I’m game.

First, an apology: I actually ran into Joe Hainthaler at the company picnic over the weekend, but just sort of mumbled a few things en route from one place to another. Basically, I was delivering food for two hungry kids; and Joe, as I saw you shepherding one around yourself, I figure you’d understand what that’s all about. We’ll share a Pepsi - or something stronger - and argue about politics in person some other day.

In any event, in a post this afternoon Joe details why his presidential candidate needs to have faith in God to win his vote:

The reason I want a God-believing candidate for executive office goes back to the belief at the core of this nation’s founding: “That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights …”

I would submit that this belief is key to the humility I’d like to see in elected officials, particularly presidents and governors, because they wield much of the life-and-death power of the state.

And I would suggest that a belief in God is the only way to believe in equality of human beings.

I’ll buy this, to an extent. And I’d also agree that this is one reason that secular officials have wanted to perpetuate religious faith down through the centuries.

Faith does or at least can act as a brake on the worst of human nature. Faith acts as a counter to human nature, requiring its adherents to act in a manner that is difficult. Faith counsels charity; faith counsels fidelity, an important factor in cohesive socieites. At its best, faith involves selflessness; but self-sacrifice is difficult. Turning the other cheek, for instance, is extrordinarily difficult.

But in that, we see why I’m always, always hesistant of any politician’s professions of faith.

Because I think faith, or talk of faith, can be designed to manipulate. A candidate might claim a degree of religiousity specifically to mollify a constituency; might claim a deep and abiding faith where there is none, just to win votes.

Christians might say they’d never fall for such a thing; many like to think they know what’s in another’s heart - that while any candidate can talk the talk, there’s a language, touchstones, an experience only true Christians know. Maybe. The trouble comes, I think, in believing that if a candidate has experienced this, does share the same type of abiding faith, then he or she can necessarily be counted on to do the “right” thing.

That doesn’t always follow.

The current president may be a Bible-believing Christian. But he’s also the president who ordered the “pre-emptive” invasion of Iraq, an invasion which has resulted in tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Iraqi deaths.

So how does this comport with his “Christian values?”

If, as noted here, a great power cannot “turn the other cheek” for strategic purposes, what purpose is it then to elect a man who claims to adhere to those Christian ideals when - as leader of the free world - he cannot abide by them?

Religious faith has been an extraordinarily important factor in the history of this country. Without faith, there would have been no abolitionism; without faith, the Progressive movement of the early 1900s - child labor laws and other legislation pushed through to “better” the lives of the individual - might not have gained the ground it did. And I do agree, as Joe and his quote from Reagan indicate, that religious faith often involves a humility that serves democracy, and mankind, well.

But living here in Lancaster County for as many years, I also realize that humility doesn’t always accompany Christianity; that in fact there’s an arrogance to a certain kind of faith, one that offers plenty of criticism but can accept none; one focused almost entirely on the specks in others’ eyes. Religion in this country, after all, also gave us prohibitionism and the sort of moral haughtiness that went with it.

And so it’s always a delicate balancing act. A candidate’s profession of faith may tell us a great deal about the candidate. Often, I think it tells us more about ourselves.