Like most British people there are definitely two sides to my perception of Americans. Firstly, I have to confess to a certain degree of admiration, almost envy. Everything about the US is so much bigger and more extreme than the UK. You are the world super power we Brits conquered other nations to be without having colonies. But on the other side I sometimes feel I don’t understand you, and that can lead to almost frustration.
When we don’t understand, it can lead to both confusion and at times a sense of attraction. I confess to feeling both having just watched a particularly impactful edition of the West Wing. In the story Bartlett winds up appointing an extreme right wing judge and an extreme left wing judge to the supreme court. The shows with a wistful moment which seems to welcome the partisanship of these two and the toleration of both as being really very American. As a member of what I believe is the worlds oldest continuous democracy I ought to be proud of that. After all I do believe in the sentiment that says “I disagree with what you say but would die for your right to say it”.
Real life mirrors that moment when the most vicious American election ever seemed to me to end in a most bizarre attempt at reconcilliation. But is it somewhat false for Kerry and Bush to attempt to be nice to each other now after all the mud-slinging of the campaign? Are Americans really united in their pride of their ability to create a phony civil war every few years and then unite once more? Is it right that my American cousins should attempt to be both so united and divided at the same time? Americans even have a system which registers voters according to whether they were democrat or republican. How is it that the most partisan nation is also the most patriotic?
Why is it that the fault lines run the way they do? White or black, old or young, gun owner or city dweller, north and south, educated and not, and most of all church goer or not seems to predict voting patterns far more than they ever would over here.
Jollyblogger is one of the few Christian blogs I have wanted to read over the last few weeks as to a brit the ringing endorsement of one candidate almost as “Gods annointed” seems wrong. There are probably almost as many Labour Christians as Conservative in the UK- possibly as we do not have any party that would agree with us on some of the moral issues of concern to most evangelicals.
Should Christianity be identified with republicanism? My instinct says no under, and yet if Bush is able to appoint his own supreme court justices and reverse Roe v Wade, then of course if he does it will be largely because the Christians voted for him. What if 1million UK Christians decided to vote with their conscience if we had someone we could vote for? I dont think my personal opposition to the current abortion free-for-all would be any surprise to most of my readers. I recently responded very brisquely to a pro-choicer who had said “but what about the suffering of the mother” when we discussed the implications of abortion to the most vulnerable human beings in our society (the unborn) “Look, say I drive home on a fast road and a young child runs into the road. I try to brake but realise I cant stop. I realise if I hit the child I will kill her. If I swerve to miss the child I will hit the tree, and due to my airbags and seatbelt am likely to be injured but probably survive. Do I swerve or do I hit the child?” But I am not sure that in America I would feel comfortable campaigning for the republicans, certainly not if I was a preacher.
Jollyblogger expresses the dilemna well and once again I find we have been mulling over similar subjects! He says “Somehow we’ve got to extricate ourselves from the current public perception that evangelicals are simply an arm of the Republican party.” I might have left it there as a Brit, but he displays the dilemna of the American Christian by saying “At the same time, we have to bring the gospel to bear on political issues. How we do both I’m not sure – it’s a tension we just have to keep working through.”
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