The cloaks of religious intention?

An interesting article in the Providence Journal today summarizes a talk that Juan Williams of NPR gave last night on the intersection of faith and politics.

Of particular interest, Williams mentioned that certain candidates are vying for claim to carry the legacy of MLK and tying this claim to their own religious faith. He acknowledged that this seems fair on a lot of issues (poverty, race, education, health care). But then he asked people to remember Dr. King's real religious faith, his pastoring and preaching. He called people to imagine Dr. King were still alive:

“You can imagine this living Dr. King asking people, ‘Are you standing up and speaking to these central issues in American life, or are you simply asking for votes, are you simply posturing and putting on the cloaks of religious intention, rather than acting as truly religious people, who are willing to make sacrifices, willing to lose, in order to deliver the word?’ ”

One wonders, particularly as we are also looking at Yoder's Politics of Jesus over the next couple of weeks, how close to home this hits for a variety of candidates, in both parties. Is there real faith here, or is there simply the marketing and rhetoric of faith for the sake of votes?

It's important to note, I think, that as long as we have a picture of Christian faith where God became human, suffered, died, and rose in order to teach us to be nice and get along the way good democratic liberalism (in the classic sense) meant for us to, it will be very difficult to really grasp this question. Or, to put it another way, I don't think the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus happened in order to make the world safe for democracy. As long as we think this way, it is hard for us to imagine (as Williams' question implies) the possibility that we (or our favorite candidate) might have to be faithful to the Gospel even if it means sacrificing the possibility of power and success and realizing their goals.

Regardless, it is clear that the claim to be operating out of faith convictions is becoming important in this election. Now we get the beginnings of the next wave: the questions about the sincerety of that faith. I wonder if we will see a third wave: a real conversation about what a sincere faith can/should/must consist in. It will be interesting to see.