The Role Of Religion In Politics

Starhawk on the emphasis on religion in political campaigns

Campaigns Need Values, Not Media Images
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Voters have the right to know that any candidate is honest, honorable, moral, and will not abuse the public trust and power we invest in her or him. But today’s political campaigns, with all the professions of religiosity, all the sound bites, and talking points, and carefully crafted images, succeed mostly in obscuring our ability to tell if someone is simply a decent human being.

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I would love to see us change the way we do elections. If I were making the rules, anyone who ran for public office would have to complete a qualifying course that included a week living on the streets with the homeless, a month living on a welfare budget, six months of volunteer work in an inner-city classroom or emergency room or post-disaster cleanup, and an anonymous week in jail.

This would weed out the merely power-hungry and egotistical, and those who become public servants might make laws and policies that embodied the values of compassion, caring and inter-connection that all religions teach.

Right on.

And, as great as the march to end the war this weekend was, few speakers managed to avoid inserting the xian god into their speeches. Jesse Jackson and Tim Robbins, I'm looking at you. By the time that the very good hip hop artist got around to reciting his poem "One" that included the line: "There's only one god," I'd had it and yelled out, "No, there's lots of them. And Goddesses, too!" Some folks around me cheered, some smiled, and some looked at me as if I had three heads (insided joke). Does it ALWAYS have to be about the xian god and to we HAVE do have him shoved down our throats EVERYWHERE? Can a few people recognize that not EVERYONE here is a member of an Abrahamic cult?