by Elaine Arthur

Created on: June 28, 2007

The intelligent voter should be able to look past the facade of faith. Nowadays, there are few political candidates who can resist the urge to don the cloak of piety (or "spirituality") in an attempt to make the opposition look like an amoral heathen.

George W. Bush may be the first president ever to openly push his administration toward a sectarian orientation...and now his approval ratings are dropping steadily. It is worthwhile for voters to think about this. Surveys show that a vast majority of Americans claim to be Christians. The majority of voters cast ballots for Bush in two consecutive presidential elections. So if Bush's approval ratings are slipping, it must mean that 1) he has shown himself to be less religious than the voters originally thought, or 2) the voters' definition of a Christian is beginning to diverge from Mr. Bush's demonstrated characteristics.

It should be obvious to anyone with more than an 8th grade education that no matter how unified the believers in a denomination may claim to be, religious faith is a personal and individual matter. In other words, no two Christians are exactly alike. A political candidate may trumpet his Christianity on a regular basis, and may even mean every word of it, but when those religious beliefs take shape in the context of governmental policies, the voter may be left scratching his or her head, wondering what it was they voted for, after all.

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