Mennonite Weekly Review

The surprise entry of a conservative evangelical has vaulted issues of faith to the center of the presidential campaign. Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin quickly proved herself the ideal candidate to light a fire under the previously dormant Christian right.

If the Alaska governor wins large numbers of conservative Christian voters for John McCain, a dramatic transformation will have occurred. Evangelicals who led the success of George W. Bush’s 2000 and 2004 campaigns had been lukewarm for this year’s Republican nominee, who once called Christian-right icons Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell “agents of intolerance.”

Even more than the controversy over Barack Obama’s former pastor, Palin’s presence in the race has gotten voters thinking about what kind of Christian worldview they want guiding the decisions of the next administration. This is an appropriate judgment for voters to make and a relevant subject for the media to examine.

Palin’s faith leads her to link God’s will with specific policy decisions. She has spoken of American troops in Iraq as being on “a task that is from God.” She once said her work as governor “doesn’t do any good if the people of Alaska’s heart isn’t right with God.” She urged ministry students to pray that a $30 billion national gas pipeline would be built. Her anti-abortion stance is firm, without exceptions for rape and incest. She also opposes stem-cell research.

Some on the evangelical right quickly tapped Palin as the one true Christian candidate. This is a divisive and damaging way of thinking. It turns religion into a wedge issue, pitting Christian against Christian while reinforcing the perception that the Republican party owns all evangelicals’ loyalty. In fact, moderate and liberal evangelicals have gained influence in recent years, rallying to a faith-motivated social agenda that includes poverty, the environment, health care and human rights. Conservative evangelicals have begun to embrace these causes too.

For their part, Democrats in the past four years have grown more welcoming of religious expression. In 2006 Obama said secularists “are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square.” He has been open in sharing his own Christian faith and how it influences his decisions.

In a time of culture wars and partisan distortions, Mennonites can claim an evangelical identity with an inclusive vision. In the September issue of Christian Leader, the U.S. Mennonite Brethren magazine, Tabor College professor Richard Kyle gives election-year advice to “say no to Christian nationalism” and to “think outside the traditional evangelical box.”

Kyle suggests that “Mennonites place more emphasis on persuasion and providing alternatives than passing laws to enforce Christian behavior.” We can connect our convictions as peacemakers with our duty as citizens by “encourag[ing] governments to exercise restraint and minimize violence whenever possible,” Kyle says. Mennonites ought to hold a balanced view of politics and government. We place our hope in the church, not the state, to turn people toward God’s ways. We must not confuse the roles of church and state. Expectations of government, and of the presidency in particular, have risen beyond any candidate’s ability to deliver.

The adulation showered upon two candidates, Palin and Obama, gives evidence of these inflated hopes. Christians across the political spectrum — left, right and center — can inject some realism by modeling the virtues of humility and tolerance that befit a Christian candidate as well.