The Religious Right and Faith in Politics

David Kuo's book, "Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction," alleged that Republican insiders used faith-based initiatives as a political tool to garner support from the Religious Right. Kuo, former deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives claimed that White House staffers ridiculed some of their evangelical supporters as "nuts" and "goofy" and that public events surrounding Bush's faith-based initiative were geared toward Republican electoral fortunes. Sensing the religious direction of the United States, the Republican Party smartly embraced religious conservatism by lumping it together with political conservatism. Unfortunately, the uninformed majority was unable to recognize the inherent contradictions between the two.

In fact, the pandering to the Religious Right by the Republican Party appears to have been just that, pandering. For example, the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives is somewhat of a misnomer. The group does have many community based social welfare programs, however, after reading through many of their initiatives there does not seem to be anything particularly "faith-based" about the programs. By virtue of its name I believe that many of the uninformed Religious Right would de-facto believe that George W. Bush and the Republican Party was "their" party. It would imply that the Office invests in programs that they believe in without having any material proof as to their efficacy. If that truly is what the program entails I believe even this Congress would have shot it down.

While scanning over one of several blogs I regularly visit, I came across this piece from the Minnesota Monitor. At an event at the Living Word Christian Center, Republican Congressional Candidate Michele Bachmann made in my opinion, several seemingly inappropriate comments including:

"God then called me to run for the United States Congress, and I thought “What in the world will that be for?” and my husband said “You need to do this,” and I wasn’t so sure, and we took 3 days and we fasted and we prayed and we said, “Lord. Is this what you want? Is this your will?” and after long about the afternoon of day two, he made that calling sure. And its been now 22 months that I’ve been running for United States Congress. Who in their right mind would spend 2 years to run for a job that lasts 2 years? You’d have to be absolutely a fool to do that. You are now looking at a fool for Christ. This is a fool for Christ. And in the midst of him making this calling sure, what has occurred now in this particular race is that this Congressional seat out of 435 in the country has become… it has been one of the top five races in the country, and in the last week this has become one of the top three races in the country, and you may have seen how God has in his own will, and his own plan, has focused like a laser beam after this scandal that came up about a week or so ago. He has focused like a laser beam in his reasoning on this race. The reason why this is one of the top three races is because this race will probably decide which way Congress goes this fall. We could talk more about what that means for this nation, what this means for defeating radical Islam, what this means for what the future of the family is going to be, what this is going to mean for the future of the freedom of religious expression."

You understand? God told her to run, God believes that if you don't vote for her then the United States will not defeat radical Islam, the family will disintegrate, and you will lose your right to freedom of religion. You believe in God don't you? When you look at the polling numbers it appears that at a certain point the dissatisfaction level bottoms out in the mid 30s. As long as George W. Bush and the Republican Party keeps its self appointed title of "the Party of Religion" it will not go any lower no matter what GWB does, in their eyes he is infallible.