We need to excise religion from the death grip of politics
If only someone had asked Jesus who our neighbor was…
God bless America. For as much as Americans might complain about how terrible things are here, we have it good. So good in fact, that on the inaugural prayer service, Episcopalian Bishop Mariann Budde could directly confront the most powerful man in the world and tell him to be merciful to immigrants and LGBTQ+ children, and he just has to take it.
However misdirected, I think she was about some aspects of her sermon (albeit sincere and acting in good faith), I can’t help but marvel at the fact that we live in a world where she could say this. A mere 500 years ago, the executioner would have been sharpening his blade mid-sermon.
This was a strange tone for Donald Trump to start his second stab at the presidency, and if the last two weeks have shown us anything, religion is going to have a death grip on our political discourse over the next four years. These messages will be coming from both the right and the left, because what good is religion unless you can use it as a manipulation tactic when you’ve run out of good arguments? (Eternal life? Never heard of it.)
Stars, they’re just like us
JD Vance: Husband, father, Yale Law School grad, rags-to-riches poster boy, relatively recent Catholic convert, occasional internet troll, and our brand new Vice President. Despite his amazing accomplishments and busy schedule, he still finds time to engage in the great American pastime of fighting with internet strangers — sometimes dabbling in theological disagreements.
He was recently a guest on Fox News discussing the “Christian concept” of loving your family, then loving your neighbor, then loving the people beyond that when it came to the question of immigration, stating that the left has inverted that concept and “They seem to hate the citizens of their own country and care more about people outside their own borders.” If you were anything like most Bible readers in the US, this may have left you scratching your head and trying to remember what chapter of the Gospel of Mark Jesus talks about loving your neighbor. (It’s in Luke 10.)
Naturally, Theology Twitter came to criticize his take, but Vance, not to be trifled with, shot back (even going so far as to say his critic has a 110 IQ) quoting one of his critics saying, “Just google “ordo amoris.” Aside from that, the idea that there isn’t a hierarchy of obligations violates basic common sense. Does Rory really think his moral duties to his own children are the same as his duties to a stranger who lives thousands of miles away? Does anyone?”
Call me old-fashioned, but I think the second most powerful man in the world probably should spend less time getting in theological fights on Twitter and spend more time doing… whatever a Vice President is supposed to do (waiting for the president to die?)
Some people came to the VP’s defense to explain that ordo amoris — albeit a deep cut — is a real thing for which St. Augustine argues that while no one should be loved any less, it’s natural that we would care for the people closest to us. Others, including the Pope, responded, saying Vance’s interpretation was incorrect.
Much of Christian theology is up to interpretation, and there are probably as many opinions on this point of doctrine as there are denominations — if not individual Christians. Some people hold strong to trinitarianism and tell you that Latter-day Saints and Jehovah’s Witnesses are not Christian and bound for the first train to hell despite having theologies centered around Christ. Other faiths don’t put much stock in the Nicene Creed and don’t think Jesus is keeping a spreadsheet tallying every point to try and exclude people from heaven.
Separating the wheat from the tares
Long story short: I’m not going to litigate the validity of ordo amoris or whether Vance is interpreting it correctly, but I do think this illustrates the danger of grafting politics onto our religion and vice versa.
Regardless of what you believe, the use of religion to prop up our political beliefs isn’t just a lazy political practice. At its best, it results in internet squabbles and comes across as insincere and manipulative. At worst, it leaves people’s sincerely held faith open for ridicule, social punishment, institutional distrust, and, in some rare cases, unfair legal scrutiny and discrimination.
In reality, we all know what politicians are doing when they cite their religious beliefs as the reason they made certain decisions — they know they don’t have great reasoning, but they do need to score political points from their base (and maybe make themselves feel better about a morally dubious choice.)
This isn’t to say that one’s religious faith should never inform anyone’s political leanings — speaking for myself, my faith shapes a lot of my politics and the way I approach my decisions. But wrestling the rubber stamp of approval out of God’s hands to make something more electable can easily be seen for what it is — emotional manipulation masquerading as mercy, kindness, or justice.
My take, for whatever it is worth
The Bible is pretty clear about who our neighbor is and who deserves mercy. When a “certain lawyer” asked Jesus what the greatest of all the laws were, he gave, in order, the following directive:
Love God.
Love your neighbor as yourself.
All the laws hang on these two but start at rule number one if it’s unclear.
Lest there be any confusion about who our neighbor is, that same lawyer probably regretted asking, and Jesus gave the parable of the Good Samaritan. Samaritans were an ethnoreligious group similar to the Jews in ancient Judea. Despite having similarities and a common heritage, the Samaritans hated the Jews and vice versa.
The story begins with a man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho who is robbed and left for dead. A priest and a Levite (i.e., a man with some social clout because he descends from the tribe of Levi) both see the man and pass by him. Finally, a Samaritan comes by, stops, and cares for him. Then Jesus poses the question, “Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves? … He that shewed mercy on him … Go, and do thou likewise.”
In short — it doesn’t matter how different, unclean, improper, uncouth or far removed someone seems to you. You do bear a responsibility to be your brother’s keeper.
Sometimes, rules one and two appear to come into conflict. When Paul extolls the virtue of charity (1 Corinthians 13), he lists what it is: kindness, truthfulness, patience, etc. But he also lists what it is not: It doesn’t encourage evil, isn’t reactive, and “seeketh not her own.” To a great extent, loving God means following his rules while simultaneously showing compassion to others. Love respects truth and boundaries.
The United States is facing challenging questions right now with social issues, immigration, foreign policy, and more, and we have to perform the delicate balancing act of showing compassion to the less fortunate and enforcing appropriate boundaries. I can’t claim to know what the answers are. Immigrants coming to America are deserving of compassion, kindness and respect for their civil rights — even those who are here illegally. Yet we cannot possibly take everyone who wants to come here. We need a merciful and, above all, fair and just system.
I hope we will use faith to refine our characters, inform our decisions and guide our public discourse, but never manipulate people over to our side. Luckily, faith is so simple that even someone with an IQ of 110 can figure it out.
Historically politics was religion. Rulers tried to bend religion to their will (think Henry VIII) but ultimately it was the Church, the imams, the rabbis who were in control. Religion was never an ethical politician, countless offences have been committed in its name, but it did have some sense of ethical leadership, however misguided. The trouble today, in my view, is that religion has been displaced from its role as ethical leader, largely through its own shortcomings, or among fundamentalists, its perversions. As you so eloquently put it, it has now become a tool for politicians, rather than a framework guiding their actions.
The way both parties interface with religion is a good deal more complicated than that, and neither priests nor kings had the coercive power of a modern nation-state in a world without mass media and miniscule literacy. To take one example, queer male sex was essentially tolerated by Christians (and others) as a form of de facto birth control until the printing press made it possible to put whole populations on notice.
There have also always been clerics who speak truth to power, sometimes with negative consequences, sometimes not. Bishop Ambrose famously barred Church doors to Constantine until the actual Roman emperor crawled on his knees in sackcloth to atone for a massacre.
It's a fine sentiment, but the narrative soars above ground reality a bit overmuch.