Deconstructing a god built by politics

Editor’s Note: Voices is a weekly commentary by a panel of Maine columnists who explore issues affecting spirituality and religious life.

My earliest childhood memories were of stories of a family that survived Soviet communism, the German invasion of their homeland and Nazi forced labor. The lessons were clear: “God, conscience and those to whom you make a lifelong commitment” are an individual’s primary responsibilities.

Other lessons: Help people, go to church, don’t judge others and never survive in the cold, complicated world at someone else’s expense.

Reflecting on family history in this year’s presidential election has offered me some modest perspective. According to Father Alexander Men, an Eastern Orthodox priest murdered in 1990, “Religious faith has influenced great social upheavals and the most secret depths of the human heart.”

The nation is at a crossroads. The 2004 presidential race is turning into one of the most divisive on record due to faith. It has already negatively influenced “social upheaval.” Citizens would do a service to the country and themselves by examining the causes for it and how it has changed the “secret depths” of their hearts.

Diversity and acceptance are being replaced by judgment and segregation. The attack on Iraq is more about long-term economic opportunities than national security. Unbridled capitalism bases part of its legitimacy on a belief that God put men and women on earth to exploit the planet as they please. Disregard for the environment, usurious credit card rates by banks, and pharmaceutical companies that benefit from government research grants while overcharging consumer-taxpayers needing prescriptions have caused social unrest inspired by a false god.

Philip E. Clapp, president of the National Trust, noted that “across the board there is an attempt to muzzle and silence scientists who disagree with either the [Bush] administration’s ideological agenda or the agenda of its corporate constituents.” The Union of Concerned Scientists issued a letter signed by 12 Nobel laureates and 11 National Medal of Science winners, noting that government research and information has been consistently skewed, often to favor large campaign donors.

“Whether the issue is lead paint, clean air or climate change,” said the union’s chairman, Kurt Gottfried, “this behavior has serious consequences for all Americans.”

Job growth, civil liberties, environmental protections, and Supreme Court appointments will be shaped by the faith of the next president. It will influence whether America has a genuine spiritual reawakening in a godly manner or remains deluded in a false deity wrapped in the flag. There is little doubt that most Americans have an unsatisfied spiritual hunger. The current social, political and corporate environment nurtured by a kind of federal theocracy has not helped.

President Bush urged citizens after Sept. 11 to “spend more.” It would have been more beneficial had he asked Americans to register, vote and become better informed about issues. Throughout the last three years, there has been compelling evidence that the president’s understanding of God shaped policy. Lower federal court appointments have often reflected a Christian conservatism that New Englanders, especially Maine Republicans, would find unsettling on closer examination.

Increasingly, criticism of the federal government is viewed as unpatriotic and an affront to God. It is arrogantly believed that the Almighty has placed the United States above all other nations. Recently, Attorney General John Ashcroft, known for prayer sessions at the Justice Department building, sought to secure student records at a Midwestern university to determine whether law-abiding citizens opposed to the Iraq war were a threat to national security.

There is a clear religious component at work in foreign and domestic policy. Scratch the surface of the deceptively secular wrapping of the policies in place and you find a twisted theology driving government. A kind of god is being federalized.

It seems as if America has lost its way by replacing a reverence for a loving God with a spiritual vulgarity that feeds on consumerism, nationalist vanity, and misplaced loyalty in a political party system. The country’s humanity has been diminished.

God has a central role to play in the lives of all people. It’s important that candidates, including those at the national level, have faith. Americans must ask a critical question of themselves and the presidential nominee in whom they will entrust the nation’s future: “Faith in what?”

The Right Rev. Paul Peter Jesep, an auxiliary bishop in the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church-Sobornopravna, is studying at Bangor Theological Seminary. The views expressed are solely his own and do not reflect the church’s position. He can be reached at VladykaPaulPeter@aol.com.