Does God Get a Vote?

Does God get a vote?

The latest wave of “all in the name of God” has crested and is poised to drown all infidels.

The groundswell started at the Democratic convention when the word “God” was removed briefly from the party platform as well as the designation of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. You know, the party platform – those meaningless statements of purpose composed of so called “planks”  that no one pays much attention to unless there are political points to be scored.

President Obama insisted that "God" be put back into the platform along with reference to Jerusalem "to maintain consistency with the personal views expressed by the president and in the Democratic Party platform in 2008." 

This is the final language of the “God” plank: "We need a government that stands up for the hopes, values and interests of working people, and gives everyone willing to work hard the chance to make the most of their God-given potential."

The Jerusalem designation reads: "Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel. The parties have agreed that Jerusalem is a matter for final status negotiations.  It should remain an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths." (Further discussion of this topic is deferred for another time as, after so many acts of barbarism there is as much reason to believe that portion of the planet is truly God forsaken as there is to be believe it remains the Land of Milk and Honey.) 

Meanwhile, on the other side of The Great Divide, Republicans, whose own platform referenced God twelve (12!) times launched its' Greatest Crusade.

Mitt Romney insisted that God created the United States not to be one among many nations, but rather, to to lead the world and that taking the word "God" out of the platform proved that the Democratic party is "veering further and further away into an extreme wing that Americans don't recognize."

A Romney spokesman, Andrea Saul, in a statement, called on "President Obama to state in unequivocal terms whether or not he believes Jerusalem is Israel's capital," which Saul claimed Obama had not done, thereby impinging upon any policy initiative of negotiating a two state solution.

 Romney's vice presidential running mate, Paul Ryan, insisted that the omission of God in the DNC platform was "peculiar" and "is not in keeping with our founding documents, our founding vision."

But the word "God" does not appear in the Constitution.  It appears only once in the Declaration of Independence, which states "the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitles people.  The Declaration also mentions the "Creator" as having bestowed inalienable rights upon us all. That’s all.

So now, both party platforms include the word "God". Isn’t that dandy?  Never mind that according to an ABC/Washington Post poll in March, 63 percent of respondents said political leaders should not rely on their religious beliefs when making policy decisions. When you run for President, God has to be on your side and that means you have to offer Him or Her or Whom or Whatever, the requisite testimonials.

Witness: last December, Romney said, " I know there are some people who would like to make this nation a secular nation, who want to take God out of everything that exists in this country.’  After acknowledging that he was not looking for teachers to have prayer every day in the classroom" he stated that he supported having prayers at "special ceremonies" such as at graduations or football games because “it's appropriate for us to recognize that in the public square." The public square?

Why not the private church, synagogue, mosque or home?

And just when did football games become special occasions requiring prayer?  When Johnny U’s 1958 Colts beat the NY Giants?  When Joe’s ’67 Jets won the Super Bowl? Is Football now our national religion?  (You bet it is).

Most recently, we have descended to the spectacle of Romney denouncing the administrations apparently top secret plan to remove “In God We Trust” from the dime. If you missed the announcement of any plan to do this, so did everyone else in the country, save Romney, who hasn’t actually seen a dime in years.

When did professions of faith in God become a litmus test for one’s political viability anyway?  Was it when Ronald Reagan, the least church going President of modern times, began ending every single speech with the phrase “God Bless the United States of America” that, in itself, a ploy to mollify the Bible Belt conservatives who didn't trust him in the first place. In other words, preying for votes. Since then, it’s been an insidious creeping process, accelerated by the Christian right until now the only way to get elected to high office in this, our land that was made for you and me, is to invoke God as often as possible - to the point of meaninglessness, irrelevance and often, hypocrisy.  Or as the great Mencken would have it, “Deep within the heart of every evangelist lies the wreck of a car salesman.”

Incidentally, or perhaps most crucially, whose God are they invoking? The God of Muhammad or Abraham, Isaac or Jacob? Zeus?  Buddah?  Or is the Christian God the only viable candidate? Can we put it to a vote and have done with it already?

In the end, does God even care? I would have greater faith if I knew the Omnipotent One(s) were tending to more urgent business than who wins our Presidential election, whether our economy recovers or who wins the next war - like saving the rain forests, rescuing vinyl LP’s and making the mosquitoes in my back yard disappear forever.  HL August 2012