According to a recent article, 1/4 of America still believes Barack Obama is a Muslim (which certainly could not be the case), though if he was a Muslim, Atheist or any other interpretation other than church-going, active Christian would have undoubtedly restricted him from serving our country as President.
The fact is, every US president has been a Christian, and its doubtful any president who was not a church-goer could even make it to the party primaries. This is mind-boggling to most Europeans I've met and many Americans. The fact that religion ties into American politics so heavily is both an interesting and unnerving fact. At times, nothing has frustrated me more. Though recently, I've begun thinking of the religion-politics nexus in the US a bit differently, as I examine it from different angles.
The fact is, this nexus would be a very difficult standard of judgment to break; many view the president as a pseudo-spiritual leader since so much... of American idealism, exceptionalism and nationalism has a spiritual and religious basis.
From 'the land of the free' to 'the city on a hill' to GW's insane reinterpretation of biblical prophetic passages of 'slaying thine enemies' and spreading truth and freedom to the world, American domestic and foreign policy is currently and probably always has been linked with some sort of strong philosophical and religious orientation - this has undoubtedly characterized America's unique rise to Hegemonic status.
We are fairly unique among Western powers that way, for better or for worse - certainly some of both. It is a two-way street, the Christianization of Americanism and the Americanization of Christianity. It also seems to be a two-way street (or a double edged sword) in another sense. In addition to playing a positive and negative role domestically, much of the positive global development and work towards human rights promotion is coming from religious (largely Christian) civil society based in the United States and acting transnationally.
One thing is clear though, I dont think religious concerns will leave the US political process anytime soon - this will continue to be both a sponsor of awareness and profoundly disturbing ignorance.
There is nothing that frustrates me more than politicians garnering support for wicked policy aspirations by proclaiming some BS issues that appeals to the Christian Right, and maybe it's going to take people seeing politicians with religious orientations like Obama (as opposed to the Bush/Carter model) who are church-going but don't seem to use it as a major leverage tool to slowly change this trend. At least that is my hope - my hope is not that religion will leave the US political process or even people's voting habits (even though this is what I once believed), but that the good will be increasingly refined, the gospel will moreover be used to further the good of humanity both inside and outside our borders and the tendency of religious people to ignorantly follow the party line will decrease - but this is only my hope, and as Richard Rohr says 'hope is not logical but a participation in the very life of God.'
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