Only one way to be Christian?

We can be the party that makes it clear that Christianity and

Christian faith cannot be made the exclusive property of particular
ideological positions, no matter how often our opponents attempt to
make that link. We can be the party where people can come as they are
in their relationships with God, come as they are without the risk of
being judged for their ways of being religious.

Last week’s edition of Florida Baptist Witness, the newspaper of the Florida Baptist State Convention, carried an interview
with Republican congresswoman Katherine Harris. Now a candidate for the
U.S. Senate, the former Florida Secretary of State (and major player in
the 2000 presidential recount) shared some of her views on faith and
politics:

"…we have to have the faithful in
government and over time, that lie we have been told, the separation of
church and state, people have internalized, thinking that they needed
to avoid politics and that is so wrong because God is the one who
chooses our rulers."

"If you are not electing
Christians, tried and true, under public scrutiny and pressure, if
you’re not electing Christians then in essence you are going to
legislate sin." 

Apart from the fact that
Congresswoman Harris seems to have been taking lessons in grammar from
the president she helped elect, her comments might explain why, in a
recent poll in my home state of Arizona, 85% of respondents said they
don’t want "religious and political zealots telling them how to live."

I read Harris’ comments on the same day that I was teaching my students at Santa Clara University
about Father Charles Curran, a Catholic priest censured by the Vatican
in 1986 for progressive views on abortion and homosexuality. At first,
the two cases seem to have little in common. But in both instances, we
find authority figures arguing that there is only one right way
to articulate Christian faith in the context of public life. For
Harris, to be a Christian is to be pro-life and anti-gay rights, to
believe that Terri Schiavo should have been kept in a permanent
vegetative state. Disagree on any of those issues, Harris seems
implicitly to be arguing, and you no longer deserve the title Christian.

And
here, I think, Democrats have a rhetorical "in." We can be the party
that makes it clear that Christianity and Christian faith cannot be
made the exclusive property of particular ideological positions, no
matter how often our opponents attempt to make that link. We can be the
party where people can come as they are in their relationships with
God, come as they are without the risk of being judged for their ways
of being religious.

If Katherine Harris’ Republican
Party is the party of only those Christians who successfully pass
litmus test after litmus test, can’t we be the party of all those other
Christians who struggle with their faith, who sometimes may even doubt
their faith, and who express that faith in a host of different ways?

That’s
not relativism; it’s acknowledging that Christ speaks more languages
than the sometimes wooden English of the King James Bible.

p.s. And about the "lie" of the separation of church and state? The readers of the Florida Baptist Witness might well consider a passage in their own church’s statement of belief, The Baptist Faith and Message:
"Church and state should be separate. The state owes to every church
protection and full freedom in the pursuit of its spiritual ends."