In today's run for president, we are seeing a variety of orthodox Christians and subsets of the Christian Faith that many consider heretical, if not cultish (like Mormonism), that have called forth personal statements on everything from evolution to abortion. When it comes to the religious beliefs of our would-be presidents, we are a little squeamish about probing too aggressively, writes Bill Keller of the New York Times. Yet, as much as atheists might not like it, religious beliefs do play a focal point, and continue to do so, especially when it comes to hot button issues like gay marriage, abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment and how we treat the poorest amongst us.

President Obama has had to deal constantly throughout his presidency with accusations that he is a closet Muslim or all the way up to liberal Protestant, even though he has publicly stated a personal faith in Jesus Christ. Early on in his candidacy, candidate Obama was pressed to distance himself from his pastor who carried racial bitterness to extremes.

Of the present range of candidates, Keller writes, "We have an unusually large number of candidates, including putative front-runners, who belong to churches that are mysterious or suspect to many Americans. Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman are Mormons, a faith that many conservative Christians have been taught is a 'cult' and that many others think is just weird. (Huntsman says he is not 'overly religious.') Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann are both affiliated with fervid subsets of evangelical Christianity - and Rick Santorum comes out of the most conservative wing of Catholicism - which has raised concerns about their respect for the separation of church and state, not to mention the separation of fact and fiction.

"Michele Bachmann was asked during the Iowa G.O.P. debate what she meant when she said the Bible obliged her to 'be submissive' to her husband. There was an audible wave of boos - for the question, not the answer. There is a sense, encouraged by the candidates, that what goes on between a candidate and his or her God is a sensitive, even privileged domain, except when it is useful for mobilizing the religious base and prying open their wallets," writes Keller. She has taken it on the chin for her husband's views on reparative therapy for gays.

So do the private religious beliefs of candidates override the Constitution of the US that they are sworn to uphold? Writes Keller, "I care a lot if a candidate is going to be a Trojan horse for a sect that believes it has divine instructions on how we should be governed. I do want to know if a candidate places fealty to the Bible, the Book of Mormon (the text, not the Broadway musical) or some other authority higher than the Constitution and laws of this country."

But a politician's private views cannot be totally divorced from the public square. Take the issue of abortion. A Catholic or evangelical politician must take his church's teachings to heart if he is to be faithful to the teachings and preachments of his church and Scripture. He/she will have fixed views on abortion clinics and will write laws to protect the rights of the unborn. A secular politician with no or modestly held religious views will not care and believe in the rights of the mother to choose. Each will interpret the Constitution as their personal views infringe on what each believes to be the common good. A number of Roman Catholic politicians like New York Governor Mario Cuomo support gay marriage and finds himself at odds with Catholic teaching on that subject. There have been threats to withhold Holy Communion from politicians who disobey church teaching on abortion and gay marriage.

Michele Bachmann's opinions and views are viewed by liberal pundits as a serious threat to mainstream American views and she has drawn fire from heavyweight newspapers like the NY Times and The New Yorker. But have they treated her fairly? She has been deeply influenced by the writings of Francis A. Schaeffer (1912-84), an evangelical minister, theologian, and philosopher. Schaeffer, along with the contemporary writer Nancy Pearcey and others, are "dominionists." That is, they believe that "Christians alone are Biblically mandated to occupy secular institutions until Christ returns." Worse yet, Schaeffer, in A Christian Manifesto (1981), supposedly "argued for the violent overthrow of the government if Roe vs. Wade wasn't reversed." Lizza also writes of the influence of the prolific author Rousas John Rushdoony (1916-2001), who advocated "a pure Christian theocracy in which Old Testament law...would be instituted." Bachmann is allegedly thick as thieves with all these "exotic" subversives-and should be exposed as such.

But is this a fair evaluation of her views?

Douglas Groothuis a philosopher, teacher, writer, and preacher argues that Rushdoony argued for a position he called reconstructionism (not theocracy), which would have made biblical law the civil law of the land. However, neither Rushdoony nor his followers desired to impose this system through violence or illegal activity, but rather see it come to fruition through a long-term change of minds and institutions.

"Second, Rushdoony's devotees make up but an infinitesimal fraction of Christian conservatives. The vast majority of those who have been influenced by certain aspects of Rushdoony's writings emphatically reject his understanding of biblical law.

"Third, the key Christian influences on Bachmann are not Rushdoony and his followers, but Francis Schaeffer and Nancy Pearcey. Schaeffer referred to Rushdoony's views on mandating biblical law as "insanity," and never sanctioned any form of theocracy."

Bachmann's views might be considered a little crazy by mainstream Republicans, but one cannot fault her for saying that her worldview is seriously formed by the Bible. That she believes in "biblical inerrancy" does not make her a wacko, as serious theologians down through the ages have held that view. One of my own professors, the late Dr. Kenneth Kantzer, a disciple of Karl Barth, vigorously upheld biblical inerrancy. Barth considered Kantzer to be the smartest student he ever had. That Bachmann opposes abortion and believes with her husband in reparative therapy for homosexuals and has called homosexuality an "abomination" is in line with Scripture, and while she has been scorned for her views by the liberal media, that is hardly going against the Constitution. No one is pushing gays back in the closet, equally gays have no right accusing people who oppose their behavior of being homophobic.

Reports in The Texas Observer and The Texas Monthly reveal that Rick Perry has a large following of Dominionist supporters, including a number of evangelists to whom Perry gave leading roles in his huge public prayer service, called the Response, early this month.

That Perry and Bachmann ally themselves with "Dominionist" types might, in the end, have more to do with political alliances than full scale acceptance of their views. After all, John Boehner has had to move to the right to appease his Tea Party caucus. This is part of what politics is all about, whether we like it or not. There are strings attached all over the place.

John Hagee, the Texas evangelist who described Catholicism as a "godless theology of hate" and declared that the Holocaust was part of God's plan to drive the Jews to Palestine has reportedly decided to bestow his blessing on Perry's campaign. In the 2008 campaign, John McCain disavowed Hagee's endorsement. What will Perry do now? Politics makes strange bedfellows. Indeed.

"This year's Republican primary season offers us an important opportunity to confront our scruples about the privacy of faith in public life - and to get over them," writes Keller.

"I honestly don't care if Mitt Romney wears Mormon undergarments beneath his Gap skinny jeans, or if he believes that the stories of ancient American prophets were engraved on gold tablets and buried in upstate New York, or that Mormonism's founding prophet practiced polygamy (which was disavowed by the church in 1890). Every faith has its baggage, and every faith holds beliefs that will seem bizarre to outsiders. I grew up believing that a priest could turn a bread wafer into the actual flesh of Christ," said Keller.

One can read from the last statement Keller's own anti-Catholic bias. Even he cannot keep his own religious opinion out of the political discussion. THE WEEK, a growing weekly news magazine, recently headlined a front page story A matter of faith with a picture of Perry reading a Bible and Bachmann in an attitude of prayer. The key paragraph to this story is that, "we can't run the risk of our next president being a theocrat who puts the Bible ahead of the Constitution."

The notion that religious doctrine might exclude other citizens from their rights and protection under the Constitution is absurd. There are few Christians who would like to see the Constitution replaced by a Bible. On the other hand, it is clear that the 10 Commandments have formed the moral basis of most Americans and while there would be no harm in hammering them home to Christians in America more often, it is a far cry from believing that this is the beginning of a theocracy by either Perry or Bachmann.

What I believe is happening in America is that two Americas are emerging with very different ideologies.

The rise of one described as "extreme right" is at its depth a cry for an America that is passing. It is a deep cry for cultural values that have been tied together by deeply held religious (mostly Christian) beliefs. (Orthodox Muslims hate the sexualization of American culture as much as orthodox Christians. The same might be said for practicing orthodox Jews.) Those beliefs include the Protestant work ethic, marriage between a man and a woman, homosexual behavior as aberrant, gay marriage as violating 2,000 years of human history, abortion as morally wrong, divorce as an exception and not the norm and a willingness to work at anything to keep body and soul together.

There is a very deep fear that these values are being lost by an increasing advance of the nanny state, a gimme attitude of "you owe me" culture and a media in TV, films etc. that is rapidly strangling the basic Judeo-Christian values that has held this nation together. Objective truth has been replaced by relativistic morals and ethics to the detriment of the nation.

Coupled with this is the double fear that God might be punishing America with its inability to win wars, the rise of gay marriage, coupled with violent acts of nature that some politicians like Bachmann see as the "wrath of God". As silly as this might seem to intellectual liberals and secular scientists, one cannot simply brush them off as loonies who believe that there is a transcendent force in the universe that loves and cares, but also judges and punishes. The wrath of God is real, but His wrath might also be on a nation that no longer cares for its poorest and where the gap between rich and poor has grown quantifiably over the last half century. The danger of the Right's righteousness is that it can be very narrow and truncated. To rip abortion without thinking about the women who bring children into the world and how they will be looked after with kids to raise in husbandless situations is quite simply spiritual blindness.

It should be noted that many pregnancy care centers and "right-to-life" groups are intentionally doing better at supporting mothers and babies, not just through the pregnancy, but through early childhood. Providing education opportunities for moms, childcare for kids, material provision for families. Some churches are actively involved in supporting Genesis Pregnancy Care Centers "Right -to-life" groups (such as NOEL) have expanded their focus to include the full span of life issues, from abortion to euthanasia.

On the other hand the Right is justifiably outraged because their treasured values are under assault. However it can be a very selective outrage and a very selective morality. It is not just about jobs and the economy which liberals rightly carp about, it is the vast sea of social issues which have spiritual and eternal implications that trouble them. Their fervently held beliefs are under assault and to further the pain they are being mocked for them. That is hard to swallow. It is also why someone like Huntsman is having a hard time gaining traction from within the Republican Party. He is just too moderate, perhaps even too sane and does not want to go overboard on issues like evolution, social security and Medicare. He is also a (moderate) Mormon which makes him suspect.

The tragedy of the Left is that they have abandoned a Moral Order that has knit this country together. They commendably want to be concerned about the environment, jobs, the economy, Medicare, Social Security and helping the defenseless, but they are trying to do it without a moral base. The Right has the moral base which the Left need and which the Left scorns and rejects. (Is it any wonder then that NY Times writers Nicholas Kristof and David Brooks scoff at evangelicals like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell but think so highly of another evangelical John Stott). Had America's evangelicals adopted him as their theological mascot we might have a different nation today - an intelligent evangelical spiritually sound and socially concerned nation. Now we have what the media portray as fundamentalist loonies who want to run the country and a deeply flawed president out of touch with the values of most Americans. Many view Obama flirting with Islam in a way that undercuts their Christian values.

When the Left promotes Gay marriage, abortion, a laissez faire work ethic, the righteous Right go ballistic and whatever middle ground is trying to be forged is lost. The polarization only increases and as a result we have become a two nation, nation. Proposition 8, DOMA, etc, electrify the citizenry. Sides are taken and the polarization deepens.

Take Proposition 8 for example. Conservative Roman Catholics, Mormons and Evangelicals were all on the same side. Liberals, Episcopalians, pansexualists of one sort or another were on the other side. There was no middle ground nor should there be. Marriage has always been defined as a man and woman held together in the sacred bonds of matrimony.

But talk to those same Catholics and evangelicals on say Medicare, Social Security, Food Stamps and concern for the poor and you might find that they have a lot in common with those same liberals.

This is the tragedy of America today. How it is going to be resolved no one seems to know. The central issue now is jobs, jobs jobs but the waters are made murky by a variety of social issues that won't go away or be swept under the rug. President Obama is seen as being on the wrong side of fundamental theological and spiritual issues that millions of Americans hold dear. The Right smell blood in the water. As a result, he might be a one-term president.

It is not without its significance that one can see a microcosm of this in the Episcopal Church. TEC leaders have abandoned almost everything transcendent about the faith. Katharine Jefferts Schori is, to all intents a purpose a Deist who says the Creed. She has all but reduced the historic gospel to social justice, MDGs, concern for the poor. She and her followers have completely lost the plot and the gospel that goes with it.

Survey after survey reveals that the vast majority of Episcopalians are basically conservative in their values and eschew homosexuality either for their children or their churches. When confronted by pushy pansexualists they say 'not in my church, just leave us alone to worship as we have always done. You on the left and right coasts can talk about these things they are no concern of ours.' Episcopal Church elites and pansexualists who have grabbed the levers of ecclesiastical power and twisted the church into a homosexual pretzel now run the show. The truth is that Gene Robinson's consecration in 2003 pushed more than 100,000 Episcopalians right over the edge and out the red doors. They are still dribbling out the doors and a war over properties is well underway which is only further denuding the church of vitally needed funds to help the poor and promote mission. Nobody seems to notice the obvious.

Orthodox Anglicans want the faith retained but they also intend to maintain a healthy concern for the poor, missions, Islamic persecution of Christians and much more. The left wants one without the other. Conservative Anglicans want to hold the two in tension. Faith without works is dead says James. Works without Faith is just as dead. It is faith with works that wins.

In the political realm, we cannot expect candidates to put their faith in their hip pocket. Candidates should be allowed to uphold the inerrancy of Scripture, reparative therapy for gays, acknowledge the advances of science and verifiable history while showing concern for the poor, the unemployed and under-employed, 46 million Americans who need food stamps without calling them "socialists" for not trying hard enough.

At the same time, religious doctrine should not be used as a club to exclude citizens from their basic rights and protections under the constitution.

Americans are not fools, though their leaders might be. (Many now believe that the entire House and Senate should be replaced, their ratings are around 12%.) Perhaps.

No person should be excluded from public office or the nation's political life, nor their right to participate in the political process because of their deeply held religious principles. The rights and protections of Americans are not guaranteed by any one persons' faith. It is the Constitution we all turn too.

END