{"id":13479,"date":"2012-02-09T10:55:58","date_gmt":"2012-02-09T15:55:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=13479"},"modified":"2012-02-09T10:55:58","modified_gmt":"2012-02-09T15:55:58","slug":"the-heady-mix-of-politics-and-religion-this-is-why-theres-supposed-to-be-a-separation-of-church-and-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/02\/09\/the-heady-mix-of-politics-and-religion-this-is-why-theres-supposed-to-be-a-separation-of-church-and-state\/","title":{"rendered":"The heady mix of politics and religion: this is why there’s supposed to be a separation of church and state"},"content":{"rendered":"

At Reason<\/em>, A. Barton Hinkle<\/a> on the different ways the media reacts to religious issues under different presidents:<\/p>\n

\n

George W. Bush had one small office devoted to faith-based initiatives, and was savaged for it. Barack Obama, on the other hand, says faith drives much of his domestic agenda\u2014and no one even blinks.<\/p>\n

We are in \u201cthe fourth year of the ministry of George W. Bush,\u201d cracked novelist Philip Roth in 2004. By then, several million gallons of ink already had been spilled warning that Bush\u2019s \u201cfaith-based presidency\u201d was \u201cnudging the church-state line\u201d (The New York Times<\/em>) and was \u201cturning the U.S. into a religious state\u201d (Village Voice<\/em>) and was \u201carrogant\u201d and \u201ctroubling\u201d (St. Petersburg Times<\/em>) and was \u201cpandering to Christian zealots\u201d (Salon<\/em>) and \u201cimposing its values on the rest of us\u201d (too many to name).<\/p>\n

Obama has been just as overtly religious as Bush — \u201cWe worship an awesome God in the blue states,\u201d he said in his 2004 keynoter at the Democratic National Convention — and even more aggressive about injecting faith into politics. In 2006, he praised a religious \u201cCovenant for a New America.\u201d In a 2008 speech in Ohio, he said religious faith could be \u201cthe foundation of a new project of American renewal\u201d and insisted that \u201csecularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square.\u201d He has kept Bush\u2019s office of faith-based initiatives. In fact, \u201cObama’s faith-based office has given religious figures a bigger role in influencing White House decisions,\u201d reported USNews<\/em> in 2009.<\/p>\n

At the National Prayer Breakfast last Thursday, the president began by noting that he prays every morning, and then devoted the rest of his speech to explaining the manifold ways in which his faith guides his policies. \u201cI am my brother’s keeper and I am my sister’s keeper,\u201d he said. That somnolent silence you hear is the guardians of church-state separation taking a nap.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Frankly, it still boggles my mind that there’s such a thing as a “National Prayer Breakfast” outside of the annual general meetings of churches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At Reason, A. Barton Hinkle on the different ways the media reacts to religious issues under different presidents: George W. Bush had one small office devoted to faith-based initiatives, and was savaged for it. Barack Obama, on the other hand, says faith drives much of his domestic agenda\u2014and no one even blinks. We are in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,10,28,13],"tags":[360],"class_list":["post-13479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-liberty","category-media","category-usa","tag-christianity"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-3vp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13479"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13480,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13479\/revisions\/13480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}