More often than not, when a member of the clergy, regardless of faith, makes a statement or preaches a sermon which directly or indirectly relates to a government policy or personality, there are those who object to what they consider mixing politics with religion where it simply doesn’t belong.
When it happens, the clergyperson is not only criticized but runs the risk of being fired as well.
Yet if one carefully examines both sacred religious texts and political documents the two appear inextricably linked.
When Jesus said, “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s” (Matthew 22:21) or “my kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36) are these pronouncements religious or political? When the prophets of Israel rail against the injustices they see about them, are their allegations religious or political? A case in point is Isaiah’s demand to “share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house” (58:7) What are we to make of the injunctions in Leviticus 19 where we are instructed “to not favor the poor or show deference to the rich, nor reprove your neighbor?” Is this a political or a religious commandment?
When we turn to what are generally characterized as political, how do we account for the religious references they often contain?
Take the refrain in “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “then conquer we must when our cause it is just and this be our motto, in God is our trust.” Or, the Pledge of Allegiance which has the phrase, “one nation under God.” How do we explain the fact that every political platform of both the Republican and Democratic parties include detailed intentions and principles that can only be defined as religious?
Why is it that no convention of either party is ever held without invocations and benedictions delivered not merely by one, but by multiple clergy? What prospective candidate for political office would declare that he or she was an atheist and that religion had no place in politics? I have yet to hear those who object to something their rabbi, priest, minister or imam has said, which they deem to be political, register similar objections to what emanates from the political sector because it is religious.
I would suggest that navigating the narrow bridge between religion and politics is a particularly difficult undertaking, one made even more precarious by those past and present who have cynically exploited either or both messages for their own gain.
That notwithstanding, what remains indisputable is that the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and the Koran never made that separation.
For that matter neither did our Founding Fathers.
