It has become common for politicians to cite God in promoting their programs and views. Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has recently joined this growing list by invoking God’s name in promoting a new Illinois health care program. This proposal is a tax-increase-for-health-insurance plan that the governor promoted last week as something “God intended” for the people of this great state since God does not want people without health insurance. He even says his new tax increase is a “moral imperative.” That sounds pretty important to me.
Al Gore, in accepting his Oscar at the Academy Awards ceremony two weeks ago, said that his “inconvenient truth” about global warming was the great moral issue of our time. Now the governor of Illinois says that universal health coverage and a significant tax-hike for Illinois’s citizens is a “moral” issue.
Blagojevich, who is an Eastern Orthodox Christian, is not known for expressions of personal faith and has generally not injected God-talk into his political agenda. A spokeswoman for the governor, however, said this reference was not accidental because he does have a “deeply held belief” that everyone should have access to health care based on moral principle. Blagojevich has previously cited the “Golden Rule” and made a few references to biblical history to promote several similar ideas. The facts are pretty clear. More and more politicians on the left do not want to be left out on God-talk.
The problem here is one that we see on the left and the right routinely. Moral imperatives too easily become associated with particular programs for solving social problems. The same governor who invokes God for this tax increase also promotes using tax-payer money for embryonic stem cell research. He has also voted to require pharmacists, who have problems of conscience with birth control, to dispense birth control pills against their conscience or they will not be able to practice pharmacy in this state.
Most agree that Blagojevich is bringing God into his agenda in order to make his very partisan points. It sure seems that way to ordinary observers. Illinois House Republican leader Tom Cross of Oswego, the son of a Methodist minister, baptized one of the governor’s daughters. What is his agenda as a Republican? To promote the expansion of gambling in the state. Former Senate President James “Pate” Philip of Wood Dale was at least honest when he once said, “I’m an Episcopalian, but not a very good one.” Blagojevich is Orthodox for sure but to those Orthodox Christians I know his practice of faith is so inconsistent that they conclude with me that it seems, at least on the surface of things, like he is not a very good one.
Leave it to politicians, based on the numerous polls that routinely say people still retain a place for God in their private thought and public response, to invoke God’s name more and more in the coming days. I think the next time I hear a politician tell me that some program “is a moral imperative” I am going to hold on to my wallet and have some serious doubts.
John H. Armstrong is founder and director of ACT 3, a ministry aimed at “encouraging the church, through its leadership, to pursue doctrinal and ethical reformation and to foster spiritual awakening.”
