How We See It: Faith Debate Washes Over Senate Race

Monday, July 14, 2014

"Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters."

Romans 14:1

What’s The Point?

The faith-based flare-up in the race for U.S. Senate in Arkansas is a sign the campaigns will observe few boundaries in the months left before Election Day.

If a newspaper ad or radio or television commercial urged Arkansas voters to elect to the U.S. Senate the candidate with the strongest Christian faith, who would you vote for?

Tom Cotton or Mark Pryor.

It is, fundamentally, an unfair question. Both men are professed Christians. Because of the extremely personal nature of such things, one must take them at their word. While their belief or lack of Christian faith might be a crucial factor for some voters, even those voters can hardly plug each candidate into a divine truth-o-meter to determine who believes more strongly than the other.

The question of how to deal with questions of faith in elections arises out of the recent Cotton-Pryor "look what he said about me" clash that sounds more like pre-teen children tattling on each other.

Just before Independence Day, Sen. Pryor's campaign called on Rep. Cotton to apologize for comments he made about Pryor's faith during a television interview with KNWA in Fayetteville. Religion was in the news because of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that negated Obamacare's authority to fine an employer who declined to fund an insurance plan that includes four specific kinds of birth control contrary to the private employer's religious beliefs.

Cotton supported the decision, then incorporated his answer into a pre-programmed mantra of his campaign: At every turn, link Pryor to the president.

"Barack Obama and Mark Pryor think that faith is something that only happens at 11 o'clock on Sunday mornings," Cotton said. "That's when we worship, but faith is something we live every single day. And the government shouldn't infringe upon the rights of religious liberty."

Cotton didn't have a prayer of avoiding criticism for that kind of comment. And he deserved it.

Pryor may have genuinely been offended, but it's hard to tell in election years. Whether his were crocodile tears or real offense isn't the issue. He said there's no room in a political campaign for taking shots at the sincerity of an opponent's faith.

Generally, candidates have respected such boundaries. But this is the Pryor-Cotton race. For what seems like an eternity, political observers have positioned this race as crucial to the future direction of the U.S. Senate, if not the nation as a whole.

Faith certainly matters in Arkansas politics. That's why Pryor broadcast an earlier commercial touting his personal reliance on the Bible as a part of who he is. The question of faith has traditionally be left in the realm of self-aggrandizement, with candidates avoiding direct criticism of each other's faith.

It is, of course, all fair game in the political arena, and it's up to voters to decide whose actions earn them a chance to help lead the nation. We simply can't imagine the next U.S. senator from the state of Arkansas will be selected based on this holy war.

We've got four months left and we're already at the "I'm a better Christian than you" stage?

Lord help us.

Commentary on 07/14/2014