'Christianity is not a religion'

I don't know whether it's really possible to have a meaningful, reasonable debate about the place of religion in public, and about the question of what it means for the government to not "respect an establishment of religion," but a lot of examples like this "discussion" above seem to indicate it's not.

This debate, like so many on this subject, gets very weird very fast, as Bill O'Reilly claims Christianity is actually not a religion (unlike Methodism and Catholicism), and thus not subject to that clause of the First Amendment. "It is a fact," O'Reilly says, "that Christianity is not a religion. It is a philosophy. If the government was saying that the Methodist religion deserves a special place in the public square, I would be on your side." Even attempting to make any sense out of that claim just makes me tired.

And that's before the argument reaches its apex, where these public figures argue about who would have a hypothetical problem with what, and the host launches into accusations of insanity and fascism.

*sigh*

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119th St./Blue Island

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Teaching: History of American Atheism

I'm in the process of preparing a class on the history of American Atheism, which, as far as I can tell, is more or less uncharted territory. Existing studies and curricula seem to either be philosophical examinations of atheism (e.g.), or much too narrow for my interests (e.g.), or really more hagiographical canonization efforts than I am comfortable with (e.g.). Not to mention the very common whig histories of atheism.

Given the new(ish?) direction of the class I'm designing, it seems some readers might be interested in the shape of the class as it develops. Also, as there's no standard text outlining major figures or movements in American Atheism, I would appreciate readers' help in identifying critical people and/or texts to teach.

Below, I've listed those I have in mind who are important in this history and who I think can be taught fairly well to first and second year students with an interest in religious history and American cultural studies. I've construed "atheist" fairly broadly, to include some agnostics and skeptics (especially if they expand the possibility of disbelief); as well as some who's opposition to specific faith traditions is clear while their own position is more ambiguous; those of the political right as well as the more well-represented left; some who are hostile towards religion and some who attempt to make use of religious rhetoric. I've also tried to work in a fair representation of non-whites, women, and, as far as possible, some from backgrounds other than Protestant.

Are there any significant figures or movements I'm missing?

Anyone who would likely teach particularly well that I haven't thought of?

Course description:

From Cotton Mather’s denunciations to Daniel Dennett’s proposal atheists rebrand themselves as “brights,” atheists have been a much-discussed but little understood feature of the religious landscape of America. This class will take a historical approach to the subject, analytically examining the many varieties of atheism in America. Students will learn about atheisms, plural, in the past and present, and will study their cultural contexts, as well as arguments for and against the existence of God, and vying conceptions of meaning and morality. Students will also be introduced to the methodological issues in the study of the history of religion, gaining a working understanding of the approaches entailed by cultural history.

Tentative syllabus:
1. Thomas Paine
2. Joel Barlow
3. Joseph Weydemeyer
4. Robert Ingersoll
5. Charles Chilton Moore and the Blue Grass Blade
6. Emma Goldman
7. Eugene V. Debs
8. Emanuel and Marcet Haldeman-Julius
9. Richard Wright
10. James Baldwin
11. Ayn Rand
12. Madeline Murray O'Hare
13. Kurt Vonnegut
14. Thomas Altizer
15. Sam Harris
16. David Silverman
17. YouTub videos: "Why I am an Atheist"/"How I became an Atheist."
18. "Preachers who are not believers"
19. Chris Stedman

Update:
Additions suggested via twitter:
Felix Adler
Paul Kutz
Carl Sagan

Update:
Additions suggested via Facebook:
Penn Jilette
Seth MacFarlane
George Carlin
Linus Pauling
Richard Feynman
James Rani
Michael Hardt
H.L. Menken

Update:
Other additions suggested:
Charles Lee Smith
Ambrose Bierce
H.P. Lovecraft

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The courts' disagreement over corporations having religion

Can corporations practice religion? The courts disagree.

In two different federal courts, in two different cases where for-profit companies with evangelical owners are suing the government over the Obama administration's mandate that health insurance include contraception coverage, two very different conclusions were reached. 

In Washington D.C., a federal court granted the Christian publisher Tyndale House an injunction last week, exempting the company from the daily fines it would accrue starting in January for not following the new health care law. The granted injunction is a ruling that the company has a good case, and should be treated -- at least until the final outcome -- as if it has won. Three days later, however, in Oklahoma, a federal court did not grant the arts and crafts store Hobby Lobby an injunction. The two cases are almost identical, yet the courts ruled in opposite ways. 

Pretty much, too, they ruled opposite ways because of what seems to me to be the core question, which is whether or not corporations can have or exercise religion in the sense indicated by the First Amendment. 

In the first case, Judge Reggie Walton, an appointee of the second President Bush, ruled that "the beliefs of Tyndale and its owners are indistinguishable."

In the second case, Judge Joe Heaton, also a George W. Bush appointee, ruled that corporate exercise of religion is "largely uncharted waters," and said Hobby Lobby's lawyers hadn't cited any legal precedent for the idea "that secular, for-profit corporations such as Hobby Lobby [...] have a constitutional right to the free exercise of religion," despite the fact there's no legal question about the owner's religious beliefs.

One might conclude that Walton and Heaton have a fairly straightforward disagreement about what the case law says, but the difference seems more subtle than that.

Heaton, as I read his ruling, says there's no evidence that for-profit corporations can practice religion. Walton actually agrees, though, despite ruling differently.

Walton writes in his ruling that he "declines to address the unresolved question of whether for-profit corporations can exercise religion within the meaning of [...] the Free Exercise Clause," and cites three cases where the question was left unresolved, First Nat'l Bank v. Bellotti in 1978; Church of Scientology of Cal. v. Cazares in 1981; and Stormans, Inc. v. Selecky in 2009. What he does then, though, is where the difference lies. Walton, in the first move, grants that corporations maybe can't have religion in any meaningful sense and then, in a second move says, that this particular for-profit company "Tyndale has standing to assert the free exercise rights of its owners."

The corporation can act as a kind of carrier of religion or religious practice, while not itself having or exercising said religion.

Walton ruled:

"Tyndale is a closely-held corporation owned by four entities united by their Christian faith, each of which plays a distinct role in achieving shared, religious objectives. Christian principles, prayer, and activities are pervasive at Tyndale, and the company’s ownership structure is designed to ensure that it never strays from its faith-oriented mission. The Court has no reason to doubt, moreover, that Tyndale's religious objection to providing insurance coverage for certain contraceptives reflects the beliefs of Tyndale's owners. Nor is there any dispute that Tyndale's primary owner, the Foundation, can 'exercise religion' in its own right, given that it is a non-profit religious organization."

This is either a really smart solution to the technicality of the problem, or a rather crazy begging of the question that only re-instantiates all the confusions it's supposed to clear up.

It remains to be seen.

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A seasonal public service announcement from Bob Dylan

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Thanksgiving morning, at the Jarvis'

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The ignored question of corporations' religious freedom

A federal court ruling handed down in Oklahoma yesterday said that for-profit corporations don't have rights -- constitutional, inalienable, or otherwise -- to freely exercise their religion.

The court case involves a chain of arts and crafts stores called Hobby Lobby, owned by a family-established trust, in a suit with the Obama administration over the Health and Human Services mandate requiring health insurance plans include birth control coverage. This ruling will be appealed. Its not anything like the final word on this. However, the court has made clear that the issue in this case is who or what can have a religion.

Who or what can practice a religion.

The clarification of the issue is appreciated, since the assumptions out there in these claims of "freedom of religion" are actually quite confounding, and since, as far as I can tell, no one from the many many groups or among the many many critics opposing this HHS mandate seem interested in explaining the issues. Apparently it's enough to be appalled that the Obama administration is assaulting our first freedom and obliterating freedom of religion, without ever being clear about the messy matters of corporate personhood and religious practice.

Which this 28-page ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Joe Heaton points out:

"Plaintiffs have not cited, and the court has not found, any case concluding that secular, for-profit corporations such as Hobby Lobby and Mardel have a constitutional right to the free exercise of religion .... The question of whether the Greens can establish a free exercise constitutional violation by reason of restrictions or requirements imposed on general business corporations they own or control involves largely uncharted waters." 

In short, this ruling asks the very basic question that those up in arms over religious freedom have consistently refused to answer: what sense does "religious freedom" have for a corporate entity?

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Presentation in Chicago

A bit of shameless self-promotion:

Exploratory Sessions (A18-232)
Per Smith, Boston University, Presiding

Theme: Irreligion, Secularism and Social Change
Sunday, Nov. 19 – 1 – 2:30 PM, McCormick Place West, room 178A, Chicago

"Scholars of religion from a variety of disciplines are increasingly focusing their attention on the relationship between the religious and the secular. So what would a sustained discussion of 'the secular' look like within the American Academy of Religion; and moreover, how would such a discussion be relevant to religious studies? This exploratory session seeks to provide modest answers to those questions by example. On the heels of the year of the protestor, the session explores how 'the secular' is implicated in and affected by social transformations. How did social change make the secular possible? How have the demands of 20th century social movements shaped emergent forms of secularism? How do contemporary social movements provide fertile soil for secular theologies of resistance? And how are contemporary irreligious identities evolving within a social context that considers them deviant?

Daniel Silliman, University of Heidelberg
The Possibility of Secularity and the Material History of Fiction 
Petra Klug, University of Leipzig
The Dynamics of Standardisation and Deviance using the Way U.S. Society deals with Atheists as an Example 
Jordan Miller, Salve Regina University
Occupying Absence: Political Resistance and Secular Theology 

Responding: Jonathan VanAntwerpen, Social Science Research Council

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Religion in politics, election data

Photo by dennizo

Pew: How the faithful voted
CNN: exit polls
FOX: exit polls


Also of interest:
First Hindu elected to congress, Tulsi Gabbard:



Black Mormon woman elected to congress (first black Republican congresswoman), Mia Love:



The Catholic hierarchy's opposition to Obama:



Staunch evangelical opposition to Obama:

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Science wins small symbolic victory in Georgia vote

A bit of a political protest is becoming apparent as the ballots are tallied in one North Georgia congressional district: a protest on behalf of science.

According to the Athens Banner-Herald, Charles Darwin received nearly 4,000 write-in votes in one of the 24 counties that make up the state's 10th Congressional District, where the unopposed Republican incumbent had declared the theory of evolution to be the work of Satan. How many write-in votes went to Darwin in the 23 other counties of the district is not clear, as not all of the counties report write-ins, yet the symbolic protest was sizable enough to attract the attention of national news outlets and, Darwin supporters hope, attract a real challenger to the race in 2014. 

Broun's broad dismissal of science -- from evolution to the Big Band to embryology -- at a political rally in a Baptist church was especially inflammatory because he sits on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. In the viedo released by the church, Broun stood in front of a wall of mounted deer heads, and said that science was opposed to the Bible, which is the "manufacturer's handbook."

Echoing the ideas of Christian Theonomists such as R.J. Rushdooney, who taught that the world is divided into four spheres and that God is king of all four, Broun explained that science is a blasphemous attempt to displace God. He told the audience he doesn't accept the authority of science, but of the Bible, which "teaches us how to run our lives, individually, how to run our families, how to run our churches. But it teaches us how to run all of public policy and everything in society. And that's the reason as your congressman, I hold the Holy Bible as being the major directions for how I vote in Washington D.C."

The brouhaha that followed the congressman's version of theocratic government was turned into a symbolic protest at the polls, last week, in part due to the work of a UGA professor. 


Jim Thompson of the Athens Banner-Herald reports:

"A campaign asking voters to write-in Darwin’s name in the 10th Congressional District, which includes half of Athens-Clarke County, began after Broun, speaking at a sportsmen’s banquet at a Hartwell church, called evolution and other areas of science 'lies straight from the pit of hell.'

"Jim Leebens-Mack, the University of Georgia plant biologist who started a 'Darwin for Congress' Facebook page in the wake of Broun’s remarks, said the number of Darwin votes cast in the race were 'in the ballpark, a little bit more' than he had expected.

"The Darwin votes, Leebens-Mack added, made it 'clear to me, and I hope everybody, that Paul Broun is vulnerable' in terms of continued re-election to Congress. Broun was first elected in a special 2007 election, and won re-election in 2008, 2010 and again on Tuesday in a newly drawn 10th District, reconfigured as part of congressional reapportionment." 

Broun won re-election fairly easily, though, garnering more than 200,000 votes in his district, more than he won in 2006, 2008 or 2010. 

Even in 2008, in the context of the massive turn-out for Democrats inspired by Barack Obama's first election, Broun managed a decisive win. The Democratic challenger Bobby Saxon won only about 39 percent of the vote.

Nevertheless, the write-in votes can be read as a core of opposition to Broun, or to conservative evangelical candidates more generally, even in the deeply Republican districts of deeply Republican states like Georgia.

The Flagpole, the University of Georgia Athens paper, reports that in addition to the votes for Darwin, there were about 2,000 other write-in votes in the congressional race in Athens-Clarke County. Another 23,000 voters reportedly ignored that part of the ballot entirely.

Other write-in votes from those dissatisfied with Broun included votes for: "Carl" Marx, Burning Bag of Dog Shit, Doritos, Michael Stipe, Ron Paul, Satan, Stephen Colbert, and Taylor Swift. A fictitious candidate from a previous protest against Broun, "Pete McCommunist," also won more than 100 write-in votes. An actual person who also ran a write-in campaign, Brian Russell Brown, won 238 votes.

Bill Nye the Science Guy, who has come out in opposition of teaching creationism to children and slammed Broun for his anti-science statements, also won some of the one county's write-in votes.

Not all of the opposition to Broun, notably, was from the left. Georgia's libertarian-leaning talk show host Neil Bortz, who's most significant political foray to date was probably promoting fellow Georgian Herman Cain, came out strongly in opposition to Broun. Bortz said Republicans like Broun were "hurting the brand," making the party look like it consisted of un-evolved Neanderthals and redneck hicks.

The radio show host encouraged listeners to write-in Darwin.

The coalition of libertarians, UGA faculty and students and others who want their government officials to accept science didn't carry the day, in North Georgia, but the small symbolic protest was nonetheless noted when they went to the polls in Athens-Clarke County.

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Catholics to bishops: never mind our souls

American Catholic bishops attempted to exert their influence on the electorate, but to little effect.

Looking at the Catholic vote the day after the election doesn't reveal any significant shifts or surprises, but the results do indicate the political impotency of a Catholic hierarchy that has become very strongly identified with politics.

The American bishops didn't appear to hesitate in picking political sides in this last election. That has not always been the case, but this time the church's hierarchy leaned heavily on Catholic parishioners, making strong pronouncements about the morality of voting one way or another, clearly indication how good Catholics should cast their ballots if they cared about their souls. Picking up issues such as abortion and mandated coverage of contraception, the church's leaders issued strongly worded statements that, ostensibly, left little room for differences of opinion among the faithful.

And yet they were ignored by significant portions of the church.

One poll in the final days of the campaign put Catholic support of Barack Obama's reelection at 52 percent. An exit poll widely cited had half of self-identified Catholics saying they'd voted for Obama, and only 48 percent saying they'd supported Mitt Romney.

The bishops were spurned by sizable portions of Catholic voters, nationally and locally.

In Illinois, for example, Bishop Thomas John Paprocki wrote that voting for candidates who supported the Democratic Party platform -- which, in contrast to the Republican platform, has planks that "explicitly endorse intrinsic evils" -- puts one's soul in danger. But many, many Illinois Catholics voters just didn't seem to care.

Paprocki's message:

"I am not telling you which party or which candidates to vote for or against, but I am saying that you need to think and pray very carefully about your vote, because a vote for a candidate who promotes actions or behaviors that are intrinsically evil and gravely sinful makes you morally complicit and places the eternal salvation of your own soul in serious jeopardy."

Nearly half of the Catholic voters in Illinois disagreed with or disregarded the bishop's warning. The CNN exit poll shows that 48 percent of the state's Catholic voters cast their ballot for Obama on Tuesday.

This is true other places as well: The bishops simply do not have significant influence over their supposed flocks.

In Colorado, some lay Catholics paid for a full-page newspaper ad carrying the political message of Denver's Archbishop Samuel J. Aquila. Aquila urged Catholics to do their "moral duty" in opposing Obama's health care plan, and the Heath and Human Services mandate that insurance coverage, including that offered by Catholic charities, include coverage of contraceptives.

Colorado opted to re-elect the president by about 110,000 votes, though, and many of those were the state's more than 700,000 Catholics.

There is some minor variation from state to state in the break-down of the Catholic vote, but it doesn't seem to have anything in particular to do with the efforts of statements or activism of the region's respective bishops.

In the five states with the largest percentage of Catholics, Obama actually won, and CNN's exit polls show that the Catholic voters were split between the parties:

• In Rhode Island, 59 percent of the population is Catholic, and Obama won by 29 percentage points.
• In Massachusetts, where 43 percent of the population is Catholic, only 21 percent of voters identify as conservative, and more than a quarter of those calling themselves conservative reported they voted for Obama.
• In New Jersey, 41 percent of the population is Catholic, and 45 percent of Catholics voters said they voted for Obama. The number of Catholics in New Jersey is about six times the number of votes that made up Obama's margin of victory.
• In Connecticut, 36.6 percent of the population is Catholic, and 49 percent of Catholic voters cast their ballots for Obama. The state went for the Democrats by 17 percent.
• In New York, where 37 percent of the population is Catholic, 47 percent of Catholic voters went for Obama. 

The 47 percent of New York Catholics who voted for Obama presumably did not include Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who went on television in the Spring to describe Obama's policies as "dramatic, radical intrusion of a government bureaucracy into the internal life of the church," and an attempt to silence people of faith, saying: "I think the public square is impoverished when people might be coerced to put a piece of duct tape over their mouth keeping them from bringing their deepest held convictions to the conversation."

And, presumably, the 47 percent of New York Catholics who voted for the president don't feel that they've been violently gagged by the policies of the man they voted for.

There will likely be arguments that those Catholics who didn't vote in accordance with the wishes of the hierarchy are, in some way, not really Catholic. It is true that Catholics who attend weekly mass -- the one measure of religiosity in election polls -- were more likely to vote for Romney. FOX's exit poll shows 57 percent of weekly mass-goers voted Republican, nationally. Of those who attend less than once per week, 57 percent voted for Obama.

The much more sharp division, though, seems to be between white Catholics and non-white Catholics, not the devout and the irregular church-goers.

According to a Pew poll done in October, 71 percent of Latino Catholics identified as Democrats, and 73 percent were planning on voting for Obama. They were nearly 20 percent more likely to support Obama than non-Latino Catholics. That overwhelming support didn't disappear when one measured for religiosity, either: among Latinos who attended mass weekly, more than 60 percent said they would vote for Obama. Where the so-called "God gap" is in effect with whites, it seems minimal at best with Latinos.

This support came despite what they heard in church when they were there every week, too, further demonstrating the church's lack of authority on these matters. Nearly one third of the church-going Latinos told pollsters they had heard sermons on candidates and elections, and more than half said they'd heard priests speak from the pulpit about abortion. It's not that they're not paying attention when, for example, a church includes a weekly prayer that "the federal government will be restored to its founding principles and allow religious liberty," it's just that they disagree.

Latino Catholics express a clear political preference, a preference which is not represented in their church's leadership.

As Eduardo Peñalver wrote in Common Weal today,

"the hierarchy finds itself identified more closely than ever with a single party in the United States, a party that is on the wrong side of inexorable demographic change. The result will be diminished influence for the Church in American politics and greater hostility towards requests for accommodation from the Democrats in power."

This divide isn't new, actually, as the numbers in this election more or less match those of the last few presidential races. Increasingly, though, the clash within the Catholic church is aggravated, as "Catholic leaders and Catholic voters can’t agree on what they think these Catholic teachings actually mean. Nor can they agree on how, or whether, those teachings might apply to the public square," as exemplified, quite publicly, in the vice presidential debate.

The election results raise very real questions about what it even means to talk about a "Catholic vote," given these divisions, and it undercuts the claims of conservatives who want to speak unilaterally about what "the church" supports or doesn't. It also especially demonstrates the hierarchy of the American Catholic church, try as they might, don't carry that much weight when it comes to the country's voting Catholics. 

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Happy birthday Billy Graham

Billy Graham turns 94 today.

One of the odder moments of Graham's very public career -- though there are many, and many more than one would expect given Graham's image -- from a 1969 interview with William F. Buckley:

"I think that many people have been thrown off by the terrible sufferings and the overwhelming problems that have been created in our generation. But this is precisely a fulfillment of what the Bible itself teaches. Because the Bible teaches that our problems originate from the fact that man, since the Garden of Eden, has been in rebellion against God. Now I personally hold the view that there are beings on other planets and that, I believe, this is the only planet in rebellion against God."

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Nixon butt prints in November beach sand

Nixon went down to the beach and sat in the sand and waited. The waves came in, the waves went out, and he sat there in his suit and waited.

There comes a point, in every election, where there seems like there’s nothing anyone can do. Whatever is going to happen will happen. It has happened already. Sometime during the day, sometime while the votes are cast or after they’re cast but haven’t yet been counted, the candidates can’t do anything anymore except wait. Politicking ends. Maneuvering stops. Everyone waits. They’re as helpless as hitchhikers, at that moment, in that in-between time. As helpless as sinners in that old Calvinist doctrine of waiting for grace.

An old essay on waiting for the foreordained, secularized Calvinism, Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men, and the interregnum of election day @ TheThe Poetry. Read the rest: here.

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The diversity of religion in American politics

Two congressional candidates in two very different districts demonstrate something of the religious diversity in American politics today.

In Hawaii, in a district that previously elected one of congress' few Buddhists, Tulsi Gabbard is currently leading in the polls by 52 points. If elected, Gabbard would be the country's first Hindu representative.

As the Religious News Service reports:

"Gabbard, 31, was born in American Samoa to a Catholic father and a Hindu mother, and moved to Hawaii when she was 2. In 2002, at age 21, she was elected to the Hawaii state legislature.

"[...] Gabbard, whose first name refers to a tree sacred to Hindus, fully embraced Hinduism as a teenager, and follows the Vaishnava branch that believes in the Supreme Lord Vishnu, and his 10 primary incarnations. Her primary scripture is the centuries-old Bhagavad Gita, whose themes include selfless action, spirituality, war, and serving God and humanity.

"'The Bhagavad Gita is often considered a guide as to how to make decisions in difficult situations, when the decision is often not clear cut,'  [co-founder of the Washington-based Hindu American Foundation, Mihir] Meghani said. 'Hinduism’s innate pluralism recognizes that there are various ways to look at things, and its focus on dharma, or duty, guides those holding positions of power or authority.'"

Gabbard's political rise has been described as "out of nowhere," though her district is strongly Democratic, and her opponent is homeless. She has, interestingly, talked about how her faith has important in her life, both during the time she spent in the military in the Iraq war, and in this campaign for congress.

As Michael J. Altman notes, there's a history of opposition to Hinduism in America, and that "the earliest American ideas about Hinduism, both for good and ill, endure" in discussions of Gabbard's faith. There's been especially vigorous opposition to Hindus involved in politics. That opposition has notably come from those who've argued that there shouldn't be a separation of church and state, and that a persons faith is necessary and an integral part of their public service.

Gabbard's faith doesn't appear to have been a critical part of her campaign, though. In one interview, she suggested her Hinduism would be an advantage when working with some foreign nations, such as India, but has otherwise made central such as issues banks foreclosing on deployed soldiers' houses, regulating banks, and changing America's nuclear policy, without making reference to Hinduism.

In Northwest Ohio, meanwhile, the Democratic challenger appears to be the country's only congressional candidate who is also a female ordained minister. Angela Zimmann is the pastor of Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church.

Zimmann's chances at election are slim: the district hasn't gone Democratic since 1939, and Ohio's districts were recently re-drawn by Republicans. The incumbent is seeking his fourth term, has raised more than $1 million, more than twice the amount Zimmann has raised, and he won his last race with 64 percent of the vote.

The Toledo Blade reports that Zimmann's faith has been a question in the campaign specifically as it relates to social issues. Her church allows for the ordination of homosexuals, for example, and has a moderate position on abortion. As the Blade reports:

"Challenger Angela Zimmann (D., Springfield Township), has likely the most pro-choice position of any of the major congressional candidates in the area. She says she personally opposes abortion, but doesn't feel the government has the right to make that decision for others, even late in a pregnancy.

"'As a mother and foster mother who personally opposes abortion, I find the late-term procedure to be particularly horrific,' she said in a statement, 'however, these difficult and deeply personal medical issues are best decided between a woman and her doctor.'

"Ms. Zimmann is a pastor for the Southeast Michigan Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has approved the ordination of homosexual clergy members and the blessings of same-sex unions.

"She frames her position on gay marriage around keeping government small, considering the Defense of Marriage Act an overreach of the federal government, and said the U.S. Supreme Court should rule it unconstitutional."

According to the Religious News Service, Zimmann has also attempted to cautiously delineate the relationship, in her own life, between religion and politics. She plans to keep ministering at her church, if she wins, but is adamant that politics not be a topic at church. She spoke with two bishops before announcing her run, but said it was a conversation, "non-hierarchical."

Her articulation of the role her faith plays in her public life is likewise cautious:

"'A person without a religious faith can still be a person of integrity,' Zimmann said in an interview, 'so I wouldn’t say that if you don’t have faith you don’t have values. But I know for myself my faith influences my values.'

"'Being from the Christian faith, our values are to care for the needy. The Bible talks about helping the elderly and the widows, and I see that as an analogy for helping anyone who doesn’t have their needs met.'"

As always, the conversation about "religion in politics" this election seems to be mostly about a certain kind of religion and a certain kind of politics. As these two congressional candidates, show, though, there's actually a good bit of variety when it comes to the religious faiths involved in politics, and when it comes to how politicians understand the relationship between their faith and their public works.

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Dr. Reist

Dr. John Reist once drew me a map to his house when I was a student in one of his classes at Hillsdale College. It started with a circle, which he said was God and he said "There is a God and she's black." "Hey whoa," he said. About 10 minutes of map drawing and jokes later, I realized it was actually a straight line from the college to his house. No turns or anything. But still that map, like all the lessons Reist taught, turned out, kinda mysteriously, to be profoundly useful.

Rest in peace, Dr. Reist. Quack to you too, and rest in peace.

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