Political Engagement as Biblical Mandate. Paul D. Hanson
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of a given society and faithful to the central tenets of the proponent’s religious tradition. The problem facing the modern world resides not in a lack of efforts to apply various scriptures to world events, for we see ample examples within various branches of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism to inculcate and disseminate what is purported to be the political message of the deity. Rather, the problem is the nature of that application, or, to use the technical term again, the hermeneutic by which it is directed. Let us cite several examples to clarify the problem.
During his second term of office, Ronald Reagan, Commander-in-Chief of the world’s mightiest nuclear power locked in the grips of a Cold War with the Soviet Union, shared his biblical “hermeneutic” with Israeli lobbyist Tom Dine: “You know, I turn back to your Old Testament and the signs foretelling Armageddon, and I find myself wondering if—if we’re the generation that’s going to see that come about. I don’t know if you’ve noted any of these prophecies lately, but believe me, they certainly describe the times we’re going through.”7 On the surface, these words remain cryptic, but read against the background of Hal Lindsey’s bestseller, The Late, Great Planet Earth,8 it seems that Reagan was envisioning the possibility of a coordinated attack by the Soviet Union and China on Israel, which would set in motion the end-time cataclysm of Armageddon, a scenario sure to provoke the U.S. to unleash its nuclear arsenal.
On January 14, 1991, President George H. W. Bush was on the eve of announcing whether the U.S. would attack Iraq in response to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. His own Episcopal Bishop, Edmond Browning, had expressed his opposition to Desert Storm. That evening the President invited Evangelist Billy Graham to the White House. The next day CNN televised the pyrotechnical extravaganza of bombs falling on Baghdad. A year later the by then former President Bush had the opportunity to express his thanks at the annual meeting of The National Religious Broadcasters: “I want to thank you for helping America, as Christ ordained, to be ‘a light unto the world.’”9 What hermeneutic underlies this stingingly ironic scriptural reference? Is it simply an exploitation of biblical language in defense of a military action that was already etched in the sand? It is said that former presidential advisor Ralph Reed commented that he was glad that when he turned to the Christian faith his politics could remain unchanged. Is such a docile role of faith in relation to politics in accord with the examples of Christian leaders remembered by history for their acts of courage in times of crisis? What is the role of the Bible in relation to domestic and foreign policy? Is it simply to provide politically expedient justifications, or is it to provide a perspective free from ideological entanglements and open to chastening and reproof?
George W. Bush, in a Spring 2004 press conference, reflected on his Iraq war initiative with this theological statement: “Freedom is the Almighty’s gift to every man and woman in this world. And as the greatest power on the face of the Earth, we have an obligation to help the spread of freedom.”10 On the face of it, this sounds like an admirable goal. But if it is a pious rationalization authorizing the U.S. to act unilaterally and without restraints in promoting a plan of geo-political control over the oil-rich countries of the Middle East, it raises the specter of national idolatry, the confusion of divine and national purpose. As the military occupation of Iraq became besmeared with the shocking photographs taken in the Abu Ghraib prison facility and the number of civilian and military causalities accelerated, the prophetic irony of George H. W. Bush’s earlier remark in defense of stopping short of a full invasion of Baghdad in 1991 became shockingly apparent: “Trying to eliminate Saddam would have incurred incalculable human and political costs . . . Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.”11
Clearly, in the case of U.S. foreign policy, the Bible is not dismissed as an irrelevant relic of the past, for publicly vocal preachers claiming to be its true interpreters often are seated in places of honor among those who write and execute U.S. policy. But what sort of biblical message are they presenting, and what is the nature of the hermeneutic being applied by Presidents and their closest advisors. In the case of Reagan and the Bushes, the most charitable reading would be that they were simple, pure-hearted Christians applying biblical truth under the tutelage of preeminent religious leaders. A more cynical reading would ask whether they were being manipulated by Right Wing leaders like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Karl Rove to advance, under the pretense of biblical faith, self-serving national policies that may be in tension with or even contradict central tenants of Scripture. While room for debate over such complex and controversial issues remains, what cannot be neglected is critical analysis of the hermeneutical and moral dimensions involved in the application of biblical warrants to political policy and the economic and military actions they promote.
Part of such analysis must be the examination of the dispensationalist theology that for over a century has shaped the global policy of some of Washington’s most influential political leaders (including presidents, senators and representatives), and in the background their advisors (both official and informal) and influential and well-funded lobbyists. Though that task is too large for the present context, the initial observation can be made that the political theology that has been advanced by many influential religious and political leaders in the United States is theocratic, at times even resembling hermeneutical principles followed by Islamic fundamentalists and extreme religious Zionists like the followers of Meir Kahane and Baruch Goldstein. Held in common by these otherwise strange bedfellows is the assumption that Scripture—whether the Quran, the Tanak, or the Christian Bible—contains a political blueprint that they bear responsibility to promote in the realms of cultural mores and international policies. The exclusivist, theocratic nature of their program is illustrated by Tim LaHaye, co-author of the apocalyptic bestseller series, Left Behind: “No humanist is qualified to hold any governmental office in America—United States senator, congressman, cabinet member, State Department employee, or any other position that requires him think in the best interest of America . . . [Christians] must vote in pro-moral leaders who will return our country to the biblical base upon which it is founded.”12 Paul Weyrich adds: “We’re radicals working to overturn the present structure in this country—we’re talking about Christianizing America.”13
Thus far our illustrations of what can be characterized as the enlistment of Scripture for political purposes have been drawn from members of the Republican Party. When we turn our attention to Democratic leaders, we see another facet of the “culture war” that Hunter has studied. Quite generally, Democratic leaders have sought to avoid religious language. While he was at the apex of his campaign to become the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party, Howard Dean, who once explained that he withdrew from his church over a dispute about a bike path, offered the liberal rationale for avoiding religiously charged hot-button issues. The presidential race, he insisted, should stay away from the issues of “guns, God and gays” and focus on “jobs, healthcare, and foreign policy.” To be sure, even before the sea change initiated by Barack Obama, we can find Democrats who did not hesitate to expose the spiritual and even biblical dimensions of their political thought. Notable was the candor with which Jimmy Carter revealed how his Christian faith influenced his decisions, and certainly his post-White House career as world spokesman for peace and advocate for the poor has demonstrated the staying power of his idealism. Bill Clinton began his presidency with biblical themes like covenant and community, themes that were translated into political action in the drive for healthcare reform (spearheaded aggressively by his wife Hilary, but failing to gain sufficiently wide support to be implemented), improvement of the nation’s public school system, and tax relief for lower and middle-class Americans. Noteworthy as well was the zeal with which Clinton, as he approached the end of his second term in office, sought to bring the Israelis and Palestinians towards a lasting peace agreement at the Second Camp David. Unfortunately, a promising moment of hope vanished amidst the impeachment proceeding stemming from the Monica Lewinsky affair, an episode exposing another dimension of the Bible/Politics dialectic, the dimension of private morality.
When one ponders that dimension and specifically the impact of moral turpitude on political process, the biblical paradigm that most readily comes to mind is the story of David and Bathsheba, even as the words that epitomize the potentially tragic impact of infractions in the realm of personal ethics on the realm of public duty were the words of divine judgment pronounced against David by the prophet Nathan: “Now therefore the sword shall never depart