction of the idea of Civil Religion, a nonsectarian faith that uses sacred symbols and religious references in events such as the inauguration of the President and the swearing in of jurors in court. The penetration of religion into the public square or in politics goes beyond these utterances and symbolic gestures. The discussion on politics and religion involves principal actors, the expression of one’s beliefs, and the linking of one’s political views to a religious system or a religiously justifiable ethical position. Furthermore, religious activism in America engages a variety of organizations and individuals with differing Christian denominations and values who wish to exert influence on social or political issues, including prayer in schools, same-sex marriage and abortion. There are numerous civic associations loosely connected with faith groups that project their social and ethical views, while also caring and advocating for the poor and powerless. They include Catholic faith-based organizations such as S. Vincent de Paul Society, Catholic Charities, the Knights of Columbus, and the Social Justice Committees of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. On the Protestant side, liberal and ecumenical organizations also advocate for social change and justice, but they are often located in their respective denominational or local congregations.

One of the most productive periods in American history is the Civil Rights Movement, which resulted in lasting, positive changes with regard to minority groups. These movements advanced the rights of Blacks and women, but also helped to lead a substantial divide between liberals and conservatives, a divide that remains to this day. The 1960s contribution of Evangelicals led to greater social consciousness through the mobilization for Social Action and the publication of The Other Side, and Sojourner magazines. These publications provided inspiration and insight for many groups. However, it is impossible to discuss American democracy and the leading forces of lasting change without paying tribute to clergy, both black and white, from main religious groups in the United States. The vision and courage of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. drove clergy, and laypeople actively involved in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, to lead the way to desegregation of the Southern United States. Some of the other notable clergy involved in dismantling segregation include The Reverends Andrew Young, Fred Shuttlesworth, Wyatt T. Walker, Joseph Lowery, and Jesse Jackson. Leaders of the Civil Rights Movement also included laypeople actively involved in their church auxiliaries. One influential Civil Rights leader, whose faith made a difference even though she was not a clergy, was Fannie Lou Hamer. With only a sixth-grade education, she dedicated herself to the Bible and applied its principles to guide her activities in the SNCC (Southern National Christian Convention).

The Christian political activism that followed the liberal and extensive infusion of the Evangelical/black Church era of the Civil Rights Movement began as a fundamentalist resurgence in the late 1970s called the Moral Majority. ¹ Leaders among the Moral Majority, including Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Oral Roberts, used the mass media to deliver a conservative brand of Christian messages while advocating for the election of Republican leadership that embraced their views on sensitive political issues. Another factor related to understanding the relationship between religion and politics in America and one of the major influences in Protestant political discourse is contained in the doctrine of Christian realism. A concept of realism developed by Reinhold Niebuhr, an American Protestant theologian, came from the awareness that human activity in the realm of politics will always be imperfect, and marred by the sin factor. Its main focus is not so much the ideal of some utopian model of perfection, rather what is factual and feasible. Realism is an attitude guided by a certain measure of skepticism toward any political solution without a good measure of compromise and accommodation of conflicting opinions.

Niebuhr’s reasoning makes the difference between Christian beliefs when expressed in their appropriate context and their application when moved into the political setting, as derived by St. Augustine, whom he rightly acknowledges as the first great realist in Western history:

Augustine’s conception of the evil which threatens the human community on every level is a corollary of his doctrine of selfhood. Self-love is the source of evil rather than some residual natural impulse which mind has not yet completely mastered. This excessive love of self, sometimes also defined as pride or superbia, is explained as the self’s abandonment of God as its true end and of making itself a kind of end. It is this powerful self-love or, in a modern term, egocentricity, this tendency of the self to make itself its own end or even to make itself the false center of whatever community it inhabits, which sows confusion into every human community. The power of self-love is more spiritual than the lusts of the body, of which Plato speaks; and it corrupts the processes of the mind more than Plato or Aristotle knew . . . .

Augustine’s description of the social effects of human egocentricity or self-love is contained in his definition of the life of the city of this world, the civitatisterrena, which he sees as commingled with the civitatisdei. The city of this world is dominated by self-love to the point of contempt for God; and it is distinguished from the civitatisdei which is actuated by the love of God to the point of contempt of self. This city is not some little city-state as it is conceived in classical thought. It is the whole human community on its three levels of the family, the commonwealth, and the world . . . . Augustine is a consistent realist in calling attention to the fact that the potential world community may have a common human reason but it speaks in different languages and Two men, each ignorant of each other’s language will find that dumb animals, though of a different species, could more easily hold intercourse than they, human beings though they be. ¹

In our contemporary setting, where radical conservative and fundamentalist Christians’ expressions continue to fill the airwaves, we must identify the driving force behind all these prophets of doom. Viewed within the framework of Augustine or Niebuhr, these are politicians whose worldview is shaped by strict adherence to the letter of the law when it comes to politicians.

Their understanding of Christianity is by and large individualistic, where private morality demands righteous ethical behavior for political actors, even though they, themselves, do not always practice what they preach. People are expected to love God and follow the Ten Commandments, to avoid reckless living, the sin of drunkenness, sexual promiscuity, and fiscal irresponsibility. Whenever there is a failure or disappointment, this group considers it to be an aberration or exception, rather than the rule. Unlike Christian realists, they fail to understand, or rather they underestimate, the destructive power of self-love, whether of the individual or of the community as a whole. As a Christian realist, the believer understands that individual ethical behavior is a struggle, and it is virtually impossible for a society to act selflessly, and no political party offers salvation. For the Christian realist, or those whose Christian calling is not confined to the Church ( the body of Christ), but explicitly designed and called to go into the world and make it like the Kingdom of God, there must be a way of reading or discerning of the times. It is not enough for the believer to ignore the rumblings and currents in political life. Therefore, when it comes to the interface between politics and the Christian religion, we must be guided by the politics of Jesus and the all-encompassing ethics of Love. The role of the theologian here comes remarkably close to what American theologian Stanley Hauerhaus calls theological politics. Although his approach differs from that of German theologian Jürgen