Religion and Politics Together are Deadly to Both

I just finished David Kuo’s Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction in which the former Special Assistant to the President makes a genuine and heartfelt plea to American Christians to “fast” from politics for two years.

Why this fast? Kuo asserts that the Bush administration has skillfully extracted votes and money from religious Americans without giving their movements anything substantive in return. The culture war rages on, to be sure. But the faith-based and community initiative remains deeply underfunded. Religious Americans who once saw President Bush as a “compassionate conservative” have been deeply mislead.

The essence of compassionate conservatism is not difficult to support. Organizations that effectively help the disadvantaged can receive government funds regardless of religious affiliation. I have no problem with this, just so long as the money is not used to proselytize. Neither does the Federal Government. Even before the Bush administration, a number of large religious movements such as the Salvation Army were able to get government funds for their work.

President Bush entered the White House seeking to do some good for America’s needy. But as Kuo came to learn, he was more interested in making it look like he was helping the poor than in actually helping them. Much of the promised funding for the faith-based initiative he touted never came to be. Meanwhile, staffers in the faith-based office were forced to choose between obscurity and using the initiative to further the administration’s political gains. They chose the latter to disastrous results.

To explain the fundamental tension that led to his call for a fast, Kuo cites a passage from C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters in which the powerful demon Screwtape instructs his young cousin Wormwood on how best to vex a Christian:

 Let him begin by treating patriotism…as a part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely a part of the “cause,” in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce…[O]nce he’s made the world an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing.

Meanwhile, religious certainty can have the same dark effect on otherwise nuanced and principled public servants. After a while, those in positions of power who tie their religious beliefs directly to their duties can come to see themselves as divinely chosen. They can have a hard time separating their personal will from God’s will. Much malfeasance can be excused if it is conducted in “God’s service.” The ends come to justify the often vicious means.

I support Kuo’s call for a fast for anyone who sees himself in Screwtape’s letter to Wormwood. As a non-Christian, there’s really no way for me to second it. But I definitely support his intentions. Two years fasting from politics should give compassionate conservatives some time to re-orient themselves to what’s really important. When they do return to politics, I hope it will be much more thoughtfully.