While Rudolph Giuliani may claim the political tradition of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, I can’t help but notice how much he actually sounds like Bill Clinton and John Kerry.
Yesterday, in an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, Giuliani channeled Kerry’s signature tediousness and paradox saying, “I’m very, very passionate about abortion and the whole issue of abortion. But it leads me to a conclusion that may be different than some, the same as others, which is I oppose it. That’s a principle I’ve held forever, and I’ll hold it forever. That’s not going to change. But I also believe that in a society like ours, where people have very, very different consciences about this, it’s best for us to respect each other’s differences and allow for choice.”
Or, in other words: I oppose abortion personally, but I support abortion constitutionally.
Compare that with Kerry’s response from the second presidential debate in 2004, when he said, “First of all, I cannot tell you how deeply I respect the belief about life and when it begins. I’m a Catholic – raised a Catholic. I was an altar boy. Religion has been a huge part of my life, helped lead me through a war, leads me today. But I can’t take what is an article of faith for me and legislate it for someone who doesn’t share that article of faith, whether they be agnostic, atheist, Jew, Protestant, whatever. I can’t do that. But I can counsel people, I can talk reasonably about life and about responsibility.”
Or, in other words: I oppose abortion personally, but I support abortion constitutionally.
Maybe both Giuliani and Kerry would have been wise to echo Clinton’s comparatively concise take on the subject: “Abortion should not only be safe and legal, it should be rare.” Either way, it’s clear that on the issue of abortion the current front-runner for the 2008 Republican nomination is on the exact same page as a two-term Democratic president and the 2004 Democratic nominee.
It is no small matter that the current favorite for the Republican nomination happens to support a women’s right to choose. His position is a virtual rejection of the long-established influence of the Religious Right on the Republican agenda and begins to chip away at the keystone of the party by alienating a religious, antiabortionist contingency with a historically significant impact at the polls. It simultaneously marginalizes the voice of the Religious Right and undercuts general assumptions about which candidates and which party people of faith should support on election day.
For many people, the issue of abortion is oftentimes viewed as a matter of black and white, of good and evil, of right and wrong. More importantly, its profound ability to regularly affect an entire presidential race is such that it often casts the candidates in a similarity dualistic light: one candidate is good and right; the other is evil and wrong. If 2008 does eventually find the two candidates on the same side of the abortion issue for the first time, many voters will have to venture into a new gray area to resolve questions of right and wrong, of good and evil. And to do that, new questions about faith will be required.
The fact is, new questions about faith are desperately needed in this country. Faith has become the iron curtain of America – a dominating force for division, isolation, and antagonism. Such a partition is uniquely made possible by our political system, which demonizes when is should disagree and seeks to condemn when it should seek to cooperate.
Liberals and conservatives alike need to reexamine how the principle of the Golden Rule affects our politics and our policies. With global economics, global warming, and global terrorism bringing all people closer together than ever before, this is truly the time for Americans to reconsider what it means to be our brother’s keeper. It is time to seek openness and restructuring of our understandings of faith, and we can best begin by putting a little faith in each other.
Evidence exists that such a process is already underway, and Barack Obama is taking a leading role. On World AIDS Day last December, Obama accepted the invitation of evangelical leader Rick Warren to speak at a conference on the prevention of AIDS. Many evangelicals pointed to Obama’s pro-choice position as reason to prevent his participation, but Warren took a bold stand against the status-quo of evangelicalism and would have none of it. Obama also replied to the criticism in a statement, saying, “While we will never see eye to eye on all issues, surely we can come together with one voice to honor the entirety of Christ’s teachings by working to eradicate the scourge of AIDS, poverty and other challenges we all can agree must be met.”
It is that renewed emphasis on the entirety of Christ’s message of love that must become the basis for exploring issues of faith. Similarly, we must be open to the notion that a Democrat can speak from the heart about the entirety of Christ’s message of love. The familiar paradigm of the evil, secular pro-choice candidate simply cannot be reconciled with Barack Obama’s speech at the convention, where he said:
“My faith also tells me that – as Pastor Rick has said – it is not a sin to be sick. My Bible tells me that when God sent his only Son to Earth, it was to heal the sick and comfort the weary; to feed the hungry and clothe the naked; to befriend the outcast and redeem those who strayed from righteousness. Living His example is the hardest kind of faith – but it is surely the most rewarding. It is a way of life that can not only light our way as a people of faith, but guide us to a new and better politics as Americans.”
What’s especially important about the efforts of Obama and Warren is that they expressed a new understanding of faith and its role in American politics. They acted as bold leaders of new generation breaking with the notion that the Religious Right and the Republican party have cornered the market on being good and right. Giuliani’s current success within the party as well as Obama’s collaboration with Warren both point to the fact that faith needs to be reexamined at a national level – and already is. Fortunately, Obama and Warren have established a precedent for their fellow Americans by refusing to use faith as a tool to demonize or condemn one another and to instead seek ways to make faith in America an instrument for unity, community, and cooperation.
Well thought out, beautifully stated, Keith.
There is a difference between faith and religiosity. One is a deeply held credo which embraces all of humankind, quick to seek understanding and tolerance, slow to judge and condemn. The other is a doctrinaire ideology which, in its current Robertsonian/Falwellian guise, narrows the entire moral universe to a “spiritual war” against women, gays and lesbians, anyone whose system of belief questions the veracity of a singular, right-wing fundamentalist dogma.
Oddly, both can be defined as “biblically based.” The Old Testament is rife with bloodshed and intolerant laws. That God was an angry God who was not always “fair” to all his children. The letter of the old law. Christ came to bring us the spirit of the law. Mitigating circumstances, tolerance of human failings, forgiveness, reaching out to our brothers and sisters who suffer.
Biblically women were second class citizens. Slavery was a given–it was not the abomination it is to believers today. As we grew in both intellectual capacity and spirituality, we rejected both as flawed systems.
I’m a mainstream Methodist who attends church regularly. My belief in both God and in Christ has never blunted (or blinded) the need for change in my perception of what my faith should be; as I grow and change, so does my faith. It does not narrow, but enlarges. I can believe in God and in evolution. I can reject simplistic, either/or harsh judgment of things I do not understand.
I found this couplet a few months ago. It’s from a hymn, “Praise the Source of Faith and Learning”, in The Faith We Sing:
“May our learning curb the error which unthinking faith can breed,
“Lest we justify some terror with an antiquated creed.”
Faith is a living, growing, enlightening thing. Religiosity is a dead-end, stultifying, self-aggrandizing code adapted to serve a singular point of view. Faith is about love. Religiosity is about power. Faith should inform our politics. Religiosity should never define them.