The Values Voter Summit doesn’t own God

[cbayer]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/wp/2013/10/11/the-values-voter-summit-doesnt-own-god/
BY JASON STEIDL
October 11 at 4:16 pm


Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

This weekend the Family Research Council hosts the Values Voter Summit, a conference in the heart of Washington, DC that brings together many of the nation’s top religious and political leaders. Here, the religious right finds easy company with the Republican Party. Members of Congress such as Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz find warm welcome among those whose faith in God leads them to embrace traditional family and social values. It is a place where rhetoric about God easily turns into rhetoric about nation and where belief easily translates into conservative politics.

As a theologian with political views far different from those given at the Values Voter Summit, I cringe as I listen to speeches invoking God’s name on behalf of political agendas. Friday morning, for example, Marco Rubio gave a stirring account of his faith in Jesus Christ, who “suffered a brutal death and he resurrected from the dead, to erase the sins that separate us from him.” Though Rubio’s words were a matter of faith, they came in the midst of a diatribe bemoaning what he sees is the government’s campaign against traditional values. He fears his understanding of America, “this country that God has blessed us with,” is being lost under the current administration. Indeed, Rubio says, “Despite everything that is going wrong in our country today, I believe with all my heart that God is not done with America yet.” The implications of the senator’s rhetoric are clear: God, and good Christians, are on his political side.

The Christian Gospel, however, offers a vision of God’s kingdom that critiques all forms of government. Faith’s perspective gives hope that humanity can always do better, no matter who is in power. When religion is used to endorse a specific political party, this vision gets compromised. Politics is a messy business, and when it co-opts belief for its own purposes, religion gets dirty and loses its prophetic power. This explains why the third commandment proscribes taking God’s name in vain, and also why many in my generation are turned off by organized religion. Too often religious belief ordains specific programs of political action, as if God were the one who advocates cutting benefits to the poor and restricting equal access to social institutions such as marriage.

As I watch the Values Voter Summit, I become increasingly frustrated with what I see happening there. It is not long before I call upon hellfire and brimstone, considering the judgment that awaits those false prophets who presume to speak on the Almighty’s behalf. I revel in the thought that someday these ones will encounter God and will be set straight in their wrong thinking. Someday, they will give a full account for all their misdeeds and the damage they have done in the name of religion. Someday, they will see the truth about the harm their rhetoric causes to both faith and society.

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[haikugal]

1. The values voter summit has nothing at all to do with God.

[hrmjustin]

2. My idea of the Christian God is much different from theirs.

[dimbear]

4. We don't get a lot of calls right here in this forum for enemies to burn in hellfire.

We're sort of beyond that.

[hrmjustin]

5. I am happy about that. I have to say I do not really believe in hell.

[skepticscott]

3. Just another "liberal", "progressive" believer

who is dead certain that "god" is on his side, and that he knows for sure what "god" thinks and wants, while decrying the ability of the other side to know any such thing. And having no grasp of the irony of it all.