My Facebook page shows a crisis of faith from top to bottom. It seems the Red State Jesus folks are flipping out. There are Blue State Jesus people. They don't get much respect. A liberal Christian's faith is often disparaged as apostasy or heresy by the "true" believers and ridiculed by the agnostics and atheists of the liberal political party. Can your politics influence your faith? Certainly!
I registered as a Democrat my Senior year in high school. I came home that day. My parents asked me what party I registered with at the dinner table. There was complete silence after my announcement. Then it started. "How could you?" "What were you thinking?" "We're a Republican house!" You'd have thought I had announced I had become a serial killer.
I survived my first "crisis of faith" that evening. I didn't change my party affiliation. My parents eventually accepted my assessment of the Republican Party as selfish, hedonistic and heartless. That assessment was heresy to my family back then, but I never backed down and patiently pointed out every example of how the GOP was selfish, self gratifying and heartless; and more importantly, how those positions were 180 degrees from every Christian teaching they insisted I learn. Either I wore them down or they saw the light. They both changed their party affiliations to the Democratic Party some years later.
My Facebook page after the election was full of old friends from rural Ohio moaning and groaning. I grew up in Ohio. Our family moved there from New York when I was seven. I never really fit into that community. There are great people living in Ohio. Good people. Hard working people. Loving kind people. There are also people who (like anywhere else) are racist, misogynistic and worse. The Animals lyric "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" makes me think of that hometown every time I hear it. To me, Ohio is a good place to be from. This town didn't tolerate open mindedness very well and if my Facebook Wall is any indication, it still doesn't. They prefer people who never question the dogma dished at them every sermon and Bible study. The ones who fervently recite the evangelical propaganda are very unhappy with this election.
The reason I'm a Democrat is directly related to attending church 2-4 times a week when I was a kid. The Democratic Party was better at taking care of the poor and those in need - a very important tenant of my faith (if the frequency the offering basket was passed was any indication). Republicans (to my way of thinking) were too hostile toward the poor and minorities. The Democratic Party put the beatitudes to work the Republicans didn't then and they don't now unless you count ineffective abstinence programs (which, I know, have nothing to do with the Beatitudes). To me, at eighteen, the Republican Party talked about faith and the Democratic Party put their faith in action. To me, then and now, the Republican Party is all about Me Me Me and shafting You You You.
The most irritating part of what's on my wall is the Kool-Aid inspired ignorance. The idea that Democrats can't be Christians is absurd. The idea that Christians can't be Pro-Choice is also absurd. The idea that the government can't deliver good health care is asinine if the successful Medicare Programs are any indication. The idea that a continued Obama Presidency is somehow linked to the end of the world makes me roll my eyes.
I'm trying to be a gracious "winner", but some of the moaning and groaning on the right is downright irritating. I'm actively restraining myself from writing on these comments:
Despite the bullcrap your religious leaders have been spewing, the results of this election will not bring on locusts, a pox or the four horsemen of the apocalypse by reelecting President Obama to the Presidency. Shut up!
Somehow, I think a comment like that would lead to me being defriended en mass.
I need to find a nicer (and more dignified) way to say nanny nanny poo poo.