Every campaign reveals something about the candidates. This one reveals how far some are willing to go to win.
We are watching that play out in Alabama’s Republican primary for lieutenant governor.
Secretary of State Wes Allen and former Alabama Republican Party Chairman John Wahl are both seeking higher office. That is fair ground for debate. Records can be challenged. Ideas can be tested. Faith should not be.
And yet, Allen chose to go there.
In a recent campaign statement, Allen attacked Wahl for attending an interfaith gathering at the Anniston Islamic Center. “When John Wahl chose to enter an Islamic Center to celebrate the Muslim holiday of Ramadan,” Allen said, “he showed us that he does not share the same values as the majority of Alabamians… You will never find me in an Islamic Center or a mosque. I am a committed Christian.”
That is not a policy argument. It is an attempt to draw a boundary around Christianity itself—and to place a political opponent outside of it. It is below the belt. And it has no place in a serious campaign for public office.
Wahl answered differently. He denied participating in any religious observance and said he attended what he understood to be a community interfaith event. More importantly, he grounded his response in his faith. “As a committed Christian,” Wahl said, “I will never hesitate to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ—anywhere, with anyone… Scripture calls us to be the light of the world and the salt of the earth.”
That contrast matters. Allen’s argument is rooted in separation—that faith is proven by where you refuse to go. Wahl’s argument is rooted in engagement—that faith is proven by how you show up when you get there.
You can debate which approach you prefer. That is politics. But what should concern every voter is the tactic being used.
Allen is not asking voters to evaluate leadership. He is asking them to question whether his opponent is sufficiently Christian—to confuse presence with endorsement, proximity with belief, and engagement with betrayal.
That is not truth. That is manipulation.
When a politician starts grading another man’s Christianity, the campaign has already lost its way.
And it raises a deeper question: Why go there at all?
Because it is easier—far easier—to question a man’s faith than to debate his record. Easier to divide than to persuade. Easier to inflame than to lead.
History and Scripture both warn us about this path. Christ cautioned against those who “practice their righteousness before others to be seen by them,” a warning about the corruption of faith when it is performed for public approval.
And George Washington, in his letter to the Hebrew Congregation, made clear what kind of nation America was meant to be—not one that merely tolerates religious difference, but one that rejects exclusion altogether, where all “sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.” Washington did not build a nation that feared other faiths. He built one that was secure enough to live alongside them.
And if that standard is to be applied honestly, it cannot stop with one candidate in one race. Public life is filled with examples of elected officials—Republicans and Democrats alike—meeting with, speaking to, and engaging people of different faiths, including Muslims. That has never been understood as endorsement. It has been understood as leadership.
The question is whether we are now prepared to say that any such engagement is disqualifying—or whether this standard is being applied selectively, for political convenience.
Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment—“Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican”—was a recognition that internal destruction weakens the whole. What we are witnessing now goes further. It is an attempt to disqualify a man not on what he believes about governing, but on what another politician claims he believes about God.
That is a line no campaign should cross.
But here is the truth we should not ignore: this kind of politics only works if we accept it—if we reward it, if we allow ourselves to be moved more by outrage than by truth. Because once that becomes the currency of our politics, it does not stop with one candidate or one race. It spreads. It hardens. It turns allies into enemies and conviction into suspicion.
That is how movements fracture. That is how truth gets buried. And that is how faith itself is reduced to a slogan.
This is not about defending John Wahl, nor is it about condemning Wes Allen as a person. It is about condemning a tactic—a tactic that trades truth for outrage, that turns faith into a political weapon, and that assumes voters can be manipulated by fear rather than persuaded by facts.
We, as citizens, should reject that—not as Republicans or Democrats, but as people who understand that faith is not a campaign prop. It is something far more serious than that.
Faith was never meant to be a test one politician imposes on another. It was meant to guide how we live—not how we divide.
And when it is used as a weapon in politics, it does not prove who we are.
It reveals what we have become.
