What’s Your Favorite Bible Verse?
FEBRUARY 2008
The title is strictly a religious question, yes? Well, no. It is now apparently a political question—one belonging in presidential debates no less. Nothing like a lot of unconstitutional Bible-thumping to bring a Happy Heretic out of retirement. Presidential candidates are currently elbowing each other out of the way to proclaim a close, personal relationship with God. I’m trying to think of a presidential candidate who hasn’t used a photo op in or near a church. There. I’m done thinking. There isn’t one. All the candidates use churches and Bibles as props and it has got out of hand.
Especially with Republicans, God is ever-present, like head colds and headaches. One of the Republican debates was held on June 5, 2007 in New Hampshire and was moderated by Wolf Blitzer of CNN and Tom Fahey of the New Hampshire Union Leader. In a mere 1,287 words of that debate, “God” was mentioned 19 times. Here are a few random excerpts from that debate:
HUCKABEE: But you’ve raised the question, so let me answer it. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth.” To me it’s pretty simple, a person either believes that God created this process or believes that it was an accident and that it just happened all on its own.
MCCAIN: I believe in evolution. But I also believe, when I hike the Grand Canyon and see it at sunset, that the hand of God is there also.
HUCKABEE: But I believe that all of us in this room are the unique creations of a God who knows us and loves us and who created us for his own purpose.
BROWNBACK: I believe that we are created in the image of God for a particular purpose. And I believe that with all my heart.
MCCAIN: The point is that the time before time — there’s no doubt in my mind that the hand of God was in what we are today. And I do believe that we are unique, and I believe that God loves us.
ROMNEY: I believe in God, believe in the Bible, believe Jesus Christ is my savior. I believe that God created man in his image. I believe that the freedoms of man derive from inalienable rights that were given to us by God.
Had enough? There is a lot more, but my basic question remains. What has any of this to do with politics? If your brow is furrowed and you’re thinking “nothing” then you’re right. Why was all this claptrap being discussed? Because we are definitely heading toward a theocracy—a Protestant, Christian one naturally. If I’m wrong about that, how can the above quotes exist?
Making it all the more ominous is the fact that Mike Huckabee won in the Iowa Caucus. Here are the numbers:
The numbers are frightening because of what Huckabee stands for. To say he’s a
Christian fundamentalist is not news. Evangelical? Same. Insane? Possibly. When
you read the following keep in mind that as a citizen Huckabee certainly has the
right to believe anything he wants to believe. But to think that so many
American citizens believe that a man with his brand of faith should be the
Leader of the Free World is astonishing and scary. Consider:
At a public forum on the eve of the Michigan primary, while mocking Republican opponents who don't want to append a “marriage amendment” or a “life amendment” to the Constitution, Huckabee said: “I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that's what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards.”
This ideology is eerily similar to a movement called both “Christian dominionism” and “Christian reconstructionism,” which declares that America, indeed every nation on earth, is meant to be governed by biblical law. Google either of those terms and prepare to join Alice and her magic mushrooms. “Biblical law” means killing, literally murdering, adulterers, homosexuals, blasphemers, disobedient children and all the rest so graphically described in the Old Testament of the “holy” Bible. Come to think of it, which is hard to do without getting dizzy, who would be left on the planet if all those people were really killed? Better question: who would be qualified to be doing the killing?
For sale now, on Amazon, is a book titled Kids Who Kill and it is co-authored by Mike Huckabee. Who is the other author? It is George Grant, a militant Christian reconstructionist. Briefly, Huckabee and Grant believe school shootings are just symptoms of American civilization in decline which is reflected in the fact that we are all polarized by “abortion, environmentalism, AIDS, pornography, drug abuse, and homosexual activism.”
What has all this to do with anything? Well, the co-author of that loony book won the Republican Iowa Caucus. His bid is for the presidency of the United States and in the relatively small state of Iowa, 40,841 people thought he should hold that office. So, you may be thinking, who cares? The Republicans wear religion on their sleeves and hopefully we’ll have the sense to put a Democrat in the White House. Well, brace yourselves.
I trust my own eyes and ears, usually, but this time I might have doubted both if I hadn’t later read, online, the transcript of a Democratic debate televised on MSNBC. Here’s what happened:
The debate was held at Hanover, New Hampshire on September 26, 2007 and was moderated in part by Tim Russert of MSNBC. It was plodding along, boring and predictable, when Russert asked a final, startling question. With a smarmy smile on his face he said, “Before we go, there's been a lot of discussion about the Democrats and the issue of faith and values. I want to ask you a simple question. Senator Obama, what is your favorite Bible verse?” I listened with a slack jaw and open mouth. This is when my eyes and ears seemed to fail me. What the hell was this all about? In a Republican debate, yes, of course, it would be expected. They can’t work in enough god-talk. But the Democrats?
I wish one, just one of the eight Democratic candidates had asked back, “What’s that got to do with being President of the United States?” Alas, no one had the cojones to demand an explanation for this out-of-the-blue religious test. Every one of the candidates answered this outrageously irrelevant question without blinking an eye. The candidates scrambled for references. Obama mentioned the Sermon on the Mount, which certainly is not a verse, Clinton mentioned the Golden Rule, Kucinich said something about some prayer of St. Francis, certainly not in the Bible, and so forth, after which my husband tells me I growled, “Son of a bitch! Do you believe that?”
The only reason Tim Russert felt emboldened enough to ask such a religious question has to do with the unhealthy, obsessive nature of this entire 2008 political landscape. It is steeped in religion. It is oozing religion. When and, more important, why did we let this happen? The U.S. Constitution has been gutted, some say shredded by the Patriot Act, but how did we allow religion to be a core issue in a presidential election cycle? To refresh our jaded memories, this is a snippet of that tattered document, the Constitution of the United States:
Article VI
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. ____________________
Is there any ambiguity in “no religious test?” Is there any doubt that those words were put there for a specific reason, that reason being that religion and government shall stay apart? Why are any discussions about God a part of any presidential debates? While it’s true that the people asking the religious questions are not elected public officials, the debates are certainly public. Those questions seem indistinguishable from a “religious test” that is so clearly forbidden by the Constitution.
Adding insult to injury is thinking about the current resident of the Oval Office. Bush is an ardent Born-Again Christian, an evangelical. And look what he’s brought down on our heads! Do we really want any more of that? I don’t know where we’re headed but my instincts tell me that we should all be afraid. Very afraid. But first, answer me this: What’s your favorite Bible verse?
© 2008 Judith Hayes