Faith in Politics

This past Saturday afternoon I had an e-mail forwarded to me by Gort of Gort42:

If you're interested this is a PA blogger effort.

> From: "Lehigh Valley Democrat"
> Subject: Values, Religion and Politics
> Date: Tue, 03 Jan 2006 16:36:48 +0000
>
Hey all,

A couple of weeks ago, Above Average Jane and I had a give and take about how religion plays an influencing role in our political views (actually, we were arguing about abortion, but the above sound so much more cultured and refined). Though the conversation we emailed back and forth about perhaps having progressive leaning bloggers take the time to pen articles about faith in politics from a progressive point of view. Dems are too often labled as anti-religion and anti-family values, but we know the truth... that many of us have strong family units, go to church, volunteer in religious communities and hold very strong beliefs of religion and society. To make this more potent, Jane suggested doing this in a coordinated fashion so that all us progressive/liberal bloggers could make a profound statement about what religion means in our lives...

I think what might have brought about my invitation to this blogging exercise was a comment I made to Gort about how I might not be able to come to a gathering of local bloggers because the scheduled time was in conflict with the time I go to church each week.* I think I might have been the last one to show up at the dance. I spent much of the weekend mentally composing my essay, and much of yesterday writing it. (Blogger says I started it just after 2:00 in the afternoon, and my atomic clock said I hit the "Publish Post" comment at 11:59 PM. In between I removed our outdoor Christmas decorations, changed a burned-out floodlight, had dinner with my mom, aunt, and cousin, got gas at Sam's Club, and bought a candelabra at Target. But I digress.) When I got to the end I reviewed my post and realized that the introductory paragraphs - the bits that I had been thinking through all weekend - no longer fit in with the rest of the piece, and I cut them out. What remains was made up on the spot as I sat at my computer.

What I ended up with was not so much a statement of beliefs or analysis of the relationship between faith and politics, but more a typical bit of personal meandering similar to the waiter's tale from Monty Python's The Meaning Of Life. Several other bloggers who took part in the same exercise addressed the topic more coherently than I did. This list of participants is copied from several of their sites, and may not be complete. Check them out and see what they have to say.

LVDem

Above Average Jane

Apt. 2024

Just Between Strangers

jordanna

The Smedley Log

Forever a Square Peg

Gort 42

Another Monkey

Summarized in Keystone Politics


*Turns out that that wasn't what brought about the invite. As Gort himself commented:

Actually this remark on one of your earlier posts made me think you would be interested.
"What would Jesus do? He would kick Pat Robertson's ass on national television from one end of the set to the other."