Cross posted at Street Prophets, a dKos community.
A few weeks ago, TrueBlueMajority posted an excellent diary at the Big O and SP entitled "Romans 13: the reason fundamentalists still support GWB." In the diary, TBM summarized the view many fundamentalists appear to have of Romans 13 as applied to our nation's politics as follows:
So let me get this Republican fundy thinking straight: we must obey George Bush unquestioningly because he wouldn't be in authority if God didn't want him to be...
According to the
AP, the
Rev. O'Neil Dozier of the
Worldwide Christian Center in Pompano Beach, FL had a revelation from the Lord two years ago.
A reverend who introduced Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist during a breakfast with other pastors Monday said the Lord came to him in a dream two years ago and told him Crist would be the state's next governor.
The Rev. O'Neal Dozier said that before the dream he did not know Crist, nor had Crist made known his plans to run for governor.
"The Lord Jesus spoke to me and he said 'There's something I want you to know,'" said Dozier, pastor of the Worldwide Christian Center in Pompano Beach. "'Charlie Crist will be the next governor of the state of Florida.'"
Charlie Crist, the man that Jesus has apparently endorsed to follow Jeb Bush in Tallahassee, is the state's
current Republican Attorney General. Gov. Jeb Bush appointed Rev. Dozier to sit on the advisory committee which recommends judicial appointments to the Governor, where he no doubt had at least passing contact with the Attorney General.
And, as you recall, in the January 2004, Pat Robertson told his 700 Club viewers that God told him that George W. Bush would be re-elected.
"I think George Bush is going to win in a walk," Robertson said on his 700 Club program on the Virginia Beach-based Christian Broadcasting Network, which he founded. "I really believe I'm hearing from the Lord it's going to be like a blowout election in 2004. It's shaping up that way."
So what of this? Does the Lord really have favorites in a democracy? Do we, as human beings, get to exercise free will in casting our ballots and selecting our leaders, or are our leaders all pre-ordained by the Creator?
I've been pondering this for some time, as part of the broader question of whether God has an opinion one way or another about America's democratic republican form of government. It is certainly not the model that His chosen people used throughout the Old Testament...although God was opposed to the idea, when the people clammored for a king He did send Samuel out to annoint a series of them with oil.
I have to believe that God respects the form of government we've chosen for ourselves. But the principles at the core of our form of government - respect for the individual, a pursuit of one's own happiness, the idea of the people choosing their own destiny - are some of the very ideas which are decried by fundamentalist Christians as being against the will of God. If you believe that God has pre-ordained a plan for your life and already knows all of your actions before you make them, then by extension God already knows how you will vote before you are even born.
It's not much of a leap from there to believing that God already knows - and indeed, preordains - the outcome of every election at every level of our government. So much for free will, control of our own destinies...
For me, the sad thing about a story like this is that it such a blasphemy...such a misuse of the Lord for partisan political activities. Much like the diary we had a couple weeks ago about how immature athletes are when they go on national TV and declare that God wanted their team to win the big game, we see the same in politics.
For, you see, if Jesus Christ wants Charlie Crist to be the next governor of Florida, and by some freak occurence someone other than Charlie Crist moves into the Governor's Mansion in January, then is must be the work of Satan. That's the only way of viewing it in black/white, good/evil kind of world view.
Either way, it is destructive to our form of government and to our nation. And I have to believe that God doesn't ordain that.