GOP & God

On May 25th, 2011 the Senate voted down the Medicare overhaul pushed by Republicans. All Democrats and 5 Senate Republicans voted against the measure. Those 5 Republicans jumped the aisle for different reasons, but they jumped it nonetheless. Yet even as they have crossed the aisle, even as the partisan battle wages on, I can't help but wonder about the GOP and God. What exactly is the relationship?

In a word: unexplainable. The Religious Right held unimaginable power upon the Republican Party, and for that matter the political conversation. With the death of Dr. Jerry Falwell the power has waned considerably. Sure, Christian Fundamentalists still try to claim moral authority upon the United States, but by-and-large the conversation is moving away from centralized, authoritarian control - by means of those three letters: G-O-D.

I make it a point to not question the faith of the people. If they say they have it, I'll trust them. Then, again, I remember what Jesus said in the 13th chapter of John's Gospel:

"I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have loved for one another."




I remained concerned with love, because time-after-time Jesus commands love. Whether someone believes Jesus is the only way, think Jesus is one way, or fine with not knowing, love remains paramount. I've always been suspect of the GOP and their talk/stranglehold/control/manipulation of God-talk, because I know they have an agenda. Democrats do too, and there are people all throughout politics that could use a message of love, but it won't survive as the prevailing criterion for action.

Why you ask?


Love has no agenda.

Love does not try to coerce.
Love does not manipulate.
Love does not cut the feet out from under the infirmed and elderly.

But, love challenges into transformation. It is relational.

It's not interested in charity, but injustice. The problem I have ith the GOP and God is simple: they use "God" to hurt. I don't mind people having faith - in fact, if it's critical faith it may bear rich fruit. Yet using God to justify the denying of possibilities seems as bad, in my mind, as invading a country, killing hundreds of civilians, and saying we did it out of love because we sought to end evil.


Throughout the ages God has been on the side of good and evil because humanity argues God is on one side or the other. When the bombs drop, God is not on the plane, but in the suffering of humanity. When the tax cuts continue to fatten the richest and make those in chronic poverty the spoils of war, God sits with those unfairly oppressed. God is in the whisper of the child that asks for food and hears only, "No. We don't have any."

The relationship between the GOP and God remains unexplainable, because there is no relationship. God does not support political campaigns. God supports humanitarian campaigns. If that has political implications, then so be it; but people of faith must not justify the name of God as an endorsement for building up of the elite or making fear normative.
God sits with no party; God sits with humanity. That's all of us. God will continue to be a political hostage as long as people think God makes political decisions. We call God's breath "humanity," and God's compassion demonstrates itself in the ability to connect with each other. At the end of the day, my politics reflect humanity's needs because I am a person of love, a follower of Jesus.

Or as one person of love, a Jesus-follower, and general rabble-rouser once said, "Yes, I see the Church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists."

Thanks, Dr. King, and don't worry; we're working on it.
God isn't on the side of the GOP - God's on the side of humanity.