Religion offers what politics doesn’t. Mixing the two often makes religion meaningless
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Jefferson’s wall of separation of church and state is most frequently, and incorrectly, attacked as a vehicle through which the nation’s devilish secularists can keep courthouses from displaying manger scenes at Christmas.
Instead, this wall exists to protect religion from government manipulation, and in some cases to protect religion from itself — something it hasn’t been doing a very good job of lately.
Politics represents the commotion, the crassness and the stench that people go to church to escape. When a church makes itself indistinguishable from a political action committee, there is no longer any spiritual reason to go. As their numbers plummet, organized religions are finding this out, even if they are learning from the experience.
As with any organization that has played footsie with Trumpism, religion is finding this a difficult box from which to escape. Just ask Fox News, which deplored Trump in private but celebrated him in front of their viewers in the name of ratings and, ultimately, money.
Karma might not exist, but it does a pretty good impression of math-like certitude.
The former president, whose calling cards were meanness, disloyalty, dishonesty and duplicity, is being buried under a crush of former “friends,” who as it turns out are no more loyal than he is.
Fox’s agonizing twist in the wind — painful to watch, even for people who are not Fox fans — might be driven by a genuine political philosophy, or it might be driven by fear of an upcoming $1.6 billion payout to Dominion Voting Machines, a company it knowingly lied about. As always with Fox, truth is elusive.
But Fox itself knows the truth, and the truth is that Trump is poison. Fox is trying to wean itself from the fentanyl that is Trump with the methadone of Ron DeSantis, but convincing its viewers to sober up and see Trump for who he is — borderline insane, in the words of Fox owner Rupert Murdoch — is, as all addictions counselors know, no easy feat.
Trump needs the Fox megaphone, Fox needs Trump’s viewers.
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As such, Fox is facing its greatest propaganda challenge ever: Convincing its viewers that Trump is not the savior that for the past six years Fox has said he was. Don’t believe what we said then, believe what we say now. Good luck.
And for a former president who in Murdoch’s words is going “increasingly mad,” this isn’t liable to help. Trump expects the loyalty and sincerity in others that he himself so notably lacks. No matter how carefully choreographed so as to not alienate viewers, Trump certainly recognizes this betrayal for what it is.
So too have the nation’s evangelicals been declining to take Trump’s calls, even though he delivered on their greatest promise to them: a Supreme Court that would lay waste to Roe v. Wade.
Having milked Trump of everything they think they can get from him, evangelical pastors are now ready to toss him aside just as conservative jurists tossed aside Roe. Not very Christlike, but bigger fish have found their way into the pan.
“Conservative evangelical politics,” wrote The New York Times, “have both expanded and moved sharply rightward, animated by a new slate of issues like opposition to race and history curriculums in schools and L.G.B.T.Q. rights, and shaped by the Covid-19 lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, which some pastors rallied against as a grave affront to religious freedom.”
These issues are in the wheelhouse of DeSantis, even if Trump might legitimately say he “invented” them.
The whole sordid scene plays out like The Godfather, with Trump in the backseat begging for one more chance, with his former supporters apologizing, saying that his upcoming execution is “just business.”
The current question is where this leaves Trump, but maybe the more lasting question is, where does this leave religion? For Americans seeking sanctuary, hardball political battles, double-crossing former friends and cruel attacks on vulnerable populations might not be their idea of relief.
Pastors who barged through Jefferson’s wall now risk winning battles but losing the war. To be sure, many of these religious leaders see political baiting as a road to their own personal wealth, with spirituality being of no particular concern.
But those genuinely concerned with theology should view this intrusion with no small degree of alarm. Religion offers what politics doesn’t: forgiveness, compassion, kindness, trust and hope. That’s its brand. When these virtues are banished, religion becomes redundant and of no particular use.
Done right, religion builds community. It inspires the best in us. It completes the wholeness of our being, adding back the qualities that the secular world tends to destroy. That’s why there’s a wall between the two and that’s why, when it’s gone, it’s religion that suffers.
Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Violating separation of church and state renders religion meaningless
