A Reason to Believe_ Lessons From an Improbable Life - Deval Patrick [57]
An important distinction needs to be made in politics between allowing your values to guide you and keeping religion and government separate. Liberals are rightly concerned about government-established and government-supported religion, especially in our religiously polyglot society. But their unwillingness to engage on policy at the level of transcendent and timeless values, for fear of sounding too moralistic or religious, yields too much ground to the radical political right, which has come to claim Christianity in particular to advance a deeply un-Christian agenda. Theirs is a faith based on intolerance, a faith without compassion. Hating homosexuals and despising illegal immigrants instead of hating poverty and despising homelessness seems to miss the point of a life of faithfulness. The Gospel of Matthew teaches us:
For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.
Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’
Hardly ever does the radical right invoke these truths. While they claim to be the political haven for God-fearing Americans, love—so central to Christianity—has no place in their agenda. When they speak of faith, it seems obscene.
During my campaign for governor in 2006, the question of marriage equality was hotly debated. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court had struck down practices that limited marriage to the union of a man and a woman, and many tried to organize a ballot initiative to overturn the Court’s ruling. I agreed with the ruling and supported marriage equality. Churches were deeply divided.
The black church was particularly agitated, in part because the radical right promised that unless the court’s decision was overturned, churches would be forced to marry gay and lesbian couples or risk losing their tax-exempt status. My sister and her husband, Bernie, were active in one of the largest black churches in Boston, which was led by a gifted preacher and a leader among the black clergy. He denounced me and my candidacy from the pulpit on many Sundays while Rhonda and Bernie sat in the front pew.
I met with the Black Ministerial Alliance in Boston during the campaign, asking for their support while acknowledging our differences on this issue. I said I believed in a politics that did not require that we agree on everything before we could work together on anything. And I challenged them to work with me on the issues I believed their parishioners cared most about, such as being able to pay their rent and their heating bill in the same month. I’m happy that I got their support in the end, but a lot of nasty things were said. For some of these black ministers, the notion of social justice, faith in action, was secondary.
Once I won and took office, I worked hard to get the necessary votes at the constitutional convention that was convened so that the joint legislature could resolve the question. We convinced enough legislators to support marriage equality and to keep discrimination out of the Massachusetts Constitution. It seemed what faith in action demanded. I had no idea until many months later that our own daughter, Katherine, who was