Saritha Prabhu

Presidential rivals display stereotypes of conventional religion under prism of political ideology.

Sanders refused to deliver a hawkish pro-Israel speech at AIPAC and speak about Palestinians' needs.

How does your religious faith, or lack thereof, affect your politics? The answer to this can be seen in a stark way in our presidential candidates and voters in the 2016 race.

Those who are religious and right-leaning have strong feelings about abortion, same-sex marriage and religious liberty. They usually see private charity, and not government, as the appropriate tool to take care of the poor in our society. They’d like to see more religion, i.e. their religion, in the public sphere, if you will. Further, they believe more in personal responsibility, and so are more likely to see the poor as morally deficit in some way.

For those on the left, it is an entirely different way of looking at things. First, they are usually a motley conglomeration of religious, spiritual-not-religious, religiously nonaffiliated, atheist and humanist citizens. They’d like religion decoupled from politics to the extent possible. They recognize that this is a nation of diverse religions and belief systems.

And importantly, they recognize that while private charity can do its bit, it is government that can redress the injustice that often lies at the heart of many of our social and economic ills. And while they also believe in personal responsibility, they recognize that those less fortunate were often born into bad, sometimes insurmountable, circumstances.

To put it succinctly: For us progressives, the real abomination isn’t gay marriage, but the continuing failure, for example, of Insure Tennessee to pass in our state.

Religious leaders deserve a voice in politics

Sen. Bernie Sanders explains well how the progressive left thinks of religion’s effect on their politics. When asked if he believes in God, he said, “Yeah, I do. I’m not into organized religion. But I believe that what impacts you impacts me, that we’re all united in one way or another. When children go hungry, I get impacted. If we have elderly people who can’t afford their prescription drugs, you know what, that impacts me. And I worry very much about a society where some people spiritually say, it doesn’t matter to me, I got it, I don’t care about other people. So my spirituality is that we’re all in this together ... .”

I’ll take a detour now that seems unrelated but is connected to the topic at hand. Recently, all the presidential candidates, save one, appeared at an event with AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the nation’s most influential pro-Israel lobbying group.

Predictably, Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz, John Kasich and Donald Trump gave hawkish, pandering, one-sided speeches there. Sanders, meanwhile, skipped the event and gave his Middle East speech in Utah.

What’s more, he talked like the humanist that he is and gave a fair-minded, even-handed speech in which he talked not just about Israel’s travails but of Palestinians’ too. He talked of Israel enduring Hamas’ constant rocket attacks, and also of Israel’s disproportionate 2014 attacks on Gaza.

He talked about being a friend not only to Israel but to the Palestinians as well, talking about the blockade of Gaza, its poverty and high unemployment rate. He talked about working toward a peace that would “require tapping into our shared humanity to make hard but just decisions.”

My admiration for him rose on hearing this, I’ll admit. The irony also was loud and clear: The only Jewish presidential candidate skipped AIPAC and gave a balanced, humane and relatively critical speech on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and his Middle East doctrine.

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To our religion-and-politics-mixed moment, I’d ask this: What use is religion, any religion, if it engenders “tribalism” in us, and if in defending it, leads us to diminish our humanity?

Sanders is the least conventionally religious but perhaps the most moral of all of the presidential candidates. He displays some of the hallmarks of true religion: moral clarity and moral courage and moral consistency, even in a high-stakes presidential race.

His voice is much needed now, but sadly, he may be too good a person for our politics now.

Saritha Prabhu of Clarksville is a Tennessean columnist. Reach her at sprabhu43@gmail.com.