I had been planning to write about the eulogy President Barack Obama delivered on June 26 on the occasion of the funeral of Rev. Clementa Pinckney, but other more urgent subjects kept cropping up. Pinkney was a Demo­cratic state senator and Afro-American Methodist minister. He was slain in his church with eight others, all black, while conducting a Bible study group.

The members of the group meditating on God’s love were mercilessly cut down by a man’s hate. In their grief, their relatives chose to show the power of God’s love by having the strength to forgive the murderer on the day he was arraigned in court.

Obama’s eulogy was as spiritually deep and moving as it was politically visionary and inspiring. His delivery reached a crescendo when Obama sang the first lines from Amazing Grace, whose lyrics were the motif of the address. Obama, in line with Pauline theology, spoke of grace as something not earned, not merited, not something we deserve, but as a free and benevo­lent favour of God. “We don’t earn grace. We are sinners. We don’t deserve it. But God gives it to us anyway.”

No ordained minister could have put it better.

Obama’s entire speech is the utter negation of the ‘politically correct’ trend leading to the privatisation of Christian faith.

Political correctness tolerates faith as something privately engaging, but publicly irrelevant. Within this perspective, which is so mainstream today even in Malta, faith is something nice if it helps those who have it to get through the day; but woe to those who expect faith to have any influence in the wider public world of business, education, law or politics.

On the contrary, Obama in this heartfelt eulogy, made reference to the political commitment through which “we express God’s grace”.

“To put our faith in action is more than individual salvation, it is about our collective salvation; that to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and house the homeless is not just a call for isolated charity but the imperative of a just society,” he said.

However there are those who believe that politicians should not push their religion in public statements. The interventions of Tony Blair’s most senior advisers to prevent him from making references to religion, for example, are well known.

Former prime minister Blair was prevented by his advisers from ending his address to the nation at the start of hostilities in Iraq with the message: “God bless you.” According to The Times, there was a noisy team revolt at the suggestion. The advisors had their way; I hasten to add fortunately, as I don’t think God wanted anything to do with the military intervention.

­If politicians do not have the courage of their religious convictions will they have the courage for any other convictions which may be unpopular?

Then Alastair Campbell, Blair’s director of strategy and communications, intervened during an interview with the magazine Vanity Fair when the subject turned to Blair’s faith. His statement “We don’t do God... I’m sorry. We don’t do God”, ended the conversation.

An editorial in the London The Daily Telegraph on May 5, 2003, wryly concluded:

“How very strange that Mr Campbell is happy to tell the world about his own past struggles against alcoholism and mental breakdown, but shudders to hear his employer mentioning his religion. Mr Blair should trust more in the Almighty, and less in Alistair Campbell.”

Whether politicians publicly witness or not their religion is secondary to what politicians actually do or let happen under their watch. On both sides of the Atlantic, for example, many Christians feel that Christianity is being squeezed out and marginalised in the public square.

The US bishops, for example, have been critical of decisions taken or supported by the Obama administration which they argued lead to this marginalisation and to the restriction of religious liberty. Obama has scored well in the areas of social justice but his support for abortion and same-sex marriage, as well the contraceptive mandate of Obamacare is a bone of contention with many Catholics.

The former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey and his son Michael wrote about the marginalisation of public faith in the UK in their book We don’t do God (2012). The book was written as a reaction to Lord Justice Laws’ April 2010 approval of the dismissal from work of Gary McFarlane, who refused to counsel a same-sex couple. They lament a nascent secularism in the UK where public servants are suspended for offering to say a prayer to the public, where the defence of Christian marriage is dubbed homophobic, and where the stating of the traditional Christian views on the uniqueness of Christ is considered to be lack of respect for other faiths.

Other countries, ours included, have their own traditions.

Wherever ‘doing God’ is still popular it would be outrageous for politicians to do this not out of conviction but as a result of a politi­cally convenient tactic. It would be scandalous for politicians to pretend to wear their faith on their sleeves when there are only sleeves but no faith. In 2014, Campbell, yes him again, publicly accused David Cameron of faking his Christian faith to deflect attention from a political scandal that was plaguing him at the time.

Within the secularist juridical and cultural environment evolving in the West it is scandalous for politicians to be afraid of publicly witnessing to their faith because such a stance could make them less popular. They have the right and duty to also state how these beliefs affect their political decisions within a pluralistic environment and in respect of the secularity of the modern State. It is demeaning when they are cowed by the politically correct mantras of the so-called liberal/progressive lobbies that try to dominate public discourse though their strong contacts with the media.

If politicians do not have the courage of their religious convictions will they have the courage for any other convictions which may be unpopular?

This applies to Malta as well.

joseph.borg@um.edu.mt

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