Abe Lincoln, the Religious Wacko Fundamentalist (and what it may teach us about Sarah Palin)

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The ignorance of the press when it comes to religious matters is astounding. People of faith are too often treated as if they come from an alien planet and have habits normal mortals can never hope to understand. I've often referred to the GetReligion blog as an excellent site for cataloging much of this cluelessness - and pointing out the praiseworthy exceptions when they do occur.

Sarah Palin is being pilloried by some who see her as a Christian incarnation of a Muslim fundamentalist. And this is in the mainstream media. See, for example, Juan Cole's column on Slate.com.

One Palin comment raising eyebrows came in her address to graduating students at her former church, when she said, "Our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God. That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that plan is God's plan."

Now, every "normal" evangelical, especially those who listen to the message in context, will understand her to be saying that our leaders should ask for God's guidance as they make decisions about (the) war, and that every citizen should beseech God to guide those leaders. Praying for our leaders is, in fact, a Scriptural injunction (see, for example, 1 Timothy 2.1-3). But the rigid secularists see her as claiming divine mandate for every decision that she might make. Then they take it even further and warn that she may singlehandedly attempt to usher in the Apocalypse in order to hasten the return of Christ. I'm sure such religious wackos do exist, but there's no sane reason to believe that Sarah Palin is one of them.

Somehow, this leads to Abraham Lincoln. I was remembering how he said that we should "do right, as God gives us to see the right," and how that statement wasn't much different than Palin's. And that got me to looking at Lincoln's second inaugural address. It's only 700 words long - if only today's political speeches were so short! - and the most notable aspect is that almost 2/3 of it reads like a sermon. I'll reprint that portion below. There's more theology in this civic address than I've heard in a lot of sermons. What was Lincoln's view of God's will? Of divine Providence? Of prayer? Of the attributes and character of God? Is this the kind of relgious wacko who should be entrusted with leading a nation at crisis?

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Would You Vote for a Mormon?

I have no affection for the Mormon church. I think Mormonism is a false religion, and assuredly not Christian.

Which leaves me no fan of Mitt Romney. And thinking there's no way I'd vote for him for president. But a recent opinion piece by Michael Gerson in the Washington Post has set me to thinking: maybe my aversion to Romney is misplaced. Here's an excerpt from Gerson:

There is a long tradition of American leaders who believe that religion is so personal it shouldn't even affect their private lives. But this rigid separation between religious conviction and public policy lies outside the main current of American history. Abraham Lincoln's theology, while hardly orthodox, was not his "own private affair." "Nothing stamped with the divine image and likeness," he asserted, "was sent into the world to be trodden on." Martin Luther King Jr. claimed that to find the source of our rights, "it is necessary to move back behind the dim mist of eternity, for they are God-given."

These were theological arguments, not merely rhetorical adornments. But they were also carefully limited.

American political leaders have generally not talked about soteriology -- how the individual soul is saved. In Christian theology, these choices are fundamentally private, and government attempts to influence them are both doomed and tyrannical. American leaders have also wisely avoided the topic of eschatology -- inherently speculative theories about the end or culmination of history.

But religious convictions on the topic of anthropology-- the nature and value of men and women -- have profoundly and positively influenced American history. Many of the greatest advances toward the protection of minority rights, from the abolition of slavery to the civil rights movement, came in part because people of faith pushed for them. And religious men and women made those efforts because they were convinced that all human beings -- not just all believers -- are created in God's image.

So what does this mean for Romney? Many Christians have serious problems with Mormon theology on personal salvation and the nature of history -- disputes that go much deeper than those between, say, Baptists and Presbyterians. These disagreements are theologically important. But they are not politically important, because they are unrelated to governing.

Romney, however, should not make [John F.] Kennedy's mistake and assert that all religious beliefs are unrelated to politics. What Mormonism shares with other religious traditions is a strong commitment to the value and dignity of human beings, including the unborn, the disabled and the poor. This conviction is unavoidably political, because it leads men and women to act in the cause of justice, not in order to impose their religion, but to protect the weak.

Given this common ground, evangelicals and other religious conservatives should not disqualify Romney from the outset. There may be other reasons to oppose him for president, but his belief about the destiny of the soul is not one of them.

What do you think?