God’s Reputation Is on the Line, Again

Piety and pride can do terrible harm, but they can also create enormous messes when combined with politics. The looming elections have us all in tail tizzies, but once again the hard core Christians seem to have it all under control with their god.

Back in the 2008 presidential elections, I was especially intrigued by what happened during that campaign at a rally in Davenport, Iowa, when Rev. Arnold Conrad offered this invocation: I would also pray Lord, that your reputation is involved in all that happens between now and November, because there are millions of people around this world praying to their God — whether it’s Hindu, Buddha, Allah — that his [McCain’s] opponent wins for a variety of reasons.  And Lord I pray that you would guard your own reputation, because they’re going to think that their god is bigger than you, if that happens. So I pray that you would step forward and honor your own name in all that happens between now and Election Day.

Before I heard that prayer, I had never realized that God might have a reputation.  After that particular election, of course, one might have to conclude that God’s reputation was shot to hell.  When you think about it, throughout the various histories of humanity, the reputation of one god is pitted against the reputation of another…depending on who is telling the story as to which god outgods the other.

 For some reason, people just can’t fathom that the love of God might be bigger than a god who simply champions their particular religion or race or nation or way of seeing the world.  The kind of bumper sticker mentality of “God Bless America” as if no other country in the world ever matters to God.

I’m sure the god of the minister in Davenport, Iowa, would not want God to smear God’s holy name by abandoning those most precious voters during that election.  After all, the real Christians are deserving of their right to win — whether it’s a war or an election — in order to preserve truth, virtue, white supremacy, and the “real” American way of life.  One nation under God…God bless America…in God we trust…and all that sort of thing.  But there’s a fly in the ointment, and it’s not God’s reputation on the block here at all. 

Jesus talks about God who has a reputation for being extremely inclusive, which most righteous people — like our reverend from Iowa — find unacceptable. But that is exactly how God is. Everyone is included, no one left out.  God is not satisfied that just a few of God’s favorite children might be saved; God wants them all, Jew and Gentile, slave and free, board chairman and garbage collector, president and prostitute, rich and wretched, visiting foreign dignitaries and illegal aliens, the right wing pro-lifers and bleeding heart liberals. 

“In a society that is growing radically more secular every day,” writes David Brooks, “I’d say we have more to fear from political dogmatism than religious dogmatism. We have more to fear from those who let their politics determine their faith practices and who turn their religious communities into political armies. We have more to fear from people who look to politics as a substitute for faith.”

“Politics needs a reference point outside of politics,’’ argues the Hebrew University religious philosopher Moshe Halbertal. “It needs values, it needs facts and it needs leaders who respect that there is a sacred domain of decisions that will never be used to promote political gain, only the common good.’’