Former Republican congresswoman Michele Bachmann was roundly mocked for saying her decision to launch a senate bid would come down to whether she felt “called” by God.
“The question is, am I being called to do this now? I don’t know,” Bachmann wondered in a January interview.
In a discussion on “The View” about fired White House staffer Omarosa Manigault-Newman’s recent statement that Vice President Mike Pence “thinks Jesus tells him to say things,” Joy Behar quipped, “It’s one thing to talk to Jesus. It’s another thing when Jesus talks to you.”
“As a Christian, that’s just par for the course,” Sherri Shepard added. “You talk to Jesus, Jesus talks back.”
“What concerns me,” she continued, “is how long is the conversation with Jesus?”
Meanwhile, another famous Christian considering a run for office is talking the decision over with God. In a Thursday interview, Oprah Winfrey asked, “[I]f God actually wanted me to run, wouldn’t God kinda tell me?”
“And I haven’t heard that,” she said.
Winfrey, of course, is unlikely to face the same mockery as Bachmann and Pence given her political affiliation, even though the similarities between her statement and Bachmann’s are striking. Yet hers almost certainly won’t be the subject of a mocking billboard like Bachmann’s was, a gesture that was met with widespread amusement in left-leaning media outlets.
This juxtaposition at least partially explains why Winfrey is a formidable presidential candidate for Democrats, who are increasingly incapable of relating to Christians because normal practices like talking to God seem laughably crazy to many of them.
If one finds it bizarre for a person to ask whether God is calling them to make important life decisions, that’s fine. But then they should think it’s bizarre for Democrats to do it too. Unfortunately, however, that would challenge the perception that people who seek God’s wisdom exist only on the fringes of the Religious Right.
