au.org — From Radioactive Clergy To Media Inquisitions, Religion Was A Hot Topic In This Year's Race For The White House, Say Editors Of Church & State MagazineThe role of religion in the presidential campaign tops the 2008 ?Top Ten? list of top church-state stories, according to the editors of Church & State.
Dec 29, 2008 View in Crawl 4
alheithinnDec 29, 2008Submitter
FTA: Not since 1960 when John F. Kennedy the first Roman Catholic president was elected, has religion played such a large role in a presidential campaign. News media representatives grilled candidates on what sins they had committed and what their favorite Bible verses were. Barack Obama fought false rumors that he is secretly a Muslim, and Mitt Romney’s Mormonism became a controversial topic. Candidates were held accountable for the incendiary comments of their pastors and their clergy supporters, such as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and TV preacher John Hagee. Many observers thought the whole thing was an unholy mess, especially in a nation that separates religion and government.Now that the year is at an end, it's definitely time to take a step back and figure out where we are, how we got here, and where we go from here with the role of religion in political discourse and decision-making.
middleamericamsDec 29, 2008
The GOP uses the evangelicals by pushing wedge issues like gay marriage, abortion, stem cell research, etc. Wedge issues are not critical issues like wars, the economy, eliminating civil rights, torture, record deficit spending, etc. What wedge issues do is polarize evangelical voters so that they can not even consider critical issues or even past performance of a party's policies. In other words, dividers instead of uniters. Its disgusting, as well as undemocratic, therefore un-American.
ap0616Dec 29, 2008
My favorite religion/campaign 2008 moment was pastor opened a McCain rally, calling on god to support McCain or else other gods would think that the christian god was a pussy: <a class="user" href="http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=A5fdzji2C54">http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=A5fdzji2C54</a>
alheithinnDec 29, 2008Submitter
LOL I remember that well, ap0616. I posted on my blog that obviously this was an admission that other gods exist, which of course also means that the pastor in question is not a monotheist, because, by definition, monotheism can admit of only one god. To say many gods exist but only one is your own is known as henotheism. How a Christian can be a Christian while being a polytheist is an interesting question.