Does God Have a Candidate?
Boyd, Malcolm
Does God Have a Candidate? MALCOLM BOYD When a television interviewer asked Richard J. Daley to comment on Jimmy Carter's campaign emphasis on religion, Chicago's perpetual mayor replied, "It's...
...Repentance, forgiveness, and renewal— the awareness of "beginning anew" and "new life" — are touchstones of Christian experience...
...Sports Illustrated has described Zeoli as "the President's pastor," a leader of religion in sport — "Sportianity" —a man whose theology is based upon "God's Game Plan...
...Prophetically, Reedy concluded: "Somehow we must learn to govern our people from an office that is secular and not from a court that is sanctified...
...We surely came close to a tragic union of American politics and religion in the Nixonian prayer breakfasts, which brought church and state together...
...In 1967, I had a profound religious experience that Malcolm Boyd is an Episcopal priest, writer, and social critic...
...Various candidates, with the aid of their public relations staffs, grade themselves on religion...
...So, a false "Religious Issue" has been widely propagated...
...Editorial cartoonists have made the halo, or the pulpit, his trademark...
...He wrote, "And I believe that the only real blasphemy — the deadliest of sins — is the deification of mortals and the sanctification of human institutions...
...A pattern in political news headlines underscored the Carter religious, or moral, image: "Bar Assn...
...In his slim, classic work, The Twilight of the Presidency (World, 1970), George E. Reedy spoke about it from the standpoint of politics...
...A minister wearing a black suit and clerical collar was seen in full screen close-up as he volubly assented to Carter's remarks, which included explicit reference to Jesus Christ...
...I want to be saved from a superchrist in a superstate...
...The hard truth is that any one politician shares moral ambiguities with the rest of the candidates, as well as a relative approximation of justice, love, and truth itself...
...His seventeenth book will be published by Doubleday in the spring of1977...
...So, does the religious/moral mass image belong exclusively to Carter as the 1976 campaign nears its climax...
...In my book, Christian: Its Meanings in an Age of Future Shock (Hawthorn, 1975), I wrote: "There is a brand of Christianity which tells the rest of the world that it awaits the Second Coming of Christ to solve pressing 'social problems' such as hunger, starvation, war, racism, sexism, colonialism, grinding poverty, and the absence of equal opportunity...
...In his eyes, what is "God's will" for America and other parts of the world...
...Who gets a straight A? Squeaking by with a B-l- is tricky...
...But there are inevitably social dimensions of a President's personal faith that concern the people...
...A "sovereign" President might not find it a long step to become a "messiah," moving inexorably toward the divine right of one who "rules...
...How...
...Many Americans — many registered voters — yearn for a "return" to ostensibly safe, secure, traditional values in this time of rapid social change marked by an upsurge in violence, economic distress, and a commonly shared feeling of angst...
...We are in the era of the politician's Spiritual Report Card...
...This could be augmented by having a "White House chaplain," a mealy-mouthed sycophant muttering supportive platitudes...
...For example, precisely how does a President define "goodness" and "evil" in politics, the workings of government, and foreign affairs...
...A demagogue who set out to exploit religion for political ends might ultimately be less dangerous than a sincere politician who deeply felt that his and God's will were the same...
...Carter Vows to Strengthen Family Life...
...For it is, in fact, cohesively involved in social issues by its support of the status quo on which it is dependent...
...An emotional vein deeply imbedded in masses of people is touched when the subject of religion is discussed in a personal, confessional way in the mass media...
...Presidency, and the extraordinarily frightening implications of adding religion to its accoutrements...
...They instinctively harked back to John F. Kennedy's fight to be both a Catholic and a candidate, and then drew comparisons...
...A candidate's personal devout faith is not at issue...
...With eyes closed in the public pose of prayer, Nixon stood next to Graham as the revivalist uttered ritualistic words at a Presidential prayer breakfast...
...All candidates could well choose to address issues from a broad moral base rooted in Judeo-Christian ethics...
...Carter, says Gunn, "has been forthright in expressing a deeply held religious commitment, but some observers and critics have suggested that a devoutly religious man should be disqualified from the Presidency...
...Despite the ebullient Chicago mayor's proclivity for church-going, God isn't even a Daleyite...
...Both Carter and Ford apparently know what it is to be "born again...
...Indeed, he might believe that he should act as God's right hand to mete out judgment and wrath as well as dispense divine mercy for "God's sake...
...A candidate who understands this, and honestly acts upon its political implications, is indeed marked as the possessor of a profound religious virtue: godly humility...
...However, several prominent political writers in American journalism have explained Carter's denomination as being the sole issue...
...It is the right of persons who practice a variety of different religions in the United States not to give primacy to Jesus Christ...
...It is rewarded by privilege, tax exemptions, and deductible financial benefits, and that ineffable sort of prestige bestowed traditionally upon docile religion by seasoned manipulators of caesaropapism — which means to say, the state using religion for its own purposes...
...Does God have a favorite candidate for President of the United States this year...
...He sees the constant media discussion of Carter's personal religious views as a near infraction of the Sixth Article of the Constitution...
...Some of the mass media "veered dangerously close" to setting up a religious test for Carter, according to Andrew L. Gunn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State...
...In my own experience there came a time when there developed a new relationship with God and it grew out of need...
...I wonder if this will hold true in 1976...
...It seems to me that we shojld not add to the awesome power of the President of the United States by also making him our high priest...
...What effect could the "Religious Issue" have on the outcome of the 1976 campaign...
...Speaking to the same issue, Gunn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said, "Though there undoubtedly is a small portion of the electorate which casts votes solely or primarily on religious grounds, the vast majority of Americans of all religious traditions prop' erly determine their political decisions on the basis of secular considerations...
...We cannot let any candidate for, or holder of, the highest office absorb the religious energies, or incarnate the religious impulses, of the people...
...I perceive the emergence of an opinion-making pattern in which these beliefs could play a pivotal part this fall...
...Such an attitude strikes at the very heart of religious freedom, and reminds us of the tragically divisive religious bigotry aimed at Jack Kennedy in 1960 and Al Smith in 1928...
...MALCOLM BOYD When a television interviewer asked Richard J. Daley to comment on Jimmy Carter's campaign emphasis on religion, Chicago's perpetual mayor replied, "It's good when God is on your side...
...Its code message was: God blesses Graham, Graham blesses Nixon, God blesses Nixon...
...Yet if Billy Graham was correct in his San Diego comment, the electorate in 1976 really never had a choice if it wanted a non-religious candidate, or simply a neutral one...
...More than most people, Presidents need to be reminded that they are made of common clay and share a common destiny...
...Given the heavy emphasis on religion in the campaign, Americans may be forgiven for assuming that God plays a major role in this nation's politics...
...I tend to agree with Gunn that entirely too much emphasis, altogether out of proportion with other issues, has been placed on Carter's professed, and publicized, religious beliefs...
...But a little more than half—and the talk's main theme — was devoted to what he termed the 'dangerous' breakdown in family institutions and the need for government to deal with it...
...National television news has shown Carter surrounded by the trappings of Christianity...
...A cross was visible on a wall behind him when, early in the campaign, he was televised giving a talk, or guest sermon, inside a church...
...Photo images of the event went around the world...
...God save us from such godliness...
...But when a politician publicly invokes an association with either the Hebrew prophets or Jesus, it is inescapably suggested that goodness uniquely rubs off on him...
...Lauds Carter's Call for Rigid Adherence to Morals...
...Was someone manipulating the issue...
...Docile religion, in turn, provides those well-trained clergy who publicly mouth lukewarm yet politically supportive caricatures of prayers at government ceremonies and public assemblies, who plead with a partisan god to let 'our' side win its wars, who distort the gospel of Christ in pseudosermons to the mighty in palace chapels and White House East Rooms...
...I can't remember a time in my life when I didn't call upon God," Ronald Reagan said on a television talk-show...
...Such a sincere man, if he became President, could easily perceive himself to be a partner with God to reshape institutions, foster morality, and guard the great society...
...So do most of the rest of us...
...Los Angeles Times reporter Kenneth Reich filed this story from Manchester, New Hampshire: "Carter devoted almost half the talk to political themes...
...God isn't a Republican or a Democrat, a conservative or a liberal, a Carterite or a Fordite...
...Carter's sister, a spiritual healer and religious author and lecturer, appeared before millions of Americans on CBS's Sixty Minutes, and spoke of "God" and "Jesus Christ...
...He noted that the Presidential office has "taken on all the regalia of monarchy except ermine robes, a scepter, and a crown...
...It is also their right to have a Chief Executive who practices his own faith with restraint, eschewing any use of Presidential prerogatives either for the sake of proselytizing others or creating an aura of the "holy" around himself...
...It was dangerous, and perhaps Graham did not understand what he was doing...
...This brand of Christianity explains that it renders unto God what belongs to God, and renders unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and it remains unin-volved in the arena of social issues...
...The real one is rooted in the power of the U.S...
...The pluralistic nature of American society must be juxtaposed against a campaign's public mixture of religion and politics...
...changed my life — I accepted Christ into my life," Carter has told the press...
...He referred to "apotheosis," the assumption of divinity, as having already begun...
...Anyone qualify for a D? Carter's identity as a Southern Baptist is no more the "Religious Issue" than Ford's Episcopalianism, coupled with evangelical ministrations by the Reverend Billy Zeoli...
...For if any person comes to do this, he has linked church and state even if he fails to understand what he has done...
...If he believes that he has a "divine mission," exactly what is it...
...Evoking the manner of Savonarola, Carter has declared, "I intend to take a new broom to Washington and do everything possible to sweep the house of government clean...
...But in the opening rounds of the Presidential campaign, the "Religious Issue" clearly belonged to Carter...
...The cross, a symbol of faith to a devout Christian, is often a stark reminder of persecution to people who have known torture and extreme deprivation in its shadow...
...In my book, I speak of a tryst between politics and religion from the particular standpoint of religion...
...The resultant closeness meant that attendant clergy stifled a prophetic outcry in the face of continued bloody bombing of Vietnam as well as the prefiguring of Watergate...
...President Ford has "an evangelical friend and mentor" in the Reverend Billy Zeoli, wrote columnist Garry Wills...
...Born again," a new code word in the media, has long been used to characterize a variety of mystical experiences, shared by most Christians, although many have not used those particular words to describe it...
...So, yes, I have had an experience that could be described as born again...
...I would rather have a man in office who is highly qualified to be President who didn't make much of a religious profession than to have a man who had no qualifications but who made a religious profession," Billy Graham observed in San Diego...
...In San Diego on August 10, the Reverend Billy Graham observed, "I would say there wouldn't be a hair's difference between what Carter, Ford, and Reagan believe religiously...
...It lies...
...Whatever were his motives, Billy Graham — the closest thing we have to an American high priest — clearly placed a spiritual mantle on the shoulders of Richard M. Nixon...
Vol. 40 • November 1976 • No. 11
