The news was all a-twitter on the topic of religion and politics recently, with talk shows, newspapers, and social media exploiting the Easter holiday and national preoccupations with religion.
But let’s really face the nation and recognize that all of this talk about “religion” is a cover for Christians to talk about how their version of Christianity relates to the news of the day.
It’s not really about whether “religion” and “politics” should be kept separate; it’s about how various forms of Christianity — progressive Protestantism, conservative Catholicism, Hispanic evangelicalism, and so on — rule the national debate about politics.
From the beginning, America has been a Christian nation.
Yes, the revolutionary political stand for religious freedom in the First Amendment did indeed transform Christianity’s place in society in the aftermath of its passage.
But the amendment did not prevent the mixing of Christianity and politics in U.S. history.
The oft referred to “wall of separation” cordoning off secular space devoid of Christian religious sensibilities remains a political ideal for many Americans.
However, as a descriptive statement about American politics, past and present, it is off the mark, missing both the elusive boundaries of Christian cultures in the halls of power and the rather blatant infiltration of politics in the pews.
The lead-up to the 2012 presidential election is as much about which form of Christianity will rule as it is about the economy, war, the size of government and other highly charged issues of the day.
Rather than publicly avoiding the question of faith, the candidates openly and strongly identify the role of Christian faith in their politics.
President Barack Obama’s 2012 speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, for example, explains the place of Christianity in his policies.
Republicans today are charging that Obama is engaged in a “war on religion,” by which they mean a war on Christianity, because of a law requiring employers in certain sectors to include contraception in health care coverage and because his policies are not living up to the divine, Christian expectations of the office.
Christianity and politics make strange bedfellows indeed, but they are also quite intimate with each other today and throughout American history.
Christian power is what is ultimately at stake in the debates about the separation of church and state today.
But it is also a singular moment in U.S. history for those of us on the outside of the “church” — the very definition of Christianity has never been so contested as it is now.
Ironically, Christianity may be the most central religion in the land, but it no longer has a center and is riven with divisions that may fulfill the worst fears of Christians who worry about their power in the 21st century.
Gary Laderman is chairman of the department of religion at Emory University.
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