Public piety

By By Craig Ziemba / guest columnist
Sept. 22, 2002
Craig Ziemba is a pilot who lives in Meridian.
It has become popular for candidates for public office to show video of themselves in the act of praying or singing in church. The imagery is calculated to convince Mississippians, most of whom claim to be Christians, that the candidate is a man of faith who will represent them accordingly.
Candidates for public office should be open about their faith. What you believe determines how you act, and voters should know where candidates stand and why.
But bringing a camera crew into a church for the purpose of filming a candidate in an act of worship seems to me to be way, way over the top.
I'm no theologian, but I can't help but wonder if some campaign commercials don't fly in the face of the Lord's commands in Matthew 6:1-6:
Many campaign commercials are cleverly designed to make Christians uncomfortable voting for members of a political party that is pro-abortion, pro-homosexual and anti-family. I have a big problem with that.
The Democratic Party in the South counts on two key voting blocks to win elections: white Dixiecrats, who vote for Democrats just because they always have, and blacks, who believe that the Democratic Party cares more about them than Republicans do (even though Robert Byrd, the ranking Democrat in the Senate, was a Ku Klux Klansman).
Ironically, both groups name the name of Christ and attend church, but when it comes to elections, they continue to support a political party that clearly has espoused the anti-Christian agenda of the left.
Bill Clinton won the presidency twice with the help of quite a few people who claim to be Christians. His first day as president he reinstated federal funding for abortions and ordered the military to drop its ban on homosexuals.
Why didn't it bother Dixiecrats that their tax dollars were used to kill unborn children? Have we become so calloused and bound by political tradition that we are willing to support candidates who intentionally undermine everything we believe?
Politicians like Bill Clinton are careful to make sure they are regularly filmed coming out of church, with a Bible in their wedding-ringed left hand and their spouses's hand in their right. They hope that Christians will see the televised images, ignore their actions and continue to support the Democratic Party like they always have. They are playing us for fools.
I don't pretend to know any candidate's heart. But when someone publicly states that he voted for Bill Clinton twice and promises to vote for a Democratic (pro-abortion) Speaker of the House, that reveals far more about his loyalties than any campaign commercial ever could.