Topic: 1st Amendment
Faith and Ted Kennedy The death and funeral of Senator Ted Kennedy raised issues concerning the intersection of faith and politics in America todayby R.J. Moeller
(conservative)
Saturday, September 5, 2009
After more than a week of flattering eulogies and personal anecdotes from the life and times of Senator Edward Kennedy, there is little left to say about the man and elected representative. I cared little for his politics, was appalled by the litany of personal (and public) indiscretions during his 47 years in office that would have buried any member of congress not named "Kennedy", yet even the most devoted conservative must concede that Ted Kennedy was one of the most influential and accomplished senators in US history.
As I took in the television coverage of the senator's wake held at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston, and the actual funeral held near Washington D.C., there was a surprising, consistent theme to the sentiments offered in memory of the "Lion of the Senate."
That theme was the unmistakable, overt, and unapologetic usage of religious rhetoric to describe not just the reported personal Christian faith of Ted Kennedy, which is entirely appropriate at the funeral of anyone who claimed belief in our Creator, but to also describe the supposed direct link between the Christian faith, its Holy Scriptures, and the liberal-progressive political agenda the good senator promoted for almost half a century.
The media gave Ted Kennedy and his loved ones a free-pass to acknowledge the direct impact one's personal faith in God has on his or her public position on socio-political issues. This flies in the face of everything religious conservatives have been told for decades about keeping their Jesus fishes to themselves. The secular and religious worlds, we've been told, must never collide.
Things started off relatively innocent enough when Senator Kennedy's son, Ted Kennedy Jr., reminded us that his father was, "a devout Catholic whose faith helped him survive unbearable losses and whose teachings taught him he had a moral obligation to help others in need." Nothing too over-the-top here.
But the ante was most definitely "upped" when the Kennedy family's priest from Massachusetts, Reverend Mark Hession, stepped to the podium. After quoting from the Gospel of Matthew regarding the duty we all have to look after the "least of these", Rev. Hession commented:
"In this text on this day, our memories, and our hopes converge. These works of the kingdom were daily concerns of the public life of Teddy Kennedy. They were the fabric of his mind, heart and hands, as he sought to realize them in a society dramatically more complex than the society in which Jesus spoke these words. Our hope, our confident Christian hope, is that the fruits of his work as a political and public figure, have well prepared him for God's kingdom."
He continued:
"Like both of his brothers, Ted Kennedy was a public man, with a public faith. His strong suit was a central stream of biblical faith, expressed both in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. His strong suit was the faith of the great Hebrew profits of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos. It was they, who tied the quality of faith, to the character of justice in the land. It was they who stood in defense of the widows, the orphans and refugees of their time. The striking resemblance of these groups to the women, children, families and immigrants in poverty of our time, did not escape Ted Kennedy's notice. His public faith was reinforced and nurtured in the Christian scriptures."
So now we've gone from recalling the private, personal faith of a departed friend, to the comparing of Ted Kennedy to Hebrew prophets of the Old Testament. But why stop there? Why limit yourself only to "B.C." allusions?
"Ted Kennedy, of course, lived in a far more complex world than that of Jesus' time and place. But that challenge, evoked from him his public gifts. He understood the complexity of the society in which he lived. He was renowned for his mastery of the data, for his sense of the possible and for his genius in crafting law and policy in ways which benefited the widows and orphans of our time."
Wow.
Now, I realize that the media spectacle and powerful emotions of such a public funeral lend themselves to melodramatic accolades, but this is demagoguery on a scale seldom seen.
The "Religious Right" has been castigated, ridiculed, and scorned for decades in this country for allegedly crossing sacred, arbitrarily-defined lines between "Church" and "State." Religious conservatives are mocked and marginalized when they openly bring their faith into the public square regarding a cultural or political issue. But even more than that, when any reference is made to things such as prayer, Jesus, or the Bible being motivating factors or sustaining comforts in their public work, conservative Republicans are banished to the realm of caricature or inconsequential nut-job (or both).
But not so with the liberal Left.
When in 2000 President Bush said that his favorite philosopher was Jesus, and later said in a handful of interviews that he prayed every day of his presidency, the enlightened elites of this nation howled with outrage as they warned of a coming evangelical theocracy.
When in 2007 and 2008 then-Senator Obama repeatedly campaigned from the pulpits of churches during Sunday morning services and asked people to vote for him and help usher in a new "kingdom of God", not a peep was made. I'm guessing most of you never even heard about this. When last month President Obama held a teleconference with "liberal religious leaders", encouraging them to preach the moral duty of government-run health care, the New York Times did not run any stories warning of a coming "black liberation theology theocracy." I wonder why that is?
When a nationally televised wake and funeral is held for the most consistently liberal member of congress since 1962, and the motivation for his progressive political agenda he fought for all those years is directly (if not sloppily) linked to his belief in the same faith, book, and Savior that religious conservatives are told has no place in politics, where are the outcries from the Religion Police in our media and academia? Where is the ACLU denouncing President Obama for talking about the strong and important faith in God that he and Senator Kennedy shared? Where are the "hilarious" monologues from John Stewart, Bill Maher or Wanda Sykes about how unsophisticated those liberals who go to church and read the bible are?
The question Americans of all political and religious leanings must begin to ask themselves is this: Why is the fact that a liberal like Ted Kennedy had faith more noble, acceptable, and laudable than the fact George W. Bush, Newt Gingrich or Sarah Palin are each devout believers?
If a man or woman in public office publicly confesses to a personal faith in God, the deciding factor in how they will be treated seems to be their political loyalties more than anything else. And I'm basically fine with that, because truth and clarity are always superior to political correctness and fake calls for tolerance. But don't then tell me that my faith has no place in our national dialogue.
I'm not naive, and I don't mean to complain. I realize that in our increasingly secular world that the religious person who shortsightedly latches on to the progressive, materialist vision of a government-run utopia will be welcomed into the Statist fold by comrades who might even despise their new recruit's religious convictions. I also realize that due in part to real and regrettable examples of religious conservatives going too far in their own public rhetoric, and misusing the Christian faith for their own political aims, "Religious Right" will for the foreseeable future be a term of derision, meant to keep all who are given its label from being taken seriously.
But to all those who are proud of their faith and are convinced that the Left's plans for re-making America are flawed, please stop continuing to accept the premise that because other Right-of-Center people of faith do not do everything perfectly when it comes to expressing their political views you should feel embarrassed about your God-inspired participation in the political process.
In what I considered to be the most shamelessly politicized moment of Ted Kennedy's burial weekend, his youngest grandson Max was unwittingly directed to utter these words during the prayers of intercession: "For what my grandpa calls the cause of his life, as he said so often, in every part of this land, that every American will have decent quality health care, as a fundamental right, and not a privilege. We pray to the Lord."
Can you imagine the media backlash that would have ensued if at Ronald Reagan's funeral in 2004 his son Michael had asked the audience and nation to "pray to the Lord" for a return to freer economic markets and trickle-down fiscal policies, the kind The Gipper had so cherished and fought for?
A society that lets only one side of the political spectrum be allowed to point to their religious faith in what motivates them will inevitably become more totalitarian, because the public (politics) has at that point replaced the private (religion) in order of importance to those in power.
Senator Kennedy wasn't wrong to feel compelled by his religious, moral convictions to try and make this world a better place. He was wrong about how best to accomplish this.
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