01 May 2019 Religious Belief Is Reconcilable With Public Service, by Jerome Danner

In these postmodern times, religious belief has continued to be on a persistent decline in terms of its popularity in society.

To be specific, in western society, Christianity is the religion that is continuously in the spotlight for any number of reasons that cause debate.

Although many Christian individuals still hold a major influence in society (especially in the United States), there are still tell-tale signs that Christianity, and those who are adherents of it, is leaving a bad taste in the mouths of the secular Left more and more.

All things considered, this may be due to the Left, be they liberal Christians or secular, being just as biased against the same religious individuals that they claim are at the core of all of the backwards-thinking and bigotry in our country.

The Left claims that they stand for tolerance, but in actuality, they are as intolerant as they claim the opposition to be.

The Left desires to “educate” innocent (or ignorant) younger minds to the truth as they see it: you cannot be a Christian (a conservative one, that is) and be a public servant at the same time. Recently, the National Review’s David French touched on this point, while looking at the success of Wisconsin’s Judge Brian Hagedorn in Wisconsin’s recent Supreme Court race.

Apparently, while many turned on Hagedorn for his Bible-based Christian ways (including founding a Christian school that believed only in marriage between a man and a woman), the Wisconsin citizens would support him through it all. As French pointed out in his piece, Wisconsin is obviously not in the Bible Belt. So, its citizens had to look at the man themselves and vote for what they believed was right, including his faith and acts that he committed due to his faith.

As Bob Dylan once sang, “the times are a-changin’.” But thank God that we still live in a time when people can see that Christianity is not about hatred and putting gay people or abortion supporters to the gallows.

Ultimately, if a candidate is a Christian, then the question for voters, on the Left and the Right, should be: “Does this candidate have a history of (or come across as having a history of) being fair to individuals, maybe even especially to people who do not adhere to the same religious worldview?”

As far as the issue concerning the compatibility between a person with a pious background and values based off of said background desiring to work in public service, there should be no apprehension towards voting for people of this ilk.

Religious belief is completely reconcilable with public service. For if the religious candidate remembers that he/she will be called to represent (or govern) a diverse people group with no overwhelming bias and work unto that end, then there should be no reason to believe that they will serve to create some extreme legislation that will be against the freedoms of others.

With this in mind, if this person is voted into office, but they are viewed as not being the best politician for the job, then work with the grassroots to get them out of office with the vote.

Jerome Danner, a member of the Project 21 national advisory council, is a graduate of the University of West Georgia with a degree in anthropology. He currently works as a middle school teacher. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook for more of his thoughts and commentary. This was originally published by Newsmax.

New Visions Commentaries reflect the views of their author, and not necessarily those of Project 21, other Project 21 members, or the National Center for Public Policy Research, its board or staff.