Prevailing Winds "For the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom . . ." 2 Cor. 3:17, TNIV

Context is everything, and the geography of politics is even more.

It is Idaho, after all, that I write from, and so there’s a conservative, Western, Mormon, and not-so-subtly racist context that informs much of the local politics I comment on from my home of eight years. North Idaho is only now shaking off the filth from the Aryan Nations, even as small cells of racist thugs still litter Couer d’Alene, Sandpoint, and Spokane, Washington, with nasty anti-Semitic, anti-Black, and anti-immigrant fliers. Moscow, in the north-central part of the state, is home to an energized band of paleo- and neo-confederate classicists who have married Rushdoony Reconstructionism to an odd — some Reformed teachers say heretical — theology of Covenant and salvation. These men, steeped in the white Western canon, revere the virulently racist theologian R.L. Dabney and condemn devoutly Christian abolitionists as “haters of God” while defending the “harmonious” and “affectionate” institution of race-based slavery.

Southern Idaho, meanwhile, is awash in a peculiar tea-party hybrid of Constitutionalism and Mormonism that isn’t officially a part of Mormon theology but nonetheless attracts rabidly conservative LDS men and evangelical Christians who normally would eschew any alliance with the Mormons. An influx of Mexican immigrants in the Boise suburbs has stoked fierce anti-immigrant sentiment, and throughout the southern part of the state a Western frontier ethic, rabid conservatism, overt racism, and syncretistic Mormon and Christian alliances fed more by politics than by either group’s theologies have commanded microphones, airwaves, and platforms.

This isn’t to say that conservatism, Mormonism, bigotry and the Western frontier ethic are synonymous, nor that Idaho is only conservative or only “Western” in its cultural leanings; after all, even Moscow tends to be more blue than red in some things. It does, however, explain in part how a guy like Rex Rammell, an Independent candidate for governor who made headlines late last year when he snickered about the fun he’d have with an Obama hunting tag, is actually taken seriously by anyone other than his wife and a half-dozen other cranks at the local diner.

Rammell is an odd one. In Idaho, you’ve really gone off the Right end of things when the GOP won’t have you or when you’re so conservative you can’t abide them. I’m not sure which is the case with Rammell, but I do know that not even veteran conservatives — I, of course, am not one of them — would have expected Rammell to invoke Mormon folklore, a Constitution “hanging by a thread,” and revolution in a recent campaign stop. He and 100 other Mormon men will meet later in January to discuss the “white horse prophecy” allegedly given by LDS founder Joseph Smith, a foretelling not recognized as part of the LDS canon but embraced by the church’s more conservative members. Smith predicted that “during a future time of great confusion and chaos, the U.S. Constitution would hang ‘like a thread as fine as a silk fiber.'” According to Smith, only elders of the church, presumably including Rammell, can intervene to save it. How the governors of 49 other states will be involved in the rescue isn’t covered by either Smith or Rammell.

What was covered by Rammell is his belief that the United States Constitution is a “divinely inspired document,” and it’s at that point that the Christian must object, and object as vigorously as possible. There are three reasons why an assertion like this is dead wrong and worthy of strong, immediate rebuke from evangelical Christians.

First, Christians believe that the totality of God-inspired writings is found in the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments, although some non-evangelicals — the Roman Catholics and Greek Orthodox — also accept the Apocrypha. But the Apocrypha, when accepted into the canon, is considered part of the Bible; it’s never afforded equal status, as a separate collection, to Scripture, but is recognized, and only by a minority of Christians, as inspired Scripture itself. No other writings have been recognized by the Christian Church as authoritative, inerrant, and unchangeable. While Mormons recognize not only the Bible but the Book of Mormon, the Doctrines and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price (the Journal of Discourses is not considered part of the official canon, whatever its place in Mormon history and tradition), the option of adding to the Christian canon is not available to the Christian.

Second, the arrogance of pronouncing Divine origin and design of this nation’s, and only this nation’s, founding documents of governance is astonishing. Certainly the U.S. has been blessed by God, and just as certainly it’s received God’s chastening. But to suggest that the Almighty swept aside all the other nations in his eagerness to build this one and formulate its Constitution is an appalling example not only of historical ignorance, but unimaginable bigotry. God is calling forth a people, to be sure. That people’s name is not “Americans.”

Finally, the deficiencies in the United States Constitution make it clear that its author is human, not divine — or, if divine, a being nonetheless as trapped in sinful imperfection and excused as “a product of his time” as we are. It makes no provision for sin, repentance, redemption, or salvation; neither does it make provision for women or Blacks to vote, or for slaves to be freed. Only after amendments made, in some cases, almost two centuries after its signing has the Constitution reflected the civil liberties of equality and justice that the Christian must hold dear. Jesus is Lord over every realm of life, including government, but he is not a heavenly legislator, and it’s more than a little unwise to co-opt him as one.

There are extremely conservative Mormons and extremely conservative evangelical Christians, and they share, as would be expected, common political concerns. But each group’s theologies must claim greater allegiance on the part of the believer than do mere politics, no matter how noble the political cause is perceived. Evangelicals involved in or simply supportive of constitutionalists, the Constitution Party, the Patriot Party, and other far-right groups must keep in mind that certain alliances are not effective, not edifying, and not especially helpful to the cause of the Gospel. If the cause of the Gospel is the ultimate concern of the believer, he will examine his political alliances to see if what energizes them is in any way in conflict with the Spirit who energizes him.

And if that group whose beliefs seem to meld so easily with yours takes as gospel that God has favored the U.S. in an exclusive way and inspired its very Constitution, you can be assured that they are then opposed to the Gospel that ought to be your only inspiration and concern, and are instead objects of your evangelistic efforts, not allies in your political concerns.