The Religious Consultation
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Financial Times (London), April 8, 2005 Role of Religion
in US Politics under Question DATELINE: WASHINGTON The deaths last week of Pope John Paul II and Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman, have inspired fresh debate over the impact of faith and the "culture of life" in the US, where conservative Christian voters have discovered a new influence. While the US is robustly secular in its separation of church and state, George W. Bush, a born-again Christian, is not exceptional among presidents in using religious themes to explain his foreign policy. "There's a higher Father that I appeal to," Mr Bush told Bob Woodward when asked if he had consulted his father, the former president, before invading Iraq, according to Mr Woodward's book Plan of Attack. John Judis of the Carnegie Endowment think-tank says it has been a constant theme of presidents that America is God's "chosen nation", that the US has a mission to transform the world, and that the US represents the forces of good over evil. These ideas, says Mr Judis, are based on Protestant millennial themes that go back to 17th century England. But for Mr Bush, these concepts have not only shaped his ultimate objectives, "but also coloured the way in which he viewed reality sometimes to the detriment of US foreign policy". More recently the apocalyptical tendencies of the early Protestants have been joined by conservative evangelicals - the "religious right", who have lobbied for a greater Israel and defended Christians against persecution in Asia and Africa, particularly in Sudan's long-running civil war. But the furore over Ms Schiavo illustrates that the focus seems to be turning inward again to emphasise the "culture of life". Critics say this smacks of hypocrisy and double-standards: The Pope's outspoken opposition to the Iraq war and capital punishment were ignored by the US. Senator Jon Corzine, a New Jersey Democrat, is exasperated at what he calls US passivity over Darfur in western Sudan, where pro-government, Muslim Arabs are clearing out Muslim Africans. The Bush administration considers it genocide. "Where is the will? When the culture of life is being celebrated with the passing of Pope John Paul, we in the political environment are giving lip service to the culture of life, when there is real loss of life in Darfur," Mr Corzine declared. Religious ideology is also driving US health policy abroad, according to Jodi Jacobson of the Center for Health and Gender Equity. Funding has been cut to family-planning clinics that do not renounce abortions. Global abstinence, not condom use, has become the main anti-Aids policy. Even church members fear that the Republican party, so successful in mobilising conservative Christian voters last year, has overstepped the mark. John Danforth - an Episcopal minister, former Republican senator and former UN ambassador who mediated in the Sudanese civil war - recently attacked his party for allowing its traditional principles to become secondary to the religious right's agenda. Writing in the New York Times, he said the party had ultimately "become the political extension of a religious movement". << Financial Times -- 4/8/05 >> |