Is God For Kerry?
By Paul Kengor (11/02/04)
As the campaign season closes we can say goodbye to yet another presidential contest in which Democrats used religion for political purposes with complete impunity, while, amazingly, the media accused Republicans of exploiting religion and wrung its hands over George W. Bush’s “troubling” faith.
It was fitting that when Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said last week that John Kerry is rising in the polls because Gods wants him to, not a single New York Times columnist complained. It was also fitting that John Kerry spent an entire campaign using a Bible verse to openly question his political opponent, again with no protest from a press usually ultra-sensitive to such an abuse of faith. Kerry uses the New Testament’s James 2:14, which asks: “What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds?” Kerry applies this verse to doubt whether the president lives out his faith and whether Bush’s policy choices are rooted in Christian principles.
Kerry began doing this last spring, starting with a March 7 speech at a Mississippi church. Undeterred by a lack of media outrage, Kerry leveled the accusation again on March 28, speaking at a Baptist church in St. Louis. Understanding that he can get away with the charge, Kerry has not relented, aiming the passage at Bush too many times to count. In the final presidential debate on October 13, he twice applied the verse to Bush on national television.
James 2:14 has been John Kerry’s most frequently quoted Bible verse, which he employs not to illuminate his own faith but to directly question the sincerity of Bush’s. Despite all the wild accusations about what George W. Bush believes, he has never publicly questioned Senator Kerry’s faith. If he did, he would be pilloried.
Yet, Kerry is not alone. Religious liberals constantly level such judgmental accusations at Bush. In an October 18 speech at Georgetown, former Vice President Al Gore declared: “I’m convinced that most of the president’s frequent departures from fact-based analysis have much more to do with right-wing political and economic ideology than with the Bible.” Speaking at a church in New York City, Bill Clinton accused the Republican Party of being the party of “Nine Commandments,” and regularly bearing false witness. Imagine if George W. Bush ever accused the Democratic Party of such a thing, or said a Republican equivalent of something like, “He [Jesus] was a Democrat, I think,” as Dick Gephardt proclaimed in Iowa in December 2003, or “Herod was a conservative, Jesus was a liberal,” as Jesse Jackson announced in Boston in August.
Here are examples of liberal Christians declaring that the president’s war in Iraq was unjust and even un-Christian:
“President Bush: Your war would violate the teachings of Jesus Christ.”
New York Times ad by the group Religious Leaders for Sensible Priorities, December 2002
“He [Bush] has brought God in in handcuffs. This war is not coming from the council of heaven, it is coming from a council on earth that has not checked with God about their deeper motivations.”
Pastor James A. Forbes, Jr., Riverside Church, New York City, February 2003
“I cannot profess Christ as my Savior and simultaneously support preemptive war. I can deny Jesus and support war but I will not.”
Jim Winkler, United Methodist Church, February 26, 2003
“The Bush administration’s war on Iraq violates every value we hold as people of faith and conscience.”
Detroit Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, March 24, 2003
“Isn’t the slaughter of innocents the job of people like Herod?… It’s no wonder that the right-wing, theologically punitive Christianity of George W. Bush is so despised by the rational world.”
Gary Kohls, "Catholic New Times," March 2003
I was recently a guest on MSNBC when a respected, thoughtful analyst said that if George W. Bush had indeed prayed before going to war in Iraq he didn’t listen, because God would’ve told him the war was wrong.
What is most extraordinary about these statements is that they rage against Bush for having the audacity to assume he knew God’s will in invading Iraq—which Bush has actually never claimed—while simultaneously asserting that they knew God’s will.
A Maryland minister who opposed the war sent me an email saying that George W. Bush was not born-again; rather, Bush was “stillborn.” I receive emails daily from liberal Christians who inform me that Bush is not a Christian. Their reasons range from the Iraq war to the fact that Bush favors tax cuts, opposes gay marriage, and supports capital punishment.
The religious right is viewed as judgmental, eager to declare who is and is not a Christian. I can attest to emails from conservative Christians who instructed me that Bill Clinton was not a Christian. However, the religious left—John F. Kerry included—is equally guilty of divining to itself the ability to know the heart and soul of a sitting president, and the certainty that God would never vote for Bush. Ironically, the one Christian who refuses to say such things about political opponents is George W. Bush.
Paul Kengor, Ph.D. is author of God and George W. Bush. He is also a professor of political science at Grove City College and a visiting fellow with the Hoover Institution.
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