Written by Don Byrd
On Friday, U.S. Senator and Republican candidate for President Ted Cruz held a religious liberty-themed campaign rally in Des Moines, Iowa, that at times sounded more like an evangelical tent revival meeting. He claimed there is a “war on faith in America,” and quoted Scripture to the crowd. As Politico noted, Cruz was “in full-on preacher mode.”
When campaign events start sounding like religious services (or vice versa), I get a kind of uneasy pit-of-my-stomach feeling, like maybe a church-state ulcer is coming on. (Am I the only one that gets those?)
Luckily, there are those out there providing treatment. Writing for the Huffington Post, Dr. Susan M. Shaw has a timely piece explaining why “Christian Faith is Not a Campaign Strategy.” She evokes the Baptist tradition of religious liberty for all. Here is an excerpt:
When candidates use proclamations about their Christian faith to curry favor with particular voters, they blur the lines between religion and government and put true religious liberty at risk. Professing Christian faith should not be a campaign strategy. And we voters should be skeptical of the intertwining of religion and government, as were my Baptist forbears. As E. Y. Mullins once said, our duty is “to protect with all our souls against religious oppression. Baptists believe in religious liberty for themselves. But they believe in it equally for all people.”
My message to campaigns: for the sake of religious liberty (and my health), discuss your faith and your platform without religious pandering, and without confusing religious beliefs with policy positions! And to voters: let’s not encourage them!
For more, see a column from earlier this year written by the Baptist Joint Committee’s Brent Walker on the “Ten Commandments for Campaigns.”
