[Oe List ...] Moyers' speech

[Terry Bergdall]

Thanks to George Holcombe for posting the recent speech by Bill Moyers on 
religion and politics.  In a similar vein, I listened to an insightful 
radio interview last Sunday with John Danforth, a former US senator 
(Republican) and UN ambassador, who is also an Episcopal priest.  Below are 
a few of his comments:

"
you don't check (faith) at the door -- you bring (it) to whatever your 
job, whatever you're doing in life, whatever, you know, whatever role you 
have in life the totality of what you are and what your life experiences 
have been, what your values are, what your makeup is.

"
But there's a difference between having positions on one hand and saying, 
"My position is God's position, and I am God's oracle and God's 
representative in government, and I am here to implement God's position." 
Because once you do that, you're necessarily divisive. And it's fine 
religiously to say, "OK, here's my point of view." But once you're engaged 
in the business of government in our country, in the public sector, in 
politics in our country, we have something that we have to do in addition 
to just taking all these specific positions, and that is to figure out a 
way to keep the countries glued together. And it's not going to stay glued 
together if there is kind of a religious crusade that takes political 
positions.

"
I think it's very important for religious people to be involved in 
politics, to come to politics with their values, to press their ideas, to 
be as vigorous as they want to be or can be in presenting what their views 
are. I'm all for that. I am all for doing that with a degree of humility. 
And I am also all for the concept of separation of church and state. 
Because once the certainty of religious zealotry gets mixed up in politics, 
then we have a real problem in our country.

"
it's what like St. Paul says, work out your salvation with fear and 
trembling. I mean, you're not going to know, and that's the point, to bring 
to this humility, but to bring to it a good faith effort to try to live a 
faithful life and to try to act in the realm of politics as a faithful 
person. Knowing, however, that you are not the grand oracle of God's wisdom 
and that God's truth is not your truth. There's going to be a gap there and 
a recognition that the other person who has come to very different 
conclusions also has made a good faith effort to be a follower of the Lord. 
So, I mean, I think it's a matter of good faith and trying your best, but 
bringing humility to bear."

The entire transcript of the interview can be found at:

http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/danforth/index.shtml


-- 
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.