O Ye of Too Much Faith (guest post by Bob McElvaine)

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We hear a great deal about a “faith divide” in American politics.  There is such a divide, but not in the way that is generally thought.

The real divide is between those who are willing to accept what the nation’s leader says on faith and those who make judgments on the basis of evidence.

O Ye of Too Much Faith

By Robert S. McElvaine

It has become conventional wisdom during the current presidential campaign that people of faith are strongly attracted to George W. Bush.  This is true and significant, but for a very different reason from that which is generally assumed.

Many religious people say they are attracted to President Bush because he demonstrates his faith and lives by it.  If so, his faith must be based on an odd translation of the Scriptures.  In my Bible Jesus doesn’t say: “Blessed are the preemptive warmakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”   Nor do I find “As you did it to the richest of these my brethren, you did it to me.”  Nowhere in the Beatitudes in my Bible do I see: “Blessed are the cocky, boastful, and arrogant, for they shall inherit the earth.”  (What the Bible does say is: “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”  We saw that Proverb carried out in the first presidential debate.)  The First Commandment in my translation does not read: “Thou Shalt Not Tax the Rich.”

The real reason that Bush is so much more popular with people of faith is that one has to be a person who depends upon faith, rather than reason, in order to believe him.  The division in America today is not so much between those who are religious and those who are not.  Rather, it is between those who are willing to accept on faith what comes down to them from a higher authority and those who question received wisdom and seek evidence before they will accept it.

Essentially what President Bush asks of the American people is that we accept whatever the administration tells us:  Trust me.  Don’t look at the evidence.  Just have faith that I am right.

The desire to have faith in a president is entirely understandable, especially in a time of perceived danger.  We all want to be able to have confidence in our leaders.  The Bush campaign has been adept at exploiting that desire.  Many critics of the president find it remarkable that so many Americans are so gullible.  But the Bush campaign understands that people who feel insecure want something—someone—to believe in: someone to watch over them.  To question that authority is abandon the feeling of security.

Democrats have to point out that a president should have the confidence and trust of the people, but he does not simply receive that trust by divine right and can lose it if he is not truthful with the public.  This president’s actions in misleading the nation into an unnecessary and counterproductive war in Iraq should long ago have forfeited any claim he had to people accepting on faith what he says.

President Bush continues to rely on his ability to convince a majority of the American electorate that the disastrous war in Iraq is synonymous with the war against terrorists.  Indeed, his reelection depends almost entirely on maintaining that carefully woven fiction, which began to unravel in the first debate.  Anyone who looks at the evidence understands that there is no reason to think that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in 2002-03 or that he had any ties with Al Qaeda.  Nonetheless, both the president and Vice President Cheney keep talking about the Iraq War as central to the fight against terrorism.

Wishing may not make it so, but saying it does make it so for Bush and his supporters.

In the nineteenth century, some of those who desired to preserve their faith in the Genesis accounts of creation, despite scientific examinations of the fossil record indicating that the earth is far older than Genesis says, came up with a brilliant way to get around the evidence.  They contended that God created the world about 6000 years ago, but when He did so, He placed fossils in different strata of rock in order to test our faith.

That is the sort of argument that cannot be refuted, no matter how much evidence is accumulated, because it simply says that evidence doesn’t matter.  That’s what the Bush Administration contends today.  Maybe God took away all the evidence of WMD and Al Qaeda ties to test our faith of George W. Bush?  If so, my faith in this president will be found wanting.

Even if George W. Bush thinks that God speaks through him, none of the rest of us—above all the most religious among us—should confuse him with God.

Blind faith in God is one thing; blind faith in a president and his administration is quite another.  Rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s is all well and good.  But complete, unquestioning faith does not fall under what is Caesar’s. 

Were Jesus to sermonize from an American mountain today, my guess is that he would say to the Bush believers: “O ye of too much faith—in a mortal man.”

{Robert S. McElvaine teaches history at Millsaps College in Jackson, Miss.  He is the author of Eve's Seed: Biology, the Sexes and the Course of History (McGraw-Hill).  He is currently completing his first novel and screenplay, What It Feels Like . . ..}

Contact information:

Robert S. McElvaine
Elizabeth Chisholm Professor of Arts & Letters
Chair, Department of History
Millsaps College
Jackson, MS 39210

e-mail: mcelvrs@hotmail.com
Web: http://home.millsaps.edu/~mcelvrs
http://evesseed.net