Faith and Politics, Where to Start?

As the next year plays out, I'm sure I will end up having lots of political discussions. What an opinionated topic.

It will be interesting to see how many of these political discussions also involve religion. Possibly the two most argued upon subjects in America, and we'll combine them for a year. Yay.

The relation of the two topics is always an interesting one to me. I make my political decisions different than many traditional Evangelical Christians think I should, but also make them differently than many "controversial" teachers on the subject of faith and politics (i.e. Greg Boyd) thinks I should.

But my thoughts jumped forward today as I read the news. On UsaToday's website I found an article in which the discussion of the nation's Catholic Bishops was concluded with their statements on how people should vote during the elections.

They didn't go as far to endorse a specific candidate or party, but made many other bold statements, three of which I'll list below:

The article starts with a statement that aims to "remind" Catholic "voters that their choices in the 2008 elections 'also may affect' their salvation."

WOW.

It moves on saying "life issues such as abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, artificial contraception and racism are 'evils' that can never be supported."

While I agree that evils shouldn't ever be supported, I feel this has little to do with the Presidential elections as I evaluate them.

The last statement claims that "there's also room for a prudential voter, seeing no candidate in line with Catholic teachings, to weigh other critical moral issues such as poverty, peace, or social justice."

Really? We should only way issues like poverty, peace and social justice if we find no candidate in line with the issues on abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, artificial contraception and racism?

I struggle to find any rhyme or reason to their ordering of these topics.

I look forward to many discussions on the topics in the future.