Religion And Politics Don’t Mix Anti-Pharisaism: Christians Should Tread Carefully Into The World Of Politics

Contrary to popular belief, Jesus was not a Republican. Nor did he hang out with the religious moralizers of his day. He lambasted them. See Matthew, chapter 23. He wasn’t into politics, he was into personal compassion, service and redemption. He used persuasion, not coercion. His approach benefits from civil liberties, a fact his followers regularly forget.

Jesus said the poor always would be with us. He might have added the Pharisees would be, too. Pharisees thought the coercive power of law could achieve religious goals. Their modern descendents inject religion into politics, an error that spawned some of history’s ugliest abuses: The Dark Ages. The not-so-Holy Roman Empire. The Crusades. The Inquisition. The persecution of Jews. The Salem witch trials.

With a track record like that, you’d think the church would grow wary of politics, might stick to its more constructive roles in history. Yet today, American politics crawls with conspicuous Christians who are fond of firearms, shrill about other people’s sexual sins, harsh toward the poor, cozy with environmental plunderers, censorious toward the arts, suspicious of education and convinced that ritualistic public prayer can restore faith. If Pharisaism could make Jesus mad, this modern version might make him weep.

All who would blend religion with politics encounter a pitfall: Religion settles black-and-white issues with dogma, absolutism and faith. Politics settles subjective issues through reason, power struggle and compromise.

In Washington’s Legislature, conservative Christians form a voting bloc that refuses to compromise on complex secular issues about which reasonable people differ. This threatens to isolate them, split the Republican caucus and paralyze needed reform.

Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., the Christian Coalition has handed Congress a 10-point “Contract with the American Family.” Careful, Newt.

Democracy has to tolerate voices like these, and search for merit in their recommendations. But it can ill afford to grant them power to dictate policy. American government must respect people of all persuasions, not only the loudest of the countless Christian sects. So subjective are most political issues that the only god zealots can guarantee they speak for is one carved in their own image.

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