Kerry Gets Religion
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
“Scripture teaches us: ‘It is not enough, my brother, to say you have faith, when there are no deeds … Faith without works is dead,'” the candidate said. It was a reference to James, chapter 2.
“My faith teaches me, ‘Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also,'” the candidate said. It was a reference to Matthew 6:21.
That was Senator Kerry yesterday, speaking to the NAACP. He concluded with a reference to the “band of brothers”in his Vietnam War boat. All of them, he said, “prayed to the same God.”
The left criticized Senator Lieberman in the 2000 campaign for his religious words. And the left has criticized President Bush this year for his outreach to churches. So it will be interesting to see whether the left will now criticize Mr. Kerry for his invocations of the Christian Bible in the middle of a campaign for an office for which, under the Constitution, “no religious test shall ever be required.”
The only peep of protest we heard yesterday was out of the executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Rev. Barry Lynn. After we called to inquire, Rev. Lynn rang us back to say he thought the bit at the end about praying to the same God was “odd,” since America is a nation that includes hundreds of religions and tens of millions of nonbelievers. “I doubt that’s an accurate statement,” Rev. Lynn said. As for the biblical references, Rev. Lynn said,”The presidential campaign is not a scripture-quoting contest.” He noted that the NAACP “is not a religious group,” but a secular organization, suggesting Mr. Kerry’s comments went somewhat beyond the appropriate.
If the rest of the usual suspects on the left stay silent about Mr. Kerry’s comments — as we suspect they will — the impression they will leave is that mixing religion and politics is wrong for an Orthodox Jewish Democratic vice presidential candidate and wrong for a born-again Christian Republican president, but not for Catholic Democratic presidential candidates. Or that what they are really objecting to is not the mixing of religion and politics, but the politics or religion of those doing the mixing.
