God isn’t your campaign manager and we aren’t your parishioners

The only thing that irritates me more than pretending that God belongs to a certain political party is when politicians start acting like God is on the payroll of their campaigns. On Monday our friends at Heartland Hollar posted a blog that included a few interesting quotes from Republican candidate for governor, Mark Neumann. It cites a comment in something called Christian Life Resources which last fall asked Neumann if he was running for governor. After referencing a passage in the book of James Neumann said that he will run for governor if "it is the Lord's will." As Heartland Hollar surmises, apparently the Lord has since told Neumann to run because it is pretty clear that he has decided to do so. We already know that Scott Walker is not above citing God's advice in his endless quest for higher office. This could really get confusing if we end up with both Walker and Neumann trying to out-God each other in the primary.

This same week, while Heartland Hollar was referencing Neumann's comments, someone sent me a link to an interesting interview with Neumann on a religious podcast. The most interesting part of the interview was when he was asked about how he decided as a former congressman to support or reject legislation (starting at about minute 10:00). He cited the first four things that he asked himself about the legislation before he decided what action to take on it. Strangely, "is it good for the country?" only came in second on his priority list. I would think that when you are a public official, it would be the first thing that you ask. But not for Neumann. His first priority was to ask if it was "moral" (read: does it fit my personal religious beliefs and world view?). This seems odd because I don't believe that he was elected by the people of his former district to be their priest or a prophet.

Frankly I don't concern myself with the personal religious beliefs of public officials. For me, the only time that it becomes an issue is when they start pretending that God is their campaign manager or when they start imposing their beliefs on everyone else. It seems that people who hold more rigid/legalistic beliefs are also more prone to this behavior. Using public office to promote your own personal religious beliefs ahead of what is good for the country is really an abuse of power in my book. By his own words, it appears to be an abuse that Mark Neumann used in Congress and is probably perfectly willing to use in Madison.