I’m old enough to remember the first Kennedy and Nixon debate on television. But not old enough to have understood it. I remember seeing both of them on the screen. Kennedy looked cool and at ease, but Nixon looked like he was about to stroke out. It wasn’t pretty.
Years later I remember Nixon talking endlessly about Nixon, what he did, what he’d do, where he’d go, on and on. But nothing about religion.
No discussions about God or the Bible. No comments about abortion or women’s reproductive rights. I guess it was assumed they had them, even if not fully and it was politically gauche to bring bodies, sex, and God into the same conversation.
But today there are no such inhibitions.
Politics and religion are not only joined at the hip, they’re swapping spit. They’re intimate, entangled, and trying hard so no one can tell them apart.
Believe in God? Then you believe in the party that believes as well. Don’t believe in God and that he’s got skin in this game, then you must be a Democrat.
Politics is supposed to be about governance and the effective running of a country.
The word itself has its root in the Greek word Politiká, meaning affairs of the cities.
It was straightforward. The Greeks were generally straightforward people. They seemed to have liked things simple. Because simple is transparent.
It’s hard to hide behind simple. The store opens at 8 am. Dinner is served at 6 pm, don’t be late. Not much wiggle room there.
Today American politics is anything but simple. It’s like the fine print on an insurance policy. It’s not meant to be understood, but to protect the interests behind it.
Religion is about God. And God is about control. It wasn’t always that way. God came about as a means of answering the big questions.
Where are we and how did we get here?
Why does the earth shake and fire rain down from the skies?
And inevitably with God came fear. Not directly in the man himself but in the teaching of him. And there were always those willing to interpret the signs of God and tell the rest of us what they meant and more importantly what he needed from us.
Fear is also simple. The store opens at 8 am, be on time or you’re fired. Dinner’s at 6 pm, be there or no video games tonight.
Men early on discovered that God and fear were compatible. Whether it was his original intention or not is hard to say. A quick read through the bible or any holy scripture and God was seriously kicking butt throughout history. Mostly for not listening, not doing what he ordered, exactly. Not believing in his might and righteousness.
So, how does politics fit in?
Politics is also driven by fear, so they are a match made in heaven – pun intended.
Politics is also about control. Not just in those areas it is directed toward, but for the people behind politics who desire something greater than fate to guide their business interests.
The Founding Fathers (and Mothers) had their fair share of religion before they and their immediate ancestors came over from Europe.
From the Middle Ages on religion and royalty were bedfellows as well. The kings and queens throughout Europe had God on their side. Their very positions were considered divine. They went way back, besties since the Romans came marching through, making everyone sit up straight and believe in their gods first.
So, it was only a matter of time before God and religions and those that supported and interpreted them formed an alliance.
God and Glory on one side – everyone else on the other.
And what kept it all running smoothly over the centuries – fear.
There’s a great deal of fear on the tip of a sword. There are even greater amounts of fear in a single shot or cannonball. No telling how much fear resides in a machine gun or howitzer, but no doubt a great deal, judging by the legends of men willing to die for various religious and political causes over the centuries.
But today wars and crusades continue with a different face appearing on them, one better suited to today’s sensibilities and the constant invasiveness of the Internet.
Today religion is not at the head of a column of soldiers marching toward the holy land or any other land for that matter. That’s too simple, too transparent.
In today’s politics religious concepts have crept through the floorboards and attic vents. Through pulpits and expensive summer vacations. Filtered through trickle-down economics and lobbyists in expensive suits who walk the corridors of power with a confident strut and just the hint of Westside Story playing in the background.
Not bringing fear, but articulation. A game plan not unlike the plans unfolded after the hordes ransacked Rome. When simple was left behind and seriously complex took its place.
The ultimate fear in religion is the loss of one’s soul. And even as the world’s populations become less engaged in religions, religious leaders scramble to elevate their ideals, ensuring a pious future. Where God sits neatly at the head of all governments in one form or another.
If not outright as in Iran and other nations then in his alternate form. Men acting as God in taking control of their countries for the good of the people. For the saving of their souls, politically of course.
In America today we have a wannabe dictator. A man of God (bible in hand, albeit upside down) who speaks to the evangelical right like Moses must have to his people back in the day. Telling them not so much what he believes in (and by all accounts what Moses certainly did) but what he believes will get him voted back into office.
This is the nexus where the values of politics and religion merge. Where ideals that offer up the right result, the right positioning of man and woman, are those that should be elevated to the law of the land. Even if most of the population disagrees with it.
Where decisions in the nation’s highest court sound eerily like teachings coming from the pulpit rather than the Constitution.
And where the Constitution itself is becoming more and more malleable while ironically being touted as a rather inflexible document that must be interpreted as and when it was written.
Religion and politics are not merely cohabitating, they’re hoping to birth a new type of America, one based on the bible having been in every office of the Founding Fathers even if it wasn’t mentioned specifically in the document itself. An editorial oversight, no doubt.
A place where God should be feared and where one’s soul is always in peril. If that place sounds a lot like a dystopian world, a place one might expect to find in the novel 1984 or a Netflix TV series, like The Handmaiden’s Tale, one can only hope that it remains fictional.
But the winds of change are blowing – and what they’re getting in our eyes is troublesome. Not the truth. Not a valid correction on a system that has seen better days. But a complete overhaul. And it’s not like we haven’t seen this movie before.
Dictators taking power. Evil marching down city streets in stylishly tailored uniforms with sullen onlookers wondering what the fuck just happened.
The divide in this country is not just ideological, which side is offering the best deal. A set of new radials with each purchase.
It goes deeper, where pain and uncertainty reside. Where heartbreak and lost goals dwell and fester.
But the thing is, we all know this. As much as it might feel a little better to sway with the wind for a while and not expend too much energy trying to resist things, we know the good guys from the bad guys.
We know that a fair percentage of the news is skewered and basically pure horseshit.
We know when we watch Fox News, we are not likely to get a fair and unbiased look at the world, in the same unequivocal way that we know things are not going to turn out well for us if that semi doesn’t stop real soon.
And Fox is not the only purveyor of misinformation or biased news. That slippery slope was descended when corporations began buying the News in all its forms. Delivering messages that were tailored, tucked, and tested to forward an agenda that may not be in our best interests.
Politics and religion do not go together. Politics and today’s ideas of what religion should be, barely exceed the threshold for being useful in any situation.
We can do something about this or we can continue shouting across the divide and put our faith in a God who loves us and will deliver us from evil even if the odds of that happening aren’t looking all that good right now.