Sal Peralta: Hatfield right on danger of mixing politics with religion

In 1973, U.S. Sen. Mark Hatfield, an evangelical Christian from Dallas, Oregon, delivered a National Prayer Breakfast speech that began this way:

“My brothers and sisters: As we gather at this prayer breakfast, let us beware of the real danger of misplaced allegiance, if not outright idolatry, to the extent we fail to distinguish between the god of an American civil religion and the God who reveals Himself in the Holy Scriptures and in Jesus Christ.

“If we as leaders appeal to the god of civil religion, our faith is in a small and exclusive deity, a loyal spiritual advisor to power and prestige, a defender of only the American nation, the object of a national folk religion devoid of moral content. But if we pray to the biblical God of justice and righteousness, we fall under God’s judgment for calling upon His name, but failing to obey His commands.

“Our Lord Jesus Christ confronts false petitioners who disobey the word of God: ‘Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord’ and do not the things I say?’ (Luke 6:46).

“God tells us that acceptable worship and obedience are expressed by specific acts of love and justice: ‘Is not this what I require of you … to loose the fetters of injustice … to snap every yoke and set free those who have been crushed? Is it not sharing your food with the hungry, taking the homeless poor into your house, clothing the naked when you meet them, and never evading a duty to your kinfolk?’ (Isaiah 58:6-7).”

I have been thinking about that speech a lot lately. It was delivered as a warning to leaders of the time as they were preparing to embark on a 50-year project spending billions of dollars to transform Christianity from a religion centered in Jesus’ gospel into the kind of nationalist folk religion Hatfield warned about. This Christian nationalist movement features an ideology catering to people’s biases by promoting culturally divisive issues.

It scapegoats immigrants and attacks the rights of minorities, all to protect unjust structures of power and privilege allowing extreme wealth to stand next to extreme poverty at levels unseen in my lifetime. It has contributed to the destruction of America’s middle class.

This project has made America vulnerable to the propaganda and outside influence of our global adversaries in a myriad of ways.

Viewers of the recent Paris Olympics may be familiar with the controversy involving two boxers who were born and raised female, have always competed as such, and each went on to win gold medals in their weight classes. They were subjected to a torrent of hate because an official from the IBA, a Russian athletic body banned by the IOC for a long record of corruption, spread claims that they were gender frauds, and that one of them, Imane Khelif, was actually a trans person displaying male hormones.

No evidence was provided for these claims, which emanated from Russia and quickly spread worldwide through the internet. What’s more, Khelif, a Muslim, is from Algeria, a country where trans rights go unrecognized, making it especially dangerous to be viewed as trans.

But because these gender claims fit a social, political and religious narrative for them, many Americans, including Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance, spread them for political gain. Giving them such unwarranted traction helped put Khelif’s life at risk.

For her part, Khelif offers a message that followers of any religion, or even none at all, should be able to relate to:

“I send a message to all the people of the world to uphold the Olympic principles and the Olympic Charter, to refrain from bullying all athletes, because this has effects, massive effects. It can destroy people, it can kill people’s thoughts, spirit and mind. It can divide people. And because of that, I ask them to refrain from bullying.”

People should think long and hard before allowing people to use religion for a political purpose, especially when that purpose is to manipulate, bully, divide or oppress. And religion is where transgender opposition is rooted.

As Sen. Hatfield noted:

“We sit here today, as the wealthy and the powerful. But let us not forget that those who follow Christ will more often find themselves not with comfortable majorities, but with miserable minorities.

“Today, our prayers must begin with repentance. Individually, we must seek forgiveness for the exile of love from our hearts. And corporately as a people, we must turn in repentance from the sin that scarred our national soul.”

He concluded with this biblical admonition: “If my people … shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, … then I will forgive their sins, and will heal their land.”

About the writer: Sal Peralta serves as secretary of the Independent Party of Oregon. He also holds a city council seat in McMinnville, where he has long made his home.