Faith and the Presidency

January 20, 2008

Here’s an interesting article by Jim Skillen that looks at the recent hub-bub about the religious claims from the various presidential candidates that places them squarely in the mainstream of American Civil Religion, more than anything else.

Skillen concludes:

…Separation of church and state is boilerplate. To express personal faith as a mode of character-witness and as a motivation for service is no longer unusual. To locate one’s faith within America’s civil religion is obligatory. But after that it is a quick and disconnected flight to most public policy issues.

What we have, then, in the campaign rhetoric is civil religion as ground for moral values and morality as ground for self-government. Yet as we know, the policy proposals offered by the candidates are as diverse as what liberal Democrats, conservative Republicans, and those in the middle have always offered. The common values of liberty, equality, and service open onto the familiar disputes about how much (or how little) government the self-governing people want.

What is missing from the candidates’ professions of Christian (and Mormon) faith is a philosophy of the political community that clarifies the responsibilities of government in relation to the responsibilities that belong to all the other institutions, organizations, and relationships of human society. What we need is a Christian public philosophy that connects directly to office holding, policy formulation, and governing. Americanism and the liberal political tradition do not generate such a philosophy, and that is why we have what we have.

Written by admin · Filed Under POLITICS, PUBLIC SQUARE