Barry Lynn and Religious Liberty

Rev. Barry Lynn has his heart in the right place, I think: he’s wary of religion overstepping its bounds in the public square.  But as the director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, he seems a bit too eager to slam the legitimate incorporation of faith into politics.

A Dallas Morning News article from this past weekend quotes Lynn chiding presidential candidates for stepping up the faith talk this election:

“When you have Democrats and Republicans hiring ethics and religion advisers – that is to say spin doctors – it suggests they are not really comfortable themselves knowing whatever it is they do believe,” said the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United.

Mr. Lynn noted that the Democratic front-runners recently discussed their religious faith at a nationally televised forum and frequently invoke God at campaign stops.

“This is pandering,” he told a conference on church-state issues sponsored by the Texas Lyceum, a nonpartisan public-policy organization.

First off, the religion advisers in question, at least on the Democratic side — Joshua DuBois on Obama’s campaign, Burns Strider on Clinton’s — don’t tell their candidates what to believe.  Obama and Clinton are pretty well versed on this stuff.  No, the advisers are in charge of religious outreach.  I can’t imagine that Rev. Lynn expects the candidates themselves to handle all the organizing and communications associated with reaching out to religious institutions, the media, and voters on matters of faith.

Surely, there’s nothing worse about having advisers on faith than on anything else. 

Which brings me to Lynn’s next point: that candidates were “pandering” when they discussed their faith at a recent Sojourners forum.  Well, is it pandering to speak to the NEA about education?  Or to the AFL-CIO about labor issues?  Or to the NAACP about race?

In a way, of course, it is: in election season, pandering is what politicians do.  But as I’ve argued here and here, there’s no reason that faith should be singled out for criticism.  To do so is to turn the idea of religious liberty on its head — imposing a penalty on religious talk rather than ensuring it goes unimpeded.

Jesse welcomes comments at jesse [at] faithfuldemocrats.com.