A Cautionary View of Mixing Politics and Religion

At his first campaign appearance after being named the Democratic vice presidential candidate, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) affirmed his religious convictions by uttering a prayer and quoting the Bible. The B’Nai B’rith Anti-Defamation League not long afterward responded by urging Lieberman to keep religion out of politics. Even among co-religionists, it seems, the separation of church and state is an explosive issue--and that is why Stephen L. Carter’s “God’s Name in Vain” is such a timely and insightful book.

For “too many people with causes to push and desires to fulfill, the name of God will collapse into a mere rhetorical device,” argues Carter. “Instead of maintaining the sacred character guaranteed by the Third Commandment, God’s name becomes a tool, a trope, a ticket to get us where we want to go.”

A Yale law professor and the author of “The Culture of Disbelief,” Carter declares here that he is a Christian who is motivated by “my love of God and love of my country,” which should establish his bona fides for readers of strong religious conviction, and he follows up with an equally solemn declaration of “my fear that millions of Americans, across the religious and political spectrum, have lost sight of the proper relationship between religion and politics.”

At risk, Carter insists, is the delicate balance that lies at the core of the 1st Amendment. He condemns both those “who treat the merest scintilla of religion in our public and political life as an offense against the American idea” and those “who believe it to be the responsibility of government to use its power to enforce as law the moral truths of their religion.” The “silly brouhaha over whether presidential candidates should tell us about their religious views,” he insists, conceals a much deeper and more threatening conflict between 1st Amendment purists and religiously motivated political activists. “The tension between these two wrong ideas is ruining our democracy,” he insists, “and threatens to ruin many of our religious traditions as well.”

Religion has never represented a fixed value in American politics, as Carter points out, and the role of faith in the electoral process has taken some odd bounces over the years. When abolitionist clergymen from New England petitioned the Senate to end slavery in 1854, pro-slavery senators relied on the constitutional separation of church and state to argue that a petition from ordained ministers should not be considered by Congress. More than a century later, Ronald Reagan was cautious about the political repercussions of a formal endorsement by a group of white Christian evangelical preachers: “You cannot endorse me,” Reagan told the Religious Roundtable in 1980, “but I endorse you.”

Nothing in the inherent values of religion predict or limit how they will be expressed in politics. Thus, a Christian evangelist preacher like the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. played a crucial role in the civil rights agenda of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference--Carter quotes one commentator who calls him “the most important theologian in American history”--while a Christian evangelist preacher like the Rev. Jerry Falwell played an equally crucial role in the conservative political agenda of the Moral Majority.

But Carter despairs over the dangers that arise “when God-talk mixes with the partisan side of politics.” His stance has less to do with protecting democracy from religious special pleading than with his desire to protect religion from the taint of political expediency. He affirms his own faith in God and religion, but he warns that “the transcendent language of faith” is cheapened and even corrupted when it is put in service to politics. “Politics is a dirty business at its best,” he argues. “When you touch politics, it touches you back.”

Carter comes down precisely in the middle of the debate that he has framed so expertly and so fairly, allowing that “the religious voice is needed in democratic politics and should be welcomed there” but insisting that “religions should be quite cautious about deciding when and how to involve themselves in public issues, for their religious integrity is at risk.” His bottom line is that “when they do decide to take an active part in our public debates, they should, with rare exceptions, avoid the temptation to take sides in electoral contests.”

At some moments, “God’s Name in Vain” reads like a carefully argued and closely reasoned legal brief; at other moments, it is almost a religious tract, a declaration of faith by a man whose worldliness has not compromised his spiritual values. At all times, however, Carter declares his intentions openly and boldly, with arguments that are clear, courageous and compelling.

Jonathan Kirsch is the author of “The Harlot by the Side of the Road” and, most recently, “King David: The Real Life of the Man Who Ruled Israel.”