Guest
VIEW
Rights of religious
Foes of the conservative faithful use faulty myths to condemn
It sometimes seems like those of us
who follow politics are watching an hid
horror movie.
[In the background: eerie organ
music. On the screen: wide shot of
panic in the streets, people running,
mothers carrying their children]
Announcer: Everybody lock your
doors! Parents, protect your children!
Because nobody is safe from... [organ
music swells] THE RELIGIOUS
RIGHT!
[Sound of Peter Lorre cackling over
the organ music]
To hear some commentators talk,
you’d think the bogeyman you feared as
a child had emerged from under your
bed and appears nightly on the 700
Club (that is, when he isn’t busy carry
ing non-Christians to the top of a sky
scraper and throwing them off).
But, like the bogeyman, this imag
ined threat to Mom, apple pie, truth,
justice and all we hold dear is a manu
factured myth, propagated by those
who either have been woefully misin
formed or are willing to sacrifice their
integrity and honesty in order to furtner
their political agenda.
And what is this myth?
The myth is that the Religious
Right is a bunch of fanatics who want
to take over the country and force
everybody to be just like them.
The fact is that the Religious Right
are simply people of faith who exercise
the rights and responsibilities of citi
zenship in a democracy and whose pol
itics tend toward the conservative side
rather than the liberal.
The myth is that the Religious
Right is made up of evangelical
Protestants. The fact is that the issues
addressed by the Religious Right and
the positions they take attract members
of mainline Protestant denominations
as well as evangelicals. They also
attract conservatives among the
Catholic and Jewish communities, as
well.
The myth is that the Religious
Right is a monolithic group that takes
its marching orders from Pat Robertson
and Jerry Fahvell and follows them
blindly. The fact is that die Religious
Right is a group of diverse individuals
who are drawn together like those in
any political movement: by shared con
cerns and common ideas for how to
address them.
The myth is that the Religious
Right wants to impose a theocracy on
the country and the world and oppose
any separation of church and state. The
fact is that the Religious Right feels
that theological issues are not the
province or responsibility of govern
ment but rather of religious institutions.
The separation of church and state is
necessary not to keep a Judeo-Chnstian
worldview from influencing the public
square, but to protect the tenets of our
faith from being manipulated by the
government for political purposes.
Perhaps the saddest myth of all,
however, is that the people who are so
terribly outraged over the actions of the
Religious Right are somehow involved
in a noble crusade. They claim they
want to preserve the absolute separa
tion of church and state, but the fact is
that they only raise church and state
concerns when it suits their agenda.
Have you ever heard anyone com
plain that the Rev. Martin Luther King
Jr. should have remained quiet about
God in the fight for civil rights? Have
you ever heard them complain when
the Catholic Church speaks out against
the death penalty? Of course not, but
those are issues when religious people
take what is generally considered a
more liberal position. If somebody
were to speak out in favor of legal abor
tion, affirmative action dr gay marriage
on the basis of what their religion
teaches, does anybody really believe
that the supporters of these causes
would ask them to be quiet?
They also claim they somehow are
trying to preserve our heritage, but the
strictly secular heritage they defend
doesn’t square with history. In the
Declaration of Independence, when our
founding fathers wrote that people “are
endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights,” they pointed to
God as the basic foundation of their
arguments. In the 1800s, when the abo
litionist movement was opposing slav
ery, it was fueled in part by an evangeli
cal revival known as the Great
Awakening.
The notion that no religious reason
ing ought to be raised in the public
square is a relatively new idea and
completely at odds with our national
The myth is that the Religious Right is
a monolithic group that takes its .
marching orders from Pat Robertson ...
history.
Finally, they claim that they are try
ing to preserve freedom for all people,
but that is not exactly true, either.
During the Vietnam War, there were
many who, on the basis of conscience,
refused to serve in the military, and
those conscientious objectors are laud
ed as courageous heroes. However,
when Christians seek to act in accor
dance with their faith and their con
science, such praise is remarkably
absent.
Christian landlords are being
forced to rent to any couple who wish
to live together or else go into some
other line of work. Christian students
are being told if living in the residence
halls would force them to compromise
living in accordance with the tenets of
their faith, they should just get out and
go to a Bible college.
This kind of marginalization never
would be toleratecKf it were directed
toward groups such as blacks, women
or homosexuals, but it is considered
perfectly acceptable treatment of
Christians.
That is not freedom.
It is the expectation that all people
can believe whatever they want, but if
they try to live in accordance with that
faith, they will be patently unwelcome.
This is not to claim that nothing
wrong has ever been done with reli
gious justification or by religious orga
nizations. There were those who justi
fied slavery or the mistreatment of
American Indians on religious
grounds, and they were wrong.
Some of the actions of the Christian
Coalition with regard to voter guides
have been, at best, questionable. There
are those who would point to these
exceptions and use them as a brush to
tar all conservative people of faith. y
However, they are wrong, just as it
would be wrong to judge all
Palestinians based on the PLO, all
blacks based on the Black Panthers,
etc.
Those who take the time to inform
themselves know the difference, and it
is up to them to stop the stereotypes
they are perpetuating. Many of those
who are so dismayed over the Religious
Right would claim that we live in a
democracy that is open to participation
by all of its citizens.
Those of us who are conservative
people of faith and who make up what
is called the Religious Right are taking
them at their word, and we are waiting
to see if they mean any of it.
Brad Pardee is a University Libraries staff member and a Daily Nebraskan guest columnist.
Anatomy of apathy
Primary’s pathetic outcome perturbs potential voter
Politics suck.
That has been my opinion on pub
lic officials for most of my life -
including die last three years, since I
was first eligible to vote. In an act of
mild rebellion, I have never voted in
any election, to protest the futility of
politics.
With the recent presidential race,
though, politics began to seem less
futile. McCain’s victory in New
Hampshire seemed to promise that a
candidate, running on a relative shoe
string and with a platform against the
established politics of Washington,
actually might have a chance.
Then he lost in South Carolina. *
The story from there looks less
than promising. With die last of the
few states’ primaries that allow inde
pendents and Democrats to vote in
Republican primaries, McCain will
have to find his support in the
Republican party. Unfortunately, the
Republican party, fearing change, isn’t
too likely to jump to McCain’s side in
future primaries. Ultimately, the
Republican nomination may very well
be Bush.
If McCain had lost to another can
didate without lavish funds or without
the backing of most established
Republican politicians, I might not fee
the need to return to cynicism. But
Bush’s tactics in his race to win South
Carolina were despicable.
Immediately after New
Hampshire, Bush knew he was in trou
ble. McCain used Bush’s substantial
backing in Washington and throughou
the country against him as irrefutable
proof that Bush was a politician con
cemea witn
maintaining
business as
usual. So Bush
billed himself as
a reformer for
the first time in
his campaign
since McCain
was a significant
challenger.
ui course, ne
also billed himself as a
staunch conservative, to cap
ture the Religious
Right vote and also as
an outsider, to capture
the very votes that
belonged to his oppo
nents, especially
McCain.
As the campaign
dragged on in South
Carolina, Bush became
more worried, dumping
millions into television
ads attacking McCain.
Since Bush ran on his own
funds and did not accept
federal matching money,
spending caps didn’t apply
to him. But, these spending
caps did apply to McCain.
Bush’s campaign inferred
without proper reason that
McCain blew those caps.
Later on, Bush adopted a
“campaign finance reform”
policy of his own, in an
attempt to steal thunder
from McCain’s poster issue
against established politics. Of
course, this policy was tailor
made to criticize McCain’s ..
own activities. He attempted to
demonize McCain’s past actions with {
t policy that would never pass, even if
Bush were elected president. Surely
Bush knew that his idea of campaign
Melanie Falk/DN
i finance reform wouldn’t fly. He just
needed the policy to make McCain
look bad.
If all these actions don’t show
Bush to be a career politician, I don’t
know what else one would need.
Clearly, he panders to the convenient
issue of the moment in order to get
more votes. In this respect, he is just
like Bill Clinton - feeling out the polls,
feeling out what will get the most
votes and changing accordingly.
Which is why McCain was a
breath of fresh air. For once, it
seemed there was a
politician who was
n’t politicking. His
ideas were rebellious,
he admitted to mis
takes, he defended his
questionable actions without
blanket denials. He was a
Republican, with basically
Republican views, but he was willing
to be swayed by what he thought was
right
He seemed strangely human.
So after the victory in New
Hampshire, I was inspired by this
man’s work. It seemed, for once, that a
politician who didn’t play the same old
game, or really, who campaigned
against the same old game, actually
might get votes. It seemed such a man
actually might be elected. It seemed
that politics weren’t futile, that it was
time for a change, and McCain
embodied that change.
But then Bush won in South
Whk Carolina.
/\ikj u s nui jum uiai lie
won, but that he
won by playing
i obvious dirty tricks.
The voters of South
r.'ijj; Carolina showed
LS?- that they didn’t care
they were voting for
a man as slick as Texas
oil. They distrusted McCain, and they
believed the television commercials
that Bush so aggressively pushed.
They voted for politics as usual.
While McCain’s substantial suc
cesses in the face of an established
adversary exhibit hope for the rest of
the campaign, one can’t help but won
der if the rest of the country won’t vote
similarly. There is no reason to think
that South Carolinians are more or less
ignorant or stodgy than the rest of the
country’s citizens.
So it seems that, even when die
opposition is organized as well as can
be expected, the established money
bags still rule. Bush has a family of
politicians to support him - his father,
former president George Bush, and his
brother, Jeb Bush, governor of Florida,
have all campaigned heavily for their
kinsman. He has a large number of
supporters throughout the old guard of
the Republican Party.
The same thing is happening in the
Democratic campaign. Gore is sound
ly trouncing Bradley. Bradley’s hopes
were less bright than McCain’s, per
haps, but it’s another case of the
entrenched politician standing safely
away from die opposition.
Is it any wonder, then, that poten
tial voters like me stay at home come
election day? When it seems that poli
tics is nothing more than a perpetual
motion machine, sustaining itself
despite our attempts to jar it off course,
why should we bother? Even when we
do move, our motion is stopped. Even
when the rebels make their voices
heard, the powers-that-be over-shout
them.
I wanted to write a column lauding
McCain and encouraging the vote. I
wanted to give a jump-start to the
sleeping apathy that has descended on
my generation.
But I guess I don’t see the point
anymore.
Jacob Glaze ski is a music and math major and a Daily Nebraskan columnist.