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The Reverend Billy Graham, for example, successfully combined the two great institutions of church and state for decades by standing side by side with U.S. presidents in time of need, in time of want. He was never afraid to speak on behalf of Christian values and the founding principles of American society.
As with other men of God who wield great influence, Graham was also close to private financial benefactors such as the publisher and philanthropist William Randolph Hearst, who gave a huge boost to his career and personal mission through his public support in 1949. The recognition was ostensibly driven by appreciation of the preacher’s patriotic bent.
On the international patriotic/political scene, Graham became the first Christian minister of note to preach behind the Iron Curtain, including in the Soviet Union itself. Socially, Graham also stood up, as did many others, against segregation, refusing to speak to segregated audiences – even though it was in many ways hurtful to his missionary cause in the American South.
A registered Democrat, during his lifetime Graham has never directly endorsed any political figure or party. He refused to join Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority in 1979, as he felt that the job of the clergy was to teach the word of God and not to engage in politics. Officially that is. In 2002, however, declassified documents were released that proved that Graham had spoken to Richard Nixon on politics back in 1972, telling the president that “Jews had a stranglehold” on the American media, and that if it remained unbroken, America would go down the drain. These were prophetic words in view of the post-9/11 world and diminished American status around the world.
Today, we may well ask whether Thailand’s clergy, the Buddhist Sangha, has been crossing the line in this regard by endorsing political candidates and parties.
For instance, when the corrupt Thai Rak Thai party was campaigning back in 2006, the northeast Buddhist abbot of Wat Ban Rai in Nakhonratchasima province, Luang Pho Khun, stood side-by-side with Thaksin supporter Suwat Liptapanlop, the Chatpattana party’s last leader before the party dissolved to join TRT, and told gullible northeast Thais, “Vote for Thai Rak Thai.”
It was not the first time that Thai money, religion and politics were merged in a marriage of convenience. Even more impressive was former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s earlier agreement to support the country’s most controversial Buddhist sect, Dhammakaya, itself widely recognized as equaling Thaksin’s astute ability to amass hundreds of thousands of followers and millions of dollars, in the name of helping one’s fellow man.
The support was not unidirectional, however. In return for his assistance, Thaksin was also assured that Wat Dahammakaya’s followers would be pro-TRT and help in important matters of votes and donations.
Ironically, a very fundamental essence of Buddhism may have stricken both greedy interests in 2006 when both the temple abbot and Thaksin became subject to multiple allegations, charges and suspicions of siphoning off money for personal use. It was that year that the temple proceeded with a huge donation drive to support construction of its US$500 million pagoda. That is big money by anyone’s imagination. The year was not auspicious, however.
Dhammakaya’s abbot was found to be departing from the traditional Buddhist path, promoting greed and insincere theological principles, and found himself defrocked. One claim the abbot had made was that he, Phra Dhammajayo, was in possession of transcendental insight, able to pin down people’s whereabouts after death. That attribute had hitherto been ascribed only to the Lord Buddha himself.
Looking back into just how the Thaksin government supported the abbot and his cause, one glaring example is the local administration department’s director general, Sarote Kachamart. Based on Thaksin’s orders, he instructed Thailand’s 7,854 local administration units to each send a 10-member team to attend a mid-July 2006 Wat Dhammaykaya event held to celebrate His Majesty the King’s 60th year as monarch. Besides having to attend, each team was also ordered to pay 5000 baht. Doing the math we come up with over 39 million baht, or in excess of US$1 million!
If one were totally naive and believed that fundamental structural change is always good for religion, politics and society, and that the faster and more comprehensively they are carried out the better, then Thaksin and Dhammakayo could be given the benefit of the doubt and be forgiven. But charges and allegations against both persisted, and continue to persist today. In one sense the abbot won out: with Thaksin’s assistance, all court proceedings against him were dropped, charges dismissed, and he found he was reinstated at the hugely influential temple.
Thaksin, however, has not been so fortunate. In contrast, allegations of his wrongdoing have resurfaced once again with protests by the People's Alliance for Democracy taking place in Thailand against the “Thaksin system.” The PAD is spearheading efforts to bring Thaksin to court and even to prison.
On June 9, thousands of PAD volunteer activists visited Thailand’s tough auditor general and her staff to push for an investigation and eventual prosecution of Thaksin for his alleged corrupt practices. The anti-graft organization, however, is itself now becoming the focus of Thaksin’s tough fight-back techniques, its members charged with defamation arising from its actions in seizing billions of dollars worth of Thaksin assets.
God and money have never been that far apart, whether in Judaism, Islam, Christianity or Buddhism, or even the uniquely American religion of Mormonism. But anyone who has seen the 1960 film Elmer Gantry, starring the late Burt Lancaster, will recall how dramatic the mix can be. Based on a novel written by Sinclair Lewis in 1926, the story is about a womanizing college jock who gives up sports to follow sex and money. Corruption, self-aggrandizement and false worship hand-in-hand, Gantry falls in love with a beautiful Christian woman, who eventually falls from grace in the story. The film is a great foretelling of the fall from grace of many modern-day nations.
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(Frank G. Anderson is the Thailand representative of American Citizens Abroad. He was a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer to Thailand from 1965-67, working in community development. A freelance writer and founder of northeast Thailand's first local English language newspaper, the Korat Post -- www.thekoratpost.com -- he has spent over eight years in Thailand "embedded" with the local media. He has an MBA in information management and an associate degree in construction technology.)
