I wrote a diary today on MyDD expressing my personal thoughts on today's whirlwind of stories on Reverend Wright.
I called it Faith and Politics, and in it I tried to make as honest and critical an accounting of my thoughts on the Wright clips as I could. However in following that discussion over to TPM today, it occured to me that this wave of YouTube clips and news stories had caused some of us, including myself, to leave hold of something basic about what it means to be an American.
Religious tolerance is our founding national value.
The following diary is the text of a comment that I left in that TPM thread...
I'm wondering where the commitment to religious plurality and tolerance that is, if anything, our founding national purpose has gone in this discussion?
We are attacking a candidate over his Pastor and House of Worship? We are using YouTube clips of religious services to attack a candidate for public office? We are asking a man to renounce the Church where he was married and baptised his children, where he grieved over the loss of friends and family, where he gathered his thoughts in his time of greatest need and his moments of greatest joy?
Has this campaign season and the media spin cycle blinded us so much that we've forgotten who we are as Americans?
I'm not sure.
I'm a Roman Catholic. I assure you that you could create out-of-context YouTube clips of services conducted in my faith life that would likely offend the sensibilities of many Americans and would cost any Roman Catholic candidate votes as well.
The same can be said, quite honestly, for any of us who don't belong to one of the mainline Protestant faiths that have traditionally fed the United States Presidency.
This nation, however, if it was founded on any value, was founded on the notion of religious tolerance. We judge our fellow citizens on their public words and actions and not their House of Worship or Private Creed, or lack thereof.
If the Sabbath is not a safe harbor in our political life, then the fabric of our Democracy has truly changed and lost its way.
I am not saying that those who took issue with Reverend Wright's words and tone and their political implications don't have cause to discuss them. I am not trying to censor. What I am saying is that allowing GMA and FOX and Ben Smith at Politico to spoon feed us this stuff without stopping once to think about our long and proud history of freedom of religion is mind boggling to me.
We are Americans. Yes, we could easily judge our candidates by words spoken within the four walls of their tabernacle, temple, church or meeting house, but in our long tradition as a nation we have refrained from doing so for the most part. We have given men and women a zone of privacy where they bow their heads to pray.
And that is part of what has made our nation great and proud. The value of religious tolerance brought us together and we are the stronger for it.
In effect, as Americans, we are being asked this question tonight, should membership in an African American Church, with an African American pastor where issues of the faith life of Black Americans are discussed in the context and fullness of the Black experience in America be a disqualification to the Presidency? Should one's membership in any church or temple, or none at all, be a barrier to elected office?
And, if that is so, what does that say about the nature and meaning of our Democracy in the year 2008?