Mixing Religion and Politics is Good

As we consider the issue of Abdul Rahman in Afghanistan, or the formation of the Iraqi Government, or for that matter, the role of the Christian Right in American politics, it is worth looking into the proper position of religion within politics. Many in America state as fact that combining church and state is fatal to both systems. It is. However, it is good to have a little religion in politics. The real mistake is to put politics into religion. That ultimately leads to the mixture of church and state, as opposed to politics and religion. Allow me to explain.

When you inject religion into politics, you are introducing morality, and the worldview of a religion into the political arena. That is not only good, because hopefully it results in moral government, but also inevitable. The only people who even claim that they don’t do this are those that deceive themselves to believe that their humanism, socialism, or environmentalism is not a religion. In the end, all moral systems appeal to faith, and take on a basic religious value whether housed in a church or not. But with religion placed into politics, the main goals of the political structure remain political, and not religious: stability, community, and prosperity to name a few.

The error comes when you introduce politics into religion. The most dramatic example of this is Wahhabism, but there are others out there. In this case, political goals and aspirations are injected into a religious system. The critical distinction is when religious organizations become concerned with enforcement of political goals. Religion is appealed to for law, order, and stability, and therefore dissent is heresy. You end up with judicial punishments for religious crimes. At that point, you have mixed church (a group as opposed to a belief structure) and state. The religion has taken over the politics, or politics has taken over the religion and they are both worse off for it.

The distinction has to be made between religion and politics. Religions need to be free from political intervention, and likewise should shy away from intervention in politics. The only involuntary punishment churches should be allowed to inflict is expulsion from their group. If they truly believe that they speak for God, he will take care of all the real punishment eventually. This is not to say that moral systems with appeals to faith should not exist, but issues of faith should not be legislated. Leave government to practical concerns. As long as government is primarily concerned with stability and prosperity, things like Catholic and Protestant, Shi’a or Sunni, Muslim and Christian become unimportant. God will take care of it in the end…or maybe not.