The Politics and Religion of Fear

Most of the time I stay away from directly addressing political issues even though all theology of every stripe always has political implications.

My concern today is the totally inappropriate (dare I say, evil) use of Christian scriptures and beliefs to generate broad-based fear throughout the electorate. By every account, fear is used to sway elections because (sadly) it works! No matter how unethical it may be or how much lying is used to generate fear, political campaigns continue to use it. While people may believe in the ethical principle that “the ends don’t justify the means”, in practice, the “end” of winning the election has come to justify any and all “means” that are employed to get that result. Truth, therefore, is now completely without value in much of our political system – and the more national the contest, the greater the propensity toward lying.

In an unintended way, the negative approach is working on me, too, because I find that I am afraid a lot these days. Mostly, I’m afraid that the politics of fear will continue to dominate the world of elections, politics, business, and international relations and that any possibility of trusting the process will be lost – in short, that candidates will get elected only on the basis of the magnitude of their lying, not their character or the creativity of their approaches to the problems of the age.

This raises the question about why winning at all costs has come to be so important. At one time I believed that those who aspired to political office actually wanted to be of service to the broader community and had some ideas about how to do that. In their campaigns, they would put out those ideas and if they resonated sufficiently with the electorate, they would win. I have become much more cynical in the face of the increasing mountain of evidence that too many politicians are in it primarily for the money. I have come to believe that all the political rhetoric about moral principles, about freedom, about fairness, and about security mostly boil down to a small “moneyed” elite who only want to protect their “right” to make as much money as they can without regard to how much it will cost everyone else or how much it will cost the health of the planet.

Pardon that slight digression about politics and money. What has my dander up today is a particular example of the dishonest use of religious language and symbolism in the political campaign. In a recent ad by the McCain camp, Barack Obama’s intelligence and popularity are used against him in a particularly heinous way. They refer to him as “The One” who is to come. This is a coded message to religious fundamentalists who believe that a charismatic leader will come onto the scene and rise to a position of great power. Once he is in power, he will show his true intention to destroy everything and will be known not as a great leader, but as the Anti-Christ. There will then be a great battle in which the real Christ will defeat the anti-Christ and will usher us into a new age.

A part of me would prefer simply to ignore such virulent foolishness. After all, nobody would believe such tripe, would they? Sadly, too many people are primed to believe lies just like this. So, I’m trying to think about how to approach the problem. I think there are a couple of issues here. The first has to do with the believability of these lies, and the second has to do with understanding the “coded” language that these ads use. To give another example, Sam Stein, in his Huffington Post article says this:

On Sunday, longtime Washington hand David Gergen took umbrage with John McCain's recent attack ads, charging that the Senator was using coded messaging to paint Barack Obama as "outside the mainstream" and "uppity."

"There has been a very intentional effort to paint him as somebody outside the mainstream, other, 'he's not one of us,'" said Gergen, who has worked with White Houses, both Republican and Democrat, from Nixon to Clinton. "I think the McCain campaign has been scrupulous about not directly saying it, but it's the subtext of this campaign. Everybody knows that. There are certain kinds of signals. As a native of the south, I can tell you, when you see this Charlton Heston ad, 'The One,' that's code for, 'he's uppity, he ought to stay in his place.' Everybody gets that who is from a southern background. We all understand that. When McCain comes out and starts talking about affirmative action, 'I'm against quotas,' we get what that's about."

Of course, it doesn’t stop there. Some, if not all, of these statements find their way into the internet distribution system. One widely distributed post has a description of the antichrist that makes this ominous character sound just like Obama, including that he will be a Muslim. Of course, many people don’t seem to notice that the Islamic religion didn’t even come to being until several centuries after the biblical prophecies were written, or the fact that Obama belongs to the United Church of Christ and is not a Muslim at all.

Also from the Huffington Post is the following that expresses my feelings very well:

A number of progressive religious figures are angry over the McCain campaign's recent ad "The One," which they believe paints Barack Obama as a kind of anti-Christ, specifically to conservative evangelicals:

On Beliefnet.com, Mara Vanderslice, founder and director of the pro-Obama religious group Matthew 25 Network, writes:

I found this McCain campaign ad "The One" to be one of the most offensive ads we have seen in American politics to date.
At best, this ad implies that those who plan to support Senator Obama are looking for a new savior or a replacement Messiah. But many are reading it even more darkly as an attempt to portray Obama as an anti-Christ figure.

A vote for Senator Obama is a vote for the man we think will make the best President, not for a new Messiah. As Christians, we have one Lord And Savior. Jesus Christ. It is blasphemous to suggest otherwise.

And it is beyond offensive to suggest that Senator Obama is a false Messiah or the anti-Christ himself. How low can we go? It shows the McCain campaign is willing to make a mockery of our faith to feed people's fears. Christians need to reject this out of hand.

This leads to my final comment. What do we do about it? Ms. Vanderslice recommends simply rejecting such thinking out of hand. I tend to agree, but it really is not quite that simple. We need to be educated enough to see how political rhetoric is trying to get us to come to superficial conclusions about complex issues and candidates. This is particularly true when people use supposed Biblical references to make their points, so our ongoing religious education is vital. We must think deeply and carefully about what we are hearing. And we need to keep the light of public awareness on the tricks of the campaigning process. This is not easy because “they” come at us often and from all directions. Let’s not be taken in. Let’s stand up for more truthfulness in the process. Our culture and our churches need it.

Wayne
“Our faith is 2000 years old, our thinking is not.”
The United Church of Christ