The Bible in American Law and Politics. John R. Vile

The Bible in American Law and Politics

The Bible in American Law and Politics - John R. Vile

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2006, 51).

      See also Eagle as American Symbol; Graham, Billy; Jesus; Presidential Inaugural Bible Verses

       For Reference and Further Reading

      Davis. Derek H. 2006. “President George Bush: America’s Pastor in Troubled Times?” Society of Biblical Literature. May. https://www.sbl-site.org/publications/article.aspx?ArticleId=153.

      Pete Buttigieg (b. 1982), the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who sought the Democratic nomination for president in 2020, is an openly gay married man and an Episcopalian. He grew up in South Bend, which is the home of Notre Dame University, where his parents were professors, and he attended St. Joseph High School (Burke 2019). He is a graduate of Harvard University, where he studied under Sacvan Bercovitch, who specialized in Puritanism, and subsequently attended Pembroke College on a Rhodes Scholarship where he traces his own spiritual awakening.

      In part because he comes from the same state as Vice President Mike Pence, who has much more conservative political and religious views, the two have sometimes been at political loggerheads. At one point Buttigieg said that if Pence had a problem with him, “your problem is not with me—your quarrel, sir, is with my creator” (Cole 2019).

      Buttigieg has identified two favorite Bible verses. The first is Matthew 25:40, which says, “Whatever you did for one of the least of these . . . you did for me.” The second is Matthew 6:5, which says, “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others” (Powers 2019).

      Asked about the tension between being gay and identifying as a Christian, Buttigieg observed, “It can be challenging to be a person of faith who’s also part of the LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual, Queer) community and yet, to me, the core of faith is regard for one another. And part of God’s love is 79experienced, according to my faith tradition, is in the way that we support one another and, in particular, support the least among us” (quoted in Rocha 2019). Further explaining his view of Scripture, Buttigieg observed,

      When I think about where most of Scripture points me, it is toward defending the poor, and the immigrant, and the stranger, and the prisoner, and the outcast, and those who are left behind by the way society works. And what we have now is this exaltation of wealth and power, almost for its own sake, that in my reading of Scripture couldn’t be more contrary to the message of Christianity. So I think it’s really important to carry a message (to the public), knitting together a lot of groups that have already been on this path for some time, but giving them more visibility in the public sphere. (Powers 2019)

      In the second debate among Democratic contenders for president in 2019, Buttigieg quoted Proverbs 14:31 when he said, “The minimum wage is just too low. And so-called conservative Christian senators right now in the Senate are blocking a bill to raise the minimum wage when Scripture says that, ‘Whoever oppresses the poor taunts their maker’” (Parke, 2019).

      Although Peter Wehner has expressed concern that Buttigieg’s remark that “Christian faith is going to point you in a progressive direction” subordinated Scripture to political ideology, Buttigieg has supported separation of church and state. He has further stated that “I get that one of the things about Scripture is different people see different things in it. But, at the very least we should be able to establish that God does not have a political party” (Rocha 2019). Evangelist Franklin Graham, who tweeted, “As a Christian, I believe the Bible which defines homosexuality as a sin, something to be repentant of, not something to be flaunted, praised or politicized,” responded that Buttigieg was right in believing that “God doesn’t have a political party. But God does have commandments laws & standards He gives us to live by” (Gomez 2019).

      In May 2019, Buttigieg and his husband visited Jimmy Carter’s Sunday school class where Carter asked him to read the day’s Scripture (Reeves 2019). In an interview on the Today Show on May 7, 2019, Buttigieg suggested that if God were to have a political affiliation, he did not think it would “be the one that sent the current president into the White House” (Mercia 2019).

      See also Carter, Jimmy; Pence, Mike; Same-Sex Marriage

       For Reference and Further Reading

      Douthat, Ross. 2019. “The Abortion Mysticism of Pete Buttigieg.” New York Times. September 17.

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