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In the state of Georgia, a state situated in the heart of the Bible Belt where religion has an important place in culture and everyday life, a mixture of religion and politics is not exactly unusual. This year Sarah Riggs Amico, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate running to oppose Republican Sen. David Perdue, has launched a campaign based on faith. Amico has already lost a 2018 campaign for lieutenant governor and this year she is trying to draw religious voters to her side by stating that faith is a guarantee for better and high-quality life.
In August she started her campaign with a video that is directly appealing to religious voters in the state. “These are times that test our faith, in our beliefs, in our democracy, in each other,” Riggs says, as Religion News Service reports. She continues: “My faith teaches that the testing of our beliefs is hard. But it can ground us with purpose.” “You don’t love the neighbor, if you shun the poor, the powerless, the least of these,” she says over images of immigrants in detention centers. “Faith is how I know that nobody should be sick because they’re poor or poor because they’re sick. That we need to protect and sustain the earth. That we have an obligation to stand up for economic security and social justice no matter the color of your skin or who you love.”
The message sent with this video is that faith is determining whether a person will have health insurance and is society going to be environmentally friendly. Faith is going to make a state economically secure and create a social justice system. Finally faith is going to prevent discrimination and racism. Placing so much belief and faith in faith is groundless because of simple reasons. Faith is not some new code or way of life and thinking, it is something that already exists almost everywhere and it has lasted for thousands of years without all of above mentioned effects. Even contrary, faith and religion have always discriminated against LGBTQ people, for example.
Leaning on faith in a campaign is not a completely new idea and it represents a strategic approach in the state of Georgia that is a convenient ground for this type of campaigning. But Amico insisted that this was not the primary concern when crafting the ad or her campaign message. “I would be running the same ad if I were running in Alaska or Idaho or Washington or Hawaii or New York,” she said, according to the Religion News Service. “It was more about ‘here’s how I see the world, here’s a filter that helps me think about the right and wrong way to treat other people. And here is where I think our leaders have failed us, and specifically David Perdue and the GOP-led U.S. Senate."
