{"id":119,"date":"2008-09-04T13:27:11","date_gmt":"2008-09-04T13:27:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/progressiverevival\/2008\/09\/democracy-not-theocracy.html"},"modified":"2008-09-04T13:27:11","modified_gmt":"2008-09-04T13:27:11","slug":"democracy-not-theocracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/09\/democracy-not-theocracy.html","title":{"rendered":"Democracy, Not Theocracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross posted over at The Hill Blog<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n

In her speech last night, Governor Palin missed a golden opportunity to explain how her religious beliefs would influence her policy priorities in the White House. This is a conversation that all of our political candidates should have with the American people, but it is particularly important one for Governor Palin given her alarming theocratic rhetoric that has been revealed this week.<\/p>\n

According to a September 3 Associated Press story<\/a>, Governor Palin addressed ministry students at her former church, Wasilla Assembly of God, this June. In her remarks she made some astounding claims: our troops in Iraq are on a “task that is from God” and it is “God’s will” to build a natural gas pipeline across Alaska. She even claimed that her work in the governor’s office is irrelevant without religion. “I can do my job…but really all of that stuff doesn’t do any good if the people of Alaska’s heart [sic] isn’t right with God.”<\/p>\n

This fusion of religion and politics serves only to further divide our country, and it has no place in our civic discourse. For years, politicians have trumpeted their positions on moral or social issues as being divinely inspired. But this is the first time I have ever heard a politician claim God’s will on a purely secular issue such as energy policy. Good and faithful people hold differing points of view in this the most religiously diverse nation in the world.<\/p>\n

Claims such as these undermine the integrity of democracy by telling your opponents that if you have a policy disagreement, you risk incurring God’s wrath. More dangerous, claims like these undermine the sanctity of religion. God does not make partisan endorsements nor does
\nGod choose our leaders – the American people do. That is why we are a democracy, not a theocracy.<\/p>\n

As a Baptist minister, I would never dream of telling my congregation, “You are not good Baptists unless you support…” one party or candidate over the others. I would hope our politicians would have a similar respect for our nation’s diversity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross posted over at The Hill Blog. In her speech last night, Governor Palin missed a golden opportunity to explain how her religious beliefs would influence her policy priorities in the White House. This is a conversation that all of our political candidates should have with the American people, but it is particularly important one…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election-08"],"yoast_head":"\nDemocracy, Not Theocracy - Progressive Revival<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/09\/democracy-not-theocracy.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Democracy, Not Theocracy - Progressive Revival\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Cross posted over at The Hill Blog. In her speech last night, Governor Palin missed a golden opportunity to explain how her religious beliefs would influence her policy priorities in the White House. 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Dr. Welton Gaddy, leads the national nonpartisan grassroots and educational organizations, The Interfaith Alliance and The Interfaith Alliance Foundation and serves as the Pastor for Preaching and Worship at Northminster (Baptist) Church in Monroe, Louisiana. Rev. Gaddy is the host of State of Belief, a weekly radio show by The Interfaith Alliance that is carried on AirAmerica. State of Belief is based on the proposition that religion has a positive and healing role to play in the life of the nation. Rev Gaddy is one of 20 international religious leaders on the Council of 100 Leaders, a group created by the World Economic Forum to improve dialogue and understanding between the Western and Islamic worlds. In addition to being the author of over 20 books, Welton provides regular commentary to the national media on issues relating to religion and politics. Some of his appearances include CNN Presents: The Fight Over Faith; PBS's NOW with Bill Moyers; PBS Frontline's The Jesus Factor; PBS's The Newshour with Jim Lehrer; NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw; CBS Evening News with Dan Rather; ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings; numerous National Public Radio stations including KQED's Forum in San Francisco and KCRW's The Politics of Culture in Los Angeles; CNBC's Capital Report; CNN's The World Today with Wolf Blitzer; CNN's Inside Politics with Judy Woodruff; PBS's Religion and Ethics Newsweekly; CBS's Freedom to Pray; C-SPAN's Washington Journal; NBC's Dateline. He is the former host of Morally Speaking on NBC affiliate KTVE in Monroe, Louisiana. Founded in 1994, The Interfaith Alliance (TIA) has grown into a national grassroots organization of 150,000+ individuals of faith and goodwill drawn from more than 75 different religious traditions or beliefs with a cyber-network of 10,000 activists and 75 local activist groups. Dedicated to promoting mutual respect, cooperation and civility, TIA strives to promote religion as a positive and healing force in the life of the nation. While ministering to churches with a message of inclusion, Welton emerged as a leader among progressive and moderate Baptists. Among his many leadership roles, he is the immediate past President of the Alliance of Baptists and is a twenty-year member of the Commission of Christian Ethics of the Baptist World Alliance. His past leadership roles include serving as a member of the General Council of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, President of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and Chair of the Pastoral Leadership Commission of the Baptist World Alliance. Prior to the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention, Welton served in many leadership roles in the SBC including membership on the convention's Executive Committee from 1980-1984 and Director of Christian Citizenship Development of the Christian Life Commission from 1973-1977. Welton received his undergraduate degree from Union University in Tennessee and his doctoral degree and divinity training from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/author\/wgaddy"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}