MEADOR: God doesn't have political affiliation

There's a wonderful little quote from Anne Lamott that both political parties should plaster over every inch of their respective national headquarters. The quote goes like this:

"You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do."

I'm hoping if people see it enough, it might sink in some day.

There's no shortage of politicians making god in their own partisan image these days, and it's proving to be every bit as tiresome and wrong-headed as it was in previous campaigns.

In the 2008 presidential campaign, the controversy about god's political affiliation began with the widely panned rants of Barack Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and his radical liberation theology. Now thanks to Wasilla Assembly of God Church, we have the Republican counterpart to Wright in the form of Pastor Ed Kalnin.

Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin attended the church from her teen years until her nomination as governor several years ago, when she moved from Wasilla. In 2004, Kalnin told congregants that if they voted for John Kerry, "I would question your salvation." Several days later Kalnin apologized, saying the whole thing was a misunderstood joke.

Hilarious.

As someone who has been the victim of profound spiritual abuse, I assure you, there's nothing funny about it. And I would hope that a pastor would demonstrate some rudimentary level of sensitivity in those areas.

That's not where it ends, either. Just days before accepting the vice presidential nomination, Palin's new church in Juneau was visited by a member of the group Jews for Jesus, who said the current terrorist attacks on Israel are "God's judgment" on Jews who do not accept Jesus as Messiah.

This isn't meant to be an attack exclusively against Palin or her former pastor but rather against the entire mindset, found especially among Christians of both liberal and conservative persuasions, that creates leaders like Wright or Kalnin.

Their truly repugnant commonality is this insistence among both Republicans and Democrats to attempt to make god into one of their loyal partisan elite.

It leaves me wondering if we'll ever learn that god doesn't have a political affiliation. Call me what you want, but I think it's more complicated than all that. God doesn't really fit into either of our political parties that well.

The Democrats would have us embrace an eloquent, but flawed, human being as the Messiah and savior of the nation, anointing him in grandiose language generally reserved only for the divine, or at the very least someone who's accomplished a good deal more than Sen. Obama.

But the Republicans are no better - they would have us bow at an altar draped with the Star Spangled Banner. They even went so far as to adopt the profoundly anti-Christian motto "country first" at their national convention, which is a rather ironic twist given most of the people present were probably Christian and should therefore know that their first loyalty is to god, not any nation-state.

Both options strike me as little more than baptizing god in the pet language of the party in an attempt to score the ultimate endorsement.

Apparently, we're incapable of learning from either the historical problems with this sort of deity-making or the simple common-sense problems with it.

Historically speaking, you'd be hard-pressed to find a major political dispute that doesn't involve people invoking the name of god as one of their chief allies. Whether it's the popes of the Middle Ages, the Christian missionaries in 19th century Africa or modern-day fundamentalist Muslims, making god in your own image to validate political interests has a bad track record.

And from a purely common-sense point of view, if our arguments are so weak that we have to appeal to the unseen to validate them, doesn't that say more about our beliefs than those of our opponent? If our beliefs are right, shouldn't they actually work in the real world on a day-to-day basis? And assuming they do, isn't that a better argument for their validity?

But to be fair, I should lay all my cards on the table. I'm not opposed to the idea of religious faith informing political opinions. To hold such a view would be silly because it would be asking people to compartmentalize different areas of life, cutting off what happens on Sunday morning from the rest of the week, which obviously isn't a viable option.

Your politics will inescapably be formed by your faith.

Further, if that influence leads you to think that one party's platform best comports with your belief about the divine, then join that party. You'd be a dishonest fool not to.

But the moment you begin to identify god with that party, it is no longer your faith influencing your politics, but, as Lamott warns us, the exact opposite. Your faith has become captive to your politics so that your faith and the given party's platform are not discernibly different.

And when that happens, Christians have made the very mistake that the French philosopher Voltaire described 300 years ago when he said, "If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated."

Jake Meador is a junior English and history major. Reach him at jakemeador@dailynebraskan.com