Should one's faith influence a citizen's vote?

No

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by Jess Howe

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No, but dammit it does! How many times have we seen the classic "family values" platform? People going to the "Bible Belt", using their "down home, good Christian values" to try and get a win?

I'm personally tired of it. I am not alone, either: Evangelical Christians are now questioning what they've been hearing, as opposed to just blindly voting based on someone saying they stood for their values (http://www.chicagot ribune.com/news/poli tics/chi-evangelical s_bdjan13,1,447671.s tory).

There are several sites out there on the Internet, devoted to this issue. One of the prominent ones is Jacques Berlinerblau, where he discusses issues of various faiths and their relationship with politics (http://newsweek.was hingtonpost.com/onfa ith/georgetown/2007/ 10/todays_post_marks _the_inaugura.html). Now, Mr. Berlinerblau is also under the impression that religion and politics are getting farther and farther away from each other. He notes, for instance, in his most recent entry, that one of the candidates at least was being false to voters. He "seems to have the attitude that all evangelicals are dimwits"... (ibid).

And yet, when asked, it is an issue even still. Religion is so much an issue that candidates are still using it for themselves and against one another. For instance in this latest election, Senator Clinton's campaign people blasted out ads that said Barack Obama was Muslim (http://abcnews.go.c om/Nightline/Politic s/story?id=3960611&p age=1). Nasty? Yes. But it showed up in the polls in New Hampshire: she won. Mitt Romney, on the other hand, a openly Mormon candidate, insists that religion is the backbone of his fight for the presidency.

When this nation started out, we were indeed stated as "One nation under God," the writers of the original Declaration of Independence didn't necessarily mean this or that God, or even one specifically: "when in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation", says the very first paragraph of the Declaration, and I don't see a specific God mentioned (http://www.ushistor y.org/declaration/do cument/index.htm).

In fact, those first members of our nation were of different faiths and they accepted that fact. They specifically said in the Treaty of Barbary, 1797, that they weren't specifically one faith or another (http://www.talk2act ion.org/story/2007/9 /23/131056/051). So if they weren't, then why are we still going around about it? Thomas Jefferson himself probably wouldn't have wanted this, as far as history reads; he was an Anglican but donated to every denomination in his town, and when he ran for President he himself didn't want to make his religion an issue (http://www25.uua.or g/uuhs/duub/articles /thomasjefferson.htm l).

This election, vote for what you believe in. We're hundreds of years away from our founding fathers, but I think we've ended up as they wanted: a country that's remained free. If we allow one religion or the other to take over us, however, we're no better a country than the ones that our forefathers left. So vote for the person you think has the best stand on health care, or the economy, but leave your religion out of it.

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