In my sermon yesterday, I spoke about political idolatry--a fancy schmancy way of saying the misuse of religion for political ends or put another way putting politics above love of God. So far nobody has exploded at me, because of my sermon. So that means, either I communicated my message so well that everybody got it OR I wimped out and failed to deliver a prophetic message--I guess it depends on how you look at it.Anyway, my two negative examples were from speeches by President Bush--the younger one.
1. From the 2003 State of the Union Speech: "Yet there's power, wonder-working power, in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people." (Yes, that's a reference to There's Power in the Blood, a hymn that speaks of the "wonder-working power" of Christ's blood to save us from our sins--a reference used here to speak of America and how President Bush's Faith-Based Initiative should be supported.)
2. From the speech on the one-year anniversary of September 11: "Ours is the cause of human dignity; freedom guided by conscience and guarded by peace. This ideal of America is the hope of all mankind... That hope still lights our way. And the light shines in the darkness. And the darkness will not overcome it. " (Yes, that's right. He quotes John 1 and its description of Jesus as the light of the world and says that America is the light of the world instead)
As I also said in the sermon, just in case you think I'm picking only on Republicans. I refer you to the recent article in the New York Times Magazine: "Narrowing of the Religion Gap?" about how the Democratic presidential contenders will attempt to appeal to religious voters in the run up to 2008. We can only hope that their misappropriations of Christianity for partisan political purposes will be better than John Kerry's lame attempts at quoting scripture last time around.
Grace and Peace,
Chase
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