|
Clergy cite key role of religion in politics
BY: MARILYN H. KARFELD, Senior Staff Reporter
One of every three people in Cleveland lives in poverty. One of every two children in Cleveland lives in poverty.To change that, Ohio has to raise its minimum wage. So said the Rev. Tim Ahrens of the First Congregational Church of Columbus.
Ahrens is a founder of “We Believe Ohio,” an interfaith group of progressive clergy that formed last November to combat what they call the divisiveness and intolerance of religious conservatives.
Ahrens spoke on Sunday, along with the Rev. Marvin McMickle of Antioch Baptist Church, at Temple Emanu El's program titled “Politics & the Pulpit: Is there a role for religion in government?”
The Rev. Russell Johnson, pastor of Fairfield Christian Church in suburban Columbus, an evangelical Protestant congregation, was scheduled to join the panel, but failed to appear. Several hours earlier, an associate sent an e-mail to program organizers saying that Johnson was in California. His representative didn't have time to make the drive from Columbus so close to the election, the e-mail said.
Johnson founded the Ohio Restoration Project (ORP) to wield conservative Christian influence at the ballot box. His goal was to use 2,000 “Pastor Patriots” to turn out the evangelical Christian vote in the midterm elections for conservative candidates, especially gubernatorial hopeful Ken Blackwell.
We Believe has not focused on candidates, but has taken positions on public policy. In recent months, the diverse group of clergy has spoken out in favor of Issue 3, which would raise Ohio's minimum wage from $5.15 to $6.85 per hour.
Promoting social justice is what religious leaders should address, Ahrens told the audience at Temple Emanu El. “Religion should be a uniting force, not a dividing one. We should build bridges and not construct barriers. To demonize people is contrary to God.”
The religious right has emphasized opposition to abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and most prominently, gay marriage, to galvanize its base in order to win elections. These are issues that “drive a wedge through America,” the Columbus pastor maintained.
Similarly, McMickle said the role of the religious community is “to stir us up to care, not turn a blind eye on human suffering, not behave as if ‘it's not my problem.'”
He criticized Republican legislators like Bill Frist and Tom DeLay, who talked only about gay marriage and abortion at “Justice Sundays” held in April and August 2005. “They never discussed the $450 billion spent on Iraq, that 2 million people are in prison, that 45 million Americans have no health insurance, the staggering rate of unemployment driven by outsourcing of jobs and downsizing,” McMickle said.
Religion not only should be a force in the public square, it already is one, said the Baptist preacher who ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Democratic primary for the US Senate. But McMickle maintained religious leaders are not as “fully engaged as the Scriptures say” they should be.
African-Americans have a long religious tradition of influencing government policy, he noted. Abolishing slavery, winning the right to vote, gaining access to a seat on the bus, speaking out against the Ku Klux Klan. “Faith and politics had to intersect,” he said.
He cited the example of Hiram Revels, a minister with the African Methodist Episcopal Church, who organized two Union regiments of African-Americans in Maryland and Missouri during the Civil War. During the Reconstruction era, Revels moved to Mississippi and was elected to the state legislature. In 1870 he was elected to the US Senate. He filled the seat previously held by Jefferson Davis, vacated when Mississippi seceded from the union.
In January, We Believe clergy filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service, charging Johnson and Columbus televangelist the Rev. Rod Parsley with violating their churches' tax-exempt status by engaging in political activities to help elect Blackwell.
According to Ahrens, Blackwell and Parsley have not been seen together in public since the complaint was filed. “Money has dried up,” Ahrens added. “We Believe rattled them. They thought they were the only ones allowed to speak (in the public square.) Now we're on the playground.”
In 2004, political leaders used the religious right to get elected, McMickle said, urging the faithful to the polls to vote for so-called values issues. In Ohio, conservative evangelicals turned out in record numbers to vote for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.
As the war in Iraq worsens and corruption scandals dog Republicans, conservative evangelicals may reconsider their participation in the election, McMickle said. “They may do what they used to do and sit out the election.”
A member of the audience expressed concern that ORP and We Believe were going to bump into and breach the wall that separates church and state in America. Separation of church and state is not written in the Constitution, Ahrens pointed out. It was in a letter that Thomas Jefferson sent to Baptist leaders in Connecticut. The First Amendment says no law should establish a state religion.
Rather than a high wall between religion and government, Ahrens envisions a hedge that allows conversation between church and state. Religious leaders should not endorse candidates from the pulpit, he said. “That doesn't prohibit them from going to City Hall and preaching justice issues.”
Ahrens quoted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who said, “The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool.”
The cadence of the preachers' voices did not provide the evening's only drama. During the question and answer period, Dan Cord, who identified himself as an Orthodox Jew and a volunteer for Blackwell, said it was his fault that no one from the ORP appeared at the forum.
“With the election this close, I said to push this meeting off to after the election,” admitted Cord, Jewish Coalition Coordinator for Ohioans for Blackwell in Cuyahoga County. “I was concerned this wouldn't help our candidates.” Cord wrote a column in last week's CJN, part of a point/counterpoint, urging Jews to vote for Republican candidates.
Calling himself “part of the religious right,” Cord said, “America is and has been founded as a Christian nation. That's why it's good for the Jews. We flourish here because it was founded as a Christian nation with a Judeo-Christian tradition.”
McMickle took issue that America was founded on Christian principles. “Five times in the Constitution it talks about slavery, the owning of human beings. Slavery was written in by people who were slave owners, far more than they were influenced by Scripture.
“Their pre-eminent focus was to preserve the economic privileged class of the 19th century. It's why only property owners could vote.”
mkarfeld@cjn.org
Print this story
Email this story
|
