Somehow, in the 48 years between the 1960 and 2008 elections, religion has gone from something that needed to be defended to being a part of every candidate’s very being.
Two days after the Connecticut primary on Feb. 7, a three-person panel spoke at Fairfield regarding the growing role that religion plays in the political realm.
Fr. Brian Schofield-Bodt and Fr. Richard Ryscavage, S.J. spoke, along with Connecticut Post editor James Smith, to a room of approximately 70 non-students in the Dolan School of Business dining room.
Schofield-Bodt and Ryscavage focused their speeches on rectifying some of the negative stereotypes surrounding their particular religions, while Smith, the self-described “token heathen,” gave a brief history of the diminishing separation of church and state.
Smith started his speech with Thomas Jefferson’s battle for religious tolerance in Virginia in the years following the Revolutionary War, and followed the separation of religion and government through hearings that allowed for parochial students to ride public buses and permit the 10 Commandments to stay on public property.
While never condemning these practices, he showed how the political landscape has changed since the early days of our nation, explaining how the country switched from being one in which it was necessary for the public good to uphold a separation, to one in which candidates are almost expected to be forthright about their religious beliefs.
Schofield-Bodt and Ryscavage gave different viewpoints than Smith’s argument that it was impossible to completely separate the political from the religious.
Instead, they focused on informing the audience on what beliefs their religions truly uphold, and how that molded political and moral beliefs.
Schofield-Bodt, a Methodist pastor for 30 years, spoke at length on the values and beliefs of the Methodist church and how it can, and should, be translated into political belief.
He ended his speech asking the audience if Methodists even knew what their church actually represents anymore, and left the audience with a saying from the ancient Greeks: “Know thyself.”
Ryscavage stressed that there should be a separation between Catholic priests and bishops, and the political process, but that it was a different story entirely for lay people.
“The Church has no responsibility to enter the political arena,” he said, “unless a political issue becomes a moral issue based on the core reflections of Catholic social teachings.”
He argued that most of the core teachings are not simply theological but can be arrived at through deep reflection by anyone. This is why these are beliefs that Catholics want to share.
Even the audience got in on the conversation, as round table discussions based on the speeches immediately followed. With many of the audience members coming in groups from various churches, the conversation was lively.
“[Faith] is a part of who people are,” Ginny Stevenson of Golden Hill United Methodist Church said. “You end up being a piece of cloth with threads going in different directions, but your faith and experience become hard to separate as you grow.”
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