Wrestling With Religion: What GOP Strategist Steve Schmidt Doesn't Understand

(and why this matters around the world)
Also, a post that must be read entirely to be understood.

Caricature from "Le Rire" regarding a 1905 French law on the separation of Church and State)

John McCain's campaign manager Steve Schmidt made some news of his own the other day with his speech at the Log Cabin Republicans' national convention. The Huffington Post summed it up very well; "Steve Schmidt, McCain Campaign Manager: Religion Could Kill The GOP". Unfortunately the Huffington Post has also, in summing up Schmidt's point, made a better one than Schmidt himself did. To quote;

"If you put public policy issues to a religious test, you risk becoming a religious party," Schmidt declared. "And in a free country, a political party cannot be viable in the long term if it is seen as a sectarian party."

Whatever you think about the policies and beliefs of the Republican Party, this statement is incorrect.

First, in a technical sense, "Christian Democratic" political parties are extraordinarily common throughout the globe, and are frequently dominant in European Union nations. The international organization of Christian democratic parties, the Centrist Democrat International (CDI), is the second largest international political organization in the world (second only to the Socialist International). A majority of of the nations that the average North American would acknowledge as being democratic have extremely strong Christian Democratic parties. There is plenty of reason NOT to want any party with religion embedded directly of course, but nobody should pretend it is impossible.

In the second place, Schmidt's statement about the proper role of religion in politics is logically unsound. This is a pretty strong statement on my part, and such criticism would be unfair if the statement was taken casually, but policy at his level has to treated precisely.

What Schmidt is saying, is that an issue, or proposal that arrives, or is taken into the public sphere, is not to be filtered by religious convictions. Obviously in this context there is no question of Republican positions being formally certified by some specific religious hierarchy. What he is talking about is the religious sensibilities of Republican Party members.

To Schmidt these religious feelings should be ENTIRELY private; they should not influence or veto a proposal. Who however, imagines that a person who is egalitarian, who feels that people should not starve, who feels that everyone should have medical care, or who is a feminist, is NOT going to allow their feelings about what is right, appropriate and ethical, to influence their positions on political issues?

Anyone who claims that their convictions, of whatever type, are not going to influence their position on political issues, either simply doesn't know how to FIND their convictions "with both hands", does not in fact, hold the convictions that they claim to, is LYING, or, worst of all, is "just following orders". Each and every political party is going to have to take the deeply held sensibilities of their members into account.

But why should a liberal, or someone who has never even visited the US think that this point is so important? To be sure, everyone has convictions, a nice and politically pius sentiment, but isn't this fundamentally still a defense of theocratic politics?

In fact, Steve Schmidt's comments indirectly reveal exactly why religion threatens the future of the Republican party, and also why theocratic religious politics are such a problem around the globe. Schmidt asserts that the sequence;

public issue - policy proposal - voter evaluation according to personal convictions & beliefs

is corrupted if the religious convictions of the voter affect his or her REACTION to a policy proposal. This idea is wrongheaded to be sure, but the reaction to these notions is often equally undesirable. The theocrat simply reverses the sequence to;

personal convictions and beliefs - policy proposal - public issue evaluated by political calculation.

Instead of the government AVOIDING policy that offends the convictions of the populace, one gets religious convictions regurgitated ONTO the public, by the government. This theocratic regime tramples upon anyone with divergent beliefs, and the impure vessel of government stains, rots, and fouls what is pure in religion. If the public and if political parties of any nation fall into a false choice between a 'morals-free-zone, and theocratic rule, then that nation or party is in for a very hard time.