Faith and Politics: A Re-Assessment of My Approach

Back in August, I began a series on the issue of faith and politics with the idea of trying to make sense of all the noise being made by both Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives on the role faith plays (or does not play) in the public square.  As one reads websites and blogs, watches the news, and listens to the airwaves, it seems that the only decision one is given is to either support the supposed Democratic view of no faith in politics or the supposed Republican view of an intimate role of faith in politics. 

Though acknowledging the complexity of the issue, my hope was to briefly explain the Democrats and Republican stance on faith in politics and the reason(s) why.  After providing my assessment of the Democrats, though, I realized that what I desired to do cannot be done in a few blog posts.  The issue of faith in politics is so complex that it can take one a lifetime to study, and even then he would not have all the answers to this issue.  As such, I gave up for a while on writing about faith in politics, trying to determine the best way to attack it, if at all.

Fortunately, someone has already researched and put to words that which I hoped to do.  In his book The Divided States of America?, Dr. Richard Land, president of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, seeks to distinguish where both liberals and conservatives are wrong in the issue of faith in politics.  I do plan on providing a review of Dr. Land’s book in the upcoming weeks; suffice it to say, however, that Dr. Land’s book serves as a springboard for those seeking to understand the divisiveness over faith in politics and to find a balanced approach on the role of religion in the public square.  More to come on this later.

With all this being said, my approach to writing on faith and politics will change.  What it will look like, I don’t know, but it will not consist of short posts containing quotes taken from random blogs and articles, and a short assessment based off of these quotes and articles alone (as I did in my previous posts).  My main goal, though, is to try to grasp my hands around the issue of faith in politics.

written by Danny McDonald  © 2007 Musings of a Wannabemuser blog