To listen to Heidi Cruz, wife of Republican candidate Ted Cruz, her husband is running for High Priest and not President of the United States. She told South Carolina radio host Vince Coakley that her husband will “show this country the face of the God that we serve.â€
“This country is in crisis,” she said during her appearance on The Vince Coakley Radio Program, “and this individual has an incredible talent to bring us out of this crisis.†And she was not talking the economy, which has been on the upswing since 2009 and is now about where it was before the GOP crashed it.
No, Heidi Cruz, who is American investment manager at Goldman Sachs, was – bizarrely coming from a person who is very much a part of the establishment – talking about “a cultural crossroads.”
Yes, the old Religious Right culture war agenda is Ted Cruz’s agenda. Rolling us back to the 1950s and beyond, in some cases, all the way back to the 1350s, or even to the Bronze Age, making the sand glow like “the God that we serve” did in the Old Testament.
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To judge by her husband’s rhetoric and actions to date, his is not the same God many self-professed Christians worship, let alone Jews, Muslims, and others. If we’re to judge her God by the example of her husband, he’s one scary guy, and just, no thanks.
Listen courtesy of Right Wing Watch:
“When I thought about doing it for our country, it became very clear to me that our family must be in this race. And it also became clear to me that we are at a cultural crossroads in our country and if we can be in this race to show this country the face of the God that we serve — this Christian God that we serve is the foundation of our country, our country was built on Judeo-Christian values, we are a nation of freedom of religion, but the God of Christianity is the God of freedom, of individual liberty, of choice and of consequence.
“And I think that’s something that this country really needs to be reminded of, is that Christians are loving people, are nonjudgmental people, but there is right and wrong, we have a country of law and order, there are consequences to actions and we must all live peaceably in our own faiths under the Constitution. And Ted is uniquely able to deliver on that combination of the law and religion.”
There is so much wrong with her portrayal of America, not to mention her logic. She says America is about “individual liberty” and claimed Christians are nonjudgmental (apparently said without a trace of irony) but at the same time she warned there is “right and wrong” and that there are “consequences” to making the “wrong” choice.
It would therefore be difficult for people to “live peaceably” in their “own faiths” if their beliefs are judged the ones for which there will be consequences.
And that is the problem. Christianity is, by its devotion to the Law of Moses, inherently intolerant. To the extent the First Commandment – “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” – is followed, only intolerance can result because the very statement creates the “other.”
An “other” for whom there are always tragic consequences, all the way through the Bible and throughout the history of the Old World. It is quite obvious why the Founding Fathers wrote a secular Constitution rather than just duplicating the Law of Moses. But do we have actual religious liberty according to Heidi Cruz?
It is difficult to tell. It is clear, at least where politics, if not religion, are concerned, she does not always agree with her husband. Her words here were more a veiled threat of retribution than an homage to the Founding Fathers’ endorsement of religious liberty.
Actually, nowhere is “this Christian God” she serves noted to be the “foundation of our country.” He is nowhere named in the United States Constitution, which establishes this country. The Constitution was an act of will by a group of men gathered together in Philadelphia. The Premable to the United States Constitution gives the game away. She might want to read it sometime:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
We the People of the United States formed this union. Not her God. Not anyone representing her God. But the people themselves, on behalf of themselves. It was an act of political will, not an act of divine creation. Just as it is not Obama’s job to advance his faith, it is not Cruz’s job to advance his.
When her husband figure that out, she can get back us. We’ll talk then, “We the People” and Cruz.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
