Watching the political bruha in the US about candidate's pastors what they said or did not say, it got me thinking about this whole concept of religious leaders endorsing political candidates.
Should religious leaders endorse political candidates or even encourage congregation members to vote for one candidate over another, this though might seem initially to be simple answer questions but over the years it is now apparent that it is not.
Firstly religious leaders should be moral guides to their congregation, community and perhaps society as a whole. This does not mean that congregation members necessarily agree with all their pastors opinions, views or perspective but as long as the preacher is at least on point most of the time then it is fair to say that the times when they deviate from point can be attributable to their being human.
Looking back to this issues that have occurred during the current US primary elections, with Pastor Jeremiah Wright, what I find very disappointing is that many Pastors in the US did not come out in support of one of their own. He may not have preached in a way people were used to and some of what he said could be easily misunderstood and others sounded delusional but there is nothing he said that I have not heard from some documentaries or other discussions on Television. That it became more important than the message the candidate (his congregation member) was trying to deliver was frankly puzzling. I expected people like Pastor John Hagee who has always been outspoken to come out in defense of this Pastor not because of the contents of his sermons but because they too could understand how what they say can be controversial and sometimes misunderstood.
Don't get me wrong; I am not saying that I agree with some of the most controversial statements though in some ways I understand what they were really saying as opposed to what everyone else thinks they were really saying.
Had Pastor Hagee and others like him been fair enough to come out for Pastor Wright perhaps this recent debacle might have been avoided. It reminds me of the story of Queen Esther in the Bible (I will paraphrase) when her cousin sent her a message after the law was passed for the annihilation of the Jews in the Persian kingdom, that if she thinks she can hide in the king's palace and not be harmed (she should think again), that if she does not help her people at their time of great need, salvation will come to the Jews from another quarter but she and her father's household will perish because she did not step up to the plate at the time when she should have. She did as the story goes and many people were saved as a result.
I sometimes listen to many of these Christian messages on television (Including Pastor Hagee) and enjoy many of these sermons. I have heard many say things that frankly made me very, very uncomfortable. They do not do this often but sometimes it happens. The only preacher I can say I have never heard say anything contentious, only mostly things to build people up is Joel Osteen. To be fair to Pastor Hagee I originally listened to the sermon in question and honestly the accusations against him regarding the Jews is unfair. This is another sound byte hit job.
They have taken his words out of context and made it appear as if he was saying one thing while he was not at all.
Judging from what happened in the Rev Wright issue, I am sure some people even after listening to the whole sermon will have something to complain about, so there probably isn't any reason to try defending him. Those who will understand will understand and those who will not just simply will not.
After making the above observations, I do believe countries should separate Religion from Politics even in countries that predominantly have one faith represented within it. This gives religious leaders neutrality; because in every faith there are usually the fundamentals and then there are those who are more moderate, the fundamentals almost always believe they are right and will do anything to achieve their goals while the moderates will want to look at the other side to see if there is a possibility for co-existence.
All in all with the events of the past few months in the US it is fair to argue that religious leaders should leave the politicians to their business and politicians should leave religious leaders to remain neutral, after all to the religious leader, their commander in-chief is God first and then the president. The really wise ones have stayed out of politics and it has served them very well, was it not Jesus Christ who said, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's,” I think it is time American religious leaders took closer heed to these wise sayings!
