The upcoming Presidential election
Wednesday, March 24th, 2004The upcoming Presidential election…
…will not be nearly as much about the war against terrorism or tax cuts as it will be a referendum on the importance of faith in our country.
Case in point…a recent article from the very left-leaning magazine The Nation…
Many of these same political activists turned up in November to celebrate President Bush’s signing of the “partial birth” abortion ban. About this happy moment, Jerry Falwell, in a burst of characteristic hogwash, wrote:
After having a wonderful time of fellowship with President Bush, the president asked if we could all join hands and pray that God will bless our efforts to preserve life in our land. What an astounding moment this was for me personally. Standing there in the Oval Office I felt suddenly humbled to be in the presence of a man–our president–who takes his faith very seriously and who seeks the prayers of his friends as he leads our nation. Following the prayer, I told President Bush the people in the room represent about 200,000 pastors and 80 million believers nationwide, who consider him not only to be our president but also a man of God. He humbly turned to me and replied, “I’ll try to live up to it.”
The bold calculation of electoral power, the canny conflation of a sectarian agenda with divisive presidential politics, the syrup of piety poured over both–this is Bush’s America, a country where fundamentalism thrives in the chaos of non-meaning in secular public space. Richard Land has said, “We’re in this for the long haul, and the people on the other side had best understand…we’re winning.” I’m not sure about that, but to prove him wrong we have to be sure we say what we mean, and mean what we say–on the campaign trail, in Congress and in our courts.
It’s hard to follow all of this thanks to the nonsensical wordiness of the writing (with alliteration thrown in at no charge!) but it’s not hard to follow the deeply secular, anti-Christian tone of it.
