The other faith

Friday, 9:44 am

By Kate

In my daily blog travels, this morning, I’ve learned that:

The pastor of the East Waynesville Baptist Church in western North Carolina issued an ultimatum to nine members of his congregation—if they didn’t support George Bush, they’d have to repent or resign. They resigned. Forty other members also left the church in support and in protest. The pastor said his actions were not politically motivated.

A video of the newscast reporting the story can be found here (WindowsMedia), here (WindowsMedia), or here (RealPlayer).

Aside from the political litmus test being required for membership in the church, one of the sadder features of the story is the age of the banished church members. They all looked to be somewhere between their late 60s and late 70s. Not young people by any means. People who have probably been associated with their church for a good many years.

One hopes that the church’s tax exempt status is re-evaluated by the proper authorities soon.

In somewhat related news, it appears that the Vice President is beginning a new meme. During a speech before a town hall question and answer period in Smyrna, Georgia on May 2 (stumping for Social Security reform), he characterized the members of Congress, who disagree with the administration’s privatization plans, as being of the other faith (26th paragraph down). It’s a fairly ambiguous characterization in context, however, during the question and answer period, the phrase was most definitely seized upon by supportive members of the audience. Clearly the ‘other faith’ is not the right faith in their opinion. That’s a troubling use of the word faith. Unfortunately, it ties in pretty well with Senator Bill Frist’s participation in the televised Judicial Sunday a couple of weeks ago where Democrats were characterized as being against people of faith. The word faith has a very definite meaning for most people and it appears to have been used very deliberately by the Vice President.

Using faith as a political wedge is a dangerous thing to do. There are good reasons why our government was designed to be secular—separated from religion—and the East Waynesville Baptist Church incident is but one example. Those who fled Europe to begin life over in this new world faced the same kinds of political and religious persecution. And our government was formed, our Constitution written, to protect people from such persecution. Politics and religion have never mixed well. They never will. Government is for all people. Religion and politics are personal choices. Conflating the two will end badly for all of us.

(sources gleaned from DailyKos and Atrios)