Define religious values
I’m not about to question anyone’s faith or faithfulness. I just don’t like even the appearance that there’s some pandering going on for the ‘religious vote’, and it’s looking more that way this Sunday before the election.
In the hourly round robin TV news reporting on the different high profile races today, I saw Tennessee candidate Harold Ford Jr. working crowds with Illinois senator Barack Obama. Some of the coverage was at a church, where the two were on a stage with the minister, and Ford was pumping up the congregation by rousingly quoting Christ’s words in scripture. Obama was nodding behind him, the minister was clapping and nodding. Ford brought up his opponent and the campaign, and it just didn’t strike me as a good thing going on in that place in that way.
The studio and live remote news folks were talking back and forth about how the Democrats are trying to reach out to religious values voters by showing that they represent those values, too.
Somebody with a microphone ought to start asking just what those values are, because it has become a catch-all term that’s started to eliminate the very thing that defines a person of religion: accountability. There’s a natural law and moral order that people of religion believe God created, and that God remains in absolute authority over, and it’s not elastic. Or relative, as Pope Benedict continues to teach.
The Democrat party platform upholds and protects abortion. That’s not a religious value.
And speaking of births and religious values, let’s watch where all this fervor goes around December, or just after Thanksgiving, when the Christmas decorations go up. Especially the manger scenes, with the Christ child. The same one who went on to teach his apostles those words quoted in the political rally. Will he be so welcome then?
