John Kerry on Faith and Politics

John Kerry gave an interesting speech at Pepperdine University this week on the intersection of faith and politics. You can read the speech here or watch it here. He raised a number of important questions that are worth sharing. The Washington Post said of the speech that Kerry described “his religious life in greater candor and detail than ever before.” Much of his discussion revolved around some aspect of international relations, particularly world poverty, environmentalism, and just and unjust wars. Here is an excerpt from his speech:

So it is important for me to share with you how we might move from the example of Jesus as a servant into addressing the pressing needs of our time. The Catholic Bishops in their 2004 election guide provided great spiritual wisdom and guidance as they set forth a series of questions about expectations in public life.

I think they are questions any Christian needs to wrestle with:

1. After September 11, how can we build not only a safer world, but a better world — more just, more secure, more peaceful, more respectful of human life and dignity?

2. How will we protect the weakest in our midst — innocent unborn children? How will our nation resist what Pope John Paul II calls a “culture of death”? How can we keep our nation from turning to violence to solve some of its most difficult problems — abortion to deal with difficult pregnancies; the death penalty to combat crime; euthanasia and assisted suicide to deal with the burdens of age, illness, and disability; and war to address international disputes?

3. How will we address the tragic fact that more than 30,000 children die every day as a result of hunger, international debt, and lack of development around the world, as well as the fact that the younger you are, the more likely you are to be poor here in the richest nation on earth?

4. How can our nation help parents raise their children with respect for life, sound moral values, a sense of hope, and an ethic of stewardship and responsibility? How can our society defend the central institution of marriage and better support families in their moral roles and responsibilities, offering them real choices and financial resources to obtain quality education and decent housing?

5. How will we address the growing number of families and individuals without affordable and accessible health care? How can health care better protect human life and respect human dignity?

6. How will our society combat continuing prejudice, overcome hostility toward immigrants and refugees, and heal the wounds of racism, religious bigotry, and other forms of discrimination?

7. How will our nation pursue the values of justice and peace in a world where injustice is common, desperate poverty widespread, and peace is too often overwhelmed by violence?

8. What are the responsibilities and limitations of families, community organizations, markets, and government? How can these elements of society work together to overcome poverty, pursue the common good, care for creations, and overcome injustice?

9. When should our nation use, or avoid the use of, military force — for what purpose, under what authority, and at what human cost?

10. How can we join with other nations to lead the world to greater respect for human life and dignity, religious freedom and democracy, economic justice and care for God’s creation?

I believe these questions can be gathered around four issues where people of faith from every background can work together with other people of good will towards public policies that contribute to the common good.

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The first and perhaps most obvious common challenge is to take practical steps to address global issues of poverty, disease, and despair.

The cares of the poor and the troubled should be the focus of all our work.

Today extreme poverty shackles one sixth of the globe’s population, one-fifth lack access to safe drinking water. Here in America twenty one percent of our children live in poverty. Eleven million under 21 don’t have health insurance. Thirty thousand children worldwide perish each day because of hunger and disease attributable to poverty….

A second common challenge arises from the deep concern virtually all people of faith are enjoined to maintain toward sustaining and protecting God’s first creation. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians 10:20 says, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything on it.” The Prophet Isaiah (66:2) says, “has not my hand made all these things, and so they came into being?” These days we face problems on a biblical scale — floods, storms, plagues, the destruction of entire cities. And it is my belief that confronting manmade climate change is, in the long run, one of the greatest challenges we face….

The fourth and final example of where people of faith should accept a common challenge is perhaps the most difficult and essential of all: rekindling a faith-based debate on the issues of war and peace. All our different faiths, whatever their philosophical differences, have a universal sense of values, ethics, and moral truths that honor and respect the dignity of all human beings. They all agree on a form of the Golden Rule and the Supreme importance of charity and compassion. We are more than just Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims or atheists: we are human beings. We are more than the sum of our differences — we share a moral obligation to treat one another with dignity and respect — and the rest is commentary. Nowhere does this obligation arise more unavoidably than in when and how to resort to war.

Christians have long struggled to balance the legitimate need for self-defense with our highest ideals of justice and personal morality. Saint Augustine laid the foundation for a compelling philosophical tradition considering how and when Christians should fight. Augustine felt that wars of choice are generally unjust wars, that war — the organized killing of human beings, of fathers, brothers, friends — should always be a last resort, that war must always have a just cause, that those waging war need the right authority to do so, that a military response must be proportionate to the provocation, that a war must have a reasonable chance of achieving its goal and that war must discriminate between civilians and combatants. In developing the doctrine of Just War, Augustine and his many successors viewed self-restraint in warfare as a religious obligation, not as a pious hope contingent on convincing one’s adversaries to behave likewise.

Throughout the centuries there have been Christian political leaders who argued otherwise; who contended that observing Just War principles was weak, naïve, or even cowardly. It’s in Americas’ interests to maintain our unquestionable moral authority — and we risk losing it when leaders make excuses for the abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo or when an Administration lobbies for torture….

I lay out these four great challenges — fighting poverty and disease, taking care of the earth, reducing abortions, and fighting only just wars — as godly tasks on which we can transcend the culture wars and reach common ground.

And for all the anger and fear so often expressed about the intersection of politics and religion, I believe that a vision of public service based upon serving rather than being served is ultimately a vision of hope and not despair.

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