New Hampshire and Spiritual Politics

Since the world is agog with the upcoming results of the New Hampshire caucus in the US presidential race, after the recent surprise triumph of Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee, I'm posting a highly interesting analysis of what the results of the second key caucus might mean on a spiritual level.

Below is an excerpt from the beliefnet.com blog of Neale Donald Walsch, one of today's most interesting and gifted New Age authors, and responsible for the bestselling Conversations With God series.

Arguing that politics is a demonstration of spirituality (a view that, I, personally, agree with, irrespective of where we group ourselves formally in terms of faith/religion), Walsch writes:

"Did faith play any role in the Iowa results? I think it is obvious that it did. Surely on the GOP side there is no question that Mike Huckabee's pedigree as a Baptist minister helped him tremendously. Whether that will count as much in New Hampshire will be the Big Question tomorrow. Likewise, if there really is some hesitation among the electorate about putting a Mormon in the White House (there should not be, and I would hope with all my might that we would never go to that place any more in America), there are analysts who say that this would be more likely to show up in Iowa -- a religiously conservative state -- than in New Hampshire...a neighbor of the state where Romney was elected governor.

"On the Democratic side, some fascinating stuff in play. Exit polls showed that while Clinton garnered the majority of votes from woman caucus goers over age 60, those under 60 voted overwhelmingly for Obama. This means that Obama captured the youth vote...and if he can do that across America, the Democratic nomination is his -- presuming he can get young people to actually go to the polls.

"That is not a small question. Young people are notoriously more apathetic than senior citizens when it comes to voting -- and perhaps for good reason. They have felt, in most recent years, disaffected and disenfranchised, with their views largely marginalized. Until now. They may be seeing Barack Obama as their Voice within The System. And wouldn't that be interesting...

"Is America ready -- at last -- to elect a black person President of the United States? I think it would be historically, socially, and politically beyond exciting. So, too, if we elected a Mormon. Or a woman. Or an Hispanic. Or an openly gay person.

"This is just such an historic primary season, because we have all of those kinds of candidates running for President -- and that says something remarkable about the place to which we have matured as an electorate. If politics is our spirituality demonstrated, we must have come to adopt a wonderfully inclusive spirituality in America. And I am not surprised. Tomorrow's God predicts flat out that we will create within the next 25 to 30 years an entirely new God -- that is, a new kind of God, a new understanding of the only God there ever was, is now, or ever will be."

You can read the rest of his fascinating post here.