Mixing Religion And Politics Badly

Church people usually know right away when their preacher has quit preaching and gone to meddling. Most likely, the Reverend Chan Chandler’s flock clearly saw his own descent into mischief for what it was, and acted accordingly. Pastor Chandler recently resigned the pulpit of the East Waynesville, North Carolina Baptist Church over running off church members for not supporting President Bush, conservatism, and goodness knows what else. And well the good Reverend should have resigned --- only sooner.

If the Roman Catholic Church in America were not already so desperate for priests, it might be fitting to ask that St. Paul, Minnesota priest, who recently denied communion to supporters of gay Catholics, to take the same low road out of town that Mr. Chandler had to take. On second thought, let’s ask it anyway. For one thing, it is offensive to be held captive on pew benches that are already sending congregants’ arthritis into spasms while a demagogue in the pulpit or behind the chancel rail spews out doctrinal as well as political cant in a way that permits neither honest discussion nor conscientious dissent.

If the previous examples of clergy shenanigans are not enough by way of illustrating this column’s major point, let me add another for balance. Remember the recent Presidential election controversy over priests threatening to deny communion to Candidate John Kerry and to all those other liberal-types who were supporting him? I do, but I also remember getting far more worked up over how many liberal-type Protestant preachers, who should have known better, fawned shamelessly over him during their own Sabbath services, and from their pulpits no less. Frankly, the Senator lost points with me for showing up in the first place, as does any political candidate who disrupts church gatherings whose announced purpose is the worship of God.

It bothers me a great deal to see fellow members of the cloth hunkering down tight- fistedly with rabid advocates of one political or social agenda after another, whether conservative or liberal, while showing not the slightest consideration of the possibility that there is truth on the other side of the broad, ugly ideological ditches between themselves and anybody else who might disagree with them. Nevertheless, I have to concede, as all of us must, that people do not give up their rights as citizens when they become members of the clergy, nor should they. Although I cringe a little when Jesse Jackson comes to town, I cringe even more when I hear townspeople say they would like to run him out of it.

It is one thing, however, to see your pastor on the barricades and the Internet, protesting against private Social Security accounts, abortion, trade protections, environmental assault, the filibuster, gays and lesbians, the war in Iraq, or whatever, and quite another to hear him or her tell us from the pulpit exactly what we must think and do about the issue(s) at hand. What we most need from our preachers, priests, rabbis, imams, and gurus is as honest a searching of their respective scriptures and traditions of which they are capable, and an opening of a way to them that will allow all of us to discern for ourselves the guidance they contain, and act accordingly.

What we do not need from religious leaders --- conservative, liberal, and everybody in between --- are promulgations of badly formed ideas such as those that lay strict conditions upon peoples’ access to God’s Word and Real Presence. When declamations from our pulpits serve only to silence and coerce, when Christian fellowship takes place only behind doors slammed in others’ faces, and when the communion table becomes restricted only to those arbitrarily deemed worthy, it is time to do what those Waynesville Baptists did. They reminded their pastor that his way was the highway --- for him.

Hovering quietly but threateningly in the background of ministerial malfeasances like those I have just described is the whole confused business of tax-emption for churches going about their proper work of helping and saving needy souls --- including, thankfully, our own. Wouldn’t it be a kick if the tax people all of a sudden decided to trespass on the politically incendiary terrain of determining which churches’ social involvements are genuinely religious and which are merely political? I still doubt whether anybody in the IRS can do the job better than church people can, but when I see preachers with one arm draped around a politician’s shoulders and the other leaning on a pulpit, I have to confess that for at least a tiny moment, I do begin to wonder.