Mixing Religion And Politics

A post at Fort Wayne Observed recently drew my attention to a MySpace site, which Republican mayoral hopeful Matt Kelty has set up to promote his campaign up in Fort Wayne. I don't know much about Kelty other than he's the guy who came within a whisker of defeating long-time state representative and former Fort Wayne mayor Win Moses a few years back. I was impressed that Kelty was using the MySpace site as a new medium to reach voters, and I was also impressed that he had a professionally-done video message to voters uploaded to the site and recorded from what appeared to be his living room, complete with burning logs in the fireplace and a sleeping dog at his feet. The purpose of his first video was to send a Christmas message to voters.

Now, I know a lot of Christians have increasingly become upset with many department stores, such as WalMart, because they refer to the holidays rather than the specific secular holiday (i.e., Christmas). That's because they don't want to offend their non-Christian shoppers by singling out only the Christian holiday. Their sensitivity to this concern should be accepted by Christians in a country where we celebrate our religious freedom. There is even greater concern, however, when it involves a public official or a candidate for public office.

Kelty's message on his MySpace site has a Christmas greeting to fellow Christians without reservation. His message is peppered with references to the Christian holiday only. He refers to the "Great promise and great hope represented by the birth of Christ, our Lord and Savior" and ends by saying "May Christ bless each of you." While I believe Kelty is sincere in the expression of his religious faith, it really should be an irrelevant consideration in his bid to become mayor, not to mention the excluding impact of his message.

What Kelty and so many politicians forget is that under our constitutional government, religious tests cannot be imposed as a condition to public service. By invoking their personal religion in the fashion Kelty has done, it has the effect of excluding anyone who doesn't subscribe to those particular set of religious beliefs. With a population over 220,000, Fort Wayne is Indiana's second-largest city. The vast majority of the city's residents are no doubt Christian, but I suspect a city of that size includes among its citizens a variety of non-Christians as well. If he becomes mayor, he is expected to represent all citizens, not just those of his same religious faith. But when politicians like Kelty invoke their religion in this fashion, people of other faiths have reason to worry about whether they will be treated equally as citizens.

This was the crux of the whole debate this past year in the Indiana House of Representatives over the use of Christian-only prayers as part of the House's official proceedings each day. In striking down the prayers as delivered under the leadership of Speaker Brian Bosma, the federal courts found it ran afoul of the Establishment Clause. There's no harm in allowing prayers so long as they don't prefer one religion over another. It's often more politically expedient to argue the other side, but at some point we need to accept this long-established constitutional tradition and move away from these divisive debates.