God of the Hallmark cards

Using God as political tool

By Linda Campbell

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

As this holy season of consummate consumerism gives way to the hopefulness of a new year, beware of Newts bearing pious pronouncements.

At the risk of giving attention where it isn’t due, I have to warn that the former U.S. House speaker, who was pushed out the Capitol doors not a moment too soon, is trying to worm his way back into the public consciousness with yet another dubious “Contract With America.”

The third plank in the platform promoted by potential presidential wannabe Newt Gingrich reads: “Recenter on the Creator from Whom all our liberties come. We will insist on a judiciary that understands the centrality of God in American history and reasserts the legitimacy of recognizing the Creator in public life.”

Call me cynical and paranoid, but I read into that Ten Commandments displays in every public courtroom. The Lord’s Prayer recited in unison in every public school classroom. Inquisitions into judicial nominees’ personal creeds to guarantee hostility toward abortion and gay marriage. More pointless fights over the essentiality of uttering “under God” to the very survival of the Republic.

And none of that will bring us any closer to liberty and justice for all.

Reducing God to a blatant political tool — which would be the effect of Gingrich’s proposal — substitutes form for substance. And it distorts reality about religious freedom in this country.

When did it become illegitimate to recognize the Creator in public life?

President Bush has no fear of praising God and calling for his blessings on the United States. Neither did Bush’s father nor Bill Clinton (even if he didn’t always act as though the omnipresent one was watching).

What isn’t tolerable is, say, a government executive favoring employees who attend the daily Bible study sessions in the office or a military official espousing personal beliefs as though they were policy.

Sure, there are those who would strip “In God we trust” from our money. I don’t support that, but would it have much practical effect on anyone besides counterfeiters?

Making God’s name even more ubiquitous in the public lexicon than it already is would generate additional references with all the religious significance of “God save the United States and this honorable court.”

Slate.com writer Dahlia Lithwick has described such instances of “ceremonial deism” as invoking the “God of the Hallmark cards.” Symbolically significant to someone, somewhere, maybe, but spiritually bereft.

And what of this notion about “the centrality of God in American history”? The Founding Fathers recognized the influence of religion on society — and were justly opposed to government’s embracing it.

An examination of his “centrality” in some of our darkest days might leave one wondering.

Was the Lord first and foremost in the minds of the generals and grunts who fought the Civil War? Probably he was weeping over the blood we shed, our petty brutality and the deep, divisive hatreds born of a fight that managed to keep the Union intact.

Was the herding of the Cherokee from Georgia to Oklahoma along the Trail of Tears a fulfillment of God’s will?

Did the Creator’s mercy motivate the hearts of the Birmingham firefighters who hosed civil rights marchers in 1963 Alabama?

Where is the moral accountability, the sense of humbling guilt, among the administration officials who instigated the inferno that has squandered lives, damaged bodies and minds, fractured families and wreaked havoc that greatly overshadows whatever good our troops and enormously expensive rebuilding efforts have accomplished for Iraq and its people?

Actually, I do believe that powerful spiritual forces are at work in this country — and they derive from our reverence for religious liberty, not from dictates of Congress, the White House or the courts.

They’re evident in the work of lawyers who donate their services to desperate people so that they can pull their lives together.

In the efforts of teachers who put in time, money and whatever else it takes to push and pull struggling students to success.

In the labors of volunteers who build homes to give families a decent place to live.

In the inspiration of ordinary people living responsible lives.

In the gestures large and small of those who implement God’s message without needing their government to trumpet it.

What we need from our leaders aren’t platitudes and the pretense of promoting “values.” What we need are honesty, integrity and policies that are fair and sensible, and that make it possible for even the least among us to live with dignity. Because that’s the right thing to do.

— Linda P. Campbell is a columnist and editorial writer for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.