Monday, October 18, 2004

The Senator's God-Talk

Jonah Goldberg has a good fix on Kerry's religious talk. The excerpts begin with a quote from Senator Kerry:

"I think that everything you do in public life has to be guided by your faith, affected by your faith, but without transferring it in any official way to other people," Kerry explained repeatedly, usually prompted by the abortion issue. "I believe that I can't legislate or transfer to another American citizen my article of faith. What is an article of faith for me is not something that I can legislate on somebody who doesn't share that article of faith."

What I [Goldberg] object to is this: While Kerry says he's opposed to "legislating" his faith on abortion, he insists that he's in favor of legislating his faith elsewhere. He said more than once Wednesday night, and plenty of times on the stump, that faith must be backed up by deeds. His religious faith, he says, is "why I fight against poverty. That's why I fight to clean up the environment and protect this earth. That's why I fight for equality and justice. All of those things come out of that fundamental teaching and belief of faith."

So, let me get this straight. Fighting for the environment, equality, and education - in the name of God - is righteously doing the Lord's work, but abortion must be kept legal because otherwise we'd be legislating religion?

It seems to me that you shouldn't pick and choose at all. You shouldn't infringe on, say, the property rights of citizens out of religious convictions about a clean environment and then conveniently fall back on the argument that it would be outrageous to invoke religion when it comes to abortion. Either your faith informs your views or it doesn't.

I say you shouldn't pick and choose, but I understand that sometimes you have to - but in completely the opposite way John Kerry picks and chooses. Kerry invokes God's guidance on the little stuff, the easy stuff, the boilerplate. He turns his back to God on the big issue, abortion (and, with a wink, gay marriage).

It seems to me this is exactly backwards. God doesn't have a position on the minimum wage or Superfund, so politicians shouldn't feel the need to consult Him about that stuff. It's only on the grave fundamental questions in politics that God should speak to one's conscience. Thomas More didn't put his life on the line about how Henry VIII handled crop rotation.

And that's what I find a little galling about all of Kerry's God talk. Beyond the naked pandering of it, it's morally and religiously empty. He may talk about deeds backing up faith, but where his faith is unambiguous he wants no part of it. When it comes to the tough issues, what he really seems to want is grace on the cheap. It's as More said: "If honor were profitable, everybody would be honorable."

Kerry has had much to say about matters of faith lately, but he seems distinctly uncomfortable when he has to do so, and never goes deeper than vague references to the "Almighty". He gives the impression of a man just going through the motions because he knows it's expected of him. Doubtless he'd much rather be talking about something else and wouldn't be speaking of religious matters at all if there weren't votes out there to be mined.

Speaking of Senator Kerry and religion, a PowerLine reader asks: "Why is it that when President Bush goes to church it is to worship and when Senator Kerry goes to church it is to campaign? The Democrats are the ones hollering constantly about separation of church and state and they are the only ones on the national ticket attending church to campaign."

Yes, and they do it with great panache. John Kerry has probably been in church more in the last six weeks than he has in the last six months, at least if his church attendance is anything like his Senate attendance. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and other Democrats regularly use churches as political platforms. As Power Line notes: Is it legal? No. And a Republican who did it would be in trouble. Or, rather, the church where he campaigned would be.

Church/State separation Democrat style means that Democrats can use churches to preach politics, but Republicans can only use them for worship.