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When
it Becomes too Radical to Dialogue, Perhaps it’s Time for Reform!
The last election in the USA was a bruiser
– leaving both sides licking deep wounds.
As never before, political campaigns, churches, and even employers,
turned their back on basic democratic principles such as freedom of conscience and
the integrity of the individual ballot and sought to not only influence how
those under their authority would vote, but sought near absolute control over
the dialogue on each issue.
Changes to campaign finance laws have now
enabled large corporations and trust funds to “donate” almost unlimited amounts
for select campaigns and clever little loopholes encourage churches to take
more direct roles in the political lives of their memberships.
In Minnesota, Roman Catholic and
Evangelical churches made the most of laws enabling churches to take sides in
divisive constitutional amendment battles.
While churches are excluded from endorsing political candidates, their
potential support of political causes is almost open-ended – in this case,
amendments requiring a photo ID for voting (an amendment that most opponents
saw as anti-immigrant), and an amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage. Note: In as much as the voter ID amendment campaign
was accompanied by dramatic posters conspicuously placed in immigrant neighborhoods
which warned potential voters that they could be jailed for voter fraud, the
connection seems rather reasonable and the message rather clear – voting is
just not worth the chance that you’ll end up in jail.
Not surprisingly, many members of
congregations from both sides are now ready and willing to just walk away from
churches that seem to be more political and less spiritual.
One of the less reputable reactions is from
a priest in Barnesville, Minnesota, near Fargo-Moorhead, who has apparently
refused to confirm a 17-year-old Roman Catholic teen on account of the youth’s
Facebook photo showing him posing with a strongly Catholic-supported Vote YES! against same-sex marriage
poster with the “yes” crossed out and a big “NO!” written over it. Apparently, the youth did not even have
access to a proper poster from the Vote
NO! campaign in that isolated, church-dominated community.
