A Time to Laugh

I want to talk about DeWitt Jones. My teacher. My M.A. advisor. My boss for forever.

Now, I don’t know if Dr. Jones reads blogs. And I don’t want to embarrass him if he does. But I do need to gush a little. Not much. Just enough.

DeWitt Jones taught me how fun it is to read speeches by powerful dead white guys. And women. And live ones. And black ones too. He just liked civic discourse. He liked to watch how it changed stuff.

He taught me that Wade Hampton wasn’t just the name of a boulevard in Greenville.

He literally had a spring in his step the entire Reagan administration. Not because he voted for him (although he did). But because Reagan made it cool to teach speech again. Teaching Carter was such a drag with the sweaters and the fireplaces. ::yawn:: And the Malaise.

He told me that it would be good for me to study the early feminists even when some people violently scowled at the choice.

Now, DeWitt is no raving leftist in the politics department. Yes, he likes his NPR as much as the next academic. But Dr. Jones went to Louisiana to study American Public Address. He is Old School. Neo-Aristotelian. He got it hard core when studying dead white guys’ words wasn’t about the words at all. When context was king. Before all that new-fangled New Criticism messed us up (I say that good-naturedly since my academic path veered a different and “newer” direction after my M.A. with Dr. Jones).

And he distrusts political engagement. When our academic association (NCA) supported the ERA, he disengaged. He revoked his membership and never returned. His decision wouldn’t have been mine, but I understand it and respect it. He was consistent in his protests.

He showed me the Checkers speech for the first time. And explained why it was funny. . . . because of FDR’s Fala speech, of course.

And he loves FDR! But hates his policies.

Did you catch that? DeWitt Jones — that most Platonist of thinkers and most Aristotelian of critics and most sectarian of Christians and most conservative of ideologues — has enough generosity of spirit and mind to love a good speech when he hears it and still shudder at the ideology behind it.

That’s what you call a good egg.

I used to do an exercise in Freshman Speech when we’d talk about audience adaptation. I’d have a list of 5 speakers and 5 situations, and we’d imagine what would happen if . . . say, Oprah Winfrey spoke to a Kindergarten class. How would she adapt? What might she talk about? How would she speak differently than if she were talking to this college class?

The discussion was always profitable at BJU . . . until Bill Clinton became president. When I’d ask them what Bill Clinton would say if he came to talk to “this class,” they were stymied. They couldn’t fathom what this politician they detested could ever say to them.

I’m no Clinton fan, but I still find that odd. Are the boundaries between us that impermeable? Is there nothing that our political opponent could say to us as Americans that is of any value? Is being President that irrelevant?

And it doesn’t matter what the Democrats did or would do when G.W. Bush was president. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Every good fundamentalist knows that.

So it’s in the spirit of DeWitt Jones’ loving-the-speech-but hating-the-ideology that I’m going to offer some of my own discussion questions for Obama’s speech this Tuesday. The ed.gov‘s suggested discussion questions are lame, and others I’ve seen . . . well, they simply miss the mark. If I were conducting a college discussion, before viewing the speech I’d ask my students:

• What have you heard about this speech?
• Why do you think people find this controversial?
• What are the consequences of that controversy? Where would that leave political discourse and the civic sphere if we followed the trajectory of that controversy?

After the speech, I’d ask:

• What are your initial thoughts?
• What are his arguments? How does he support those arguments?
• How does he make those arguments “stick”?
• What cultural archetypes, assumptions, and themes does he build on?
• How does his character, knowledge, and judgment command (or not) respect?
• What is the President’s “second persona“? That is, what kind of person or student does he assume you — the implied auditor — to be? How do you judge that person? How do his words encourage you to be (or not) that person?
• Was he convincing? Why or why not?
• Who’s the actor in the President’s speech? And the act? The scene?  The purpose of the action? The agency? Which of those did the President emphasize and was does that say about his overall view of the world?
• What grade would you give the President? Why? If you were his speech teacher, what advice would you give him for next time?
• How did your expectations match or conflict with your actual impressions of the speech? What does that say about media coverage and its influence on civic discourse?

We’ll be watching the speech at home whether or not my son’s teacher decides to show it in school. It’s fine if she doesn’t; I really do understand. And my questions for him, to be honest, will be taken from those above. Why shouldn’t they be?

It’s not about politics per se. It’s about judgment. And there’s a long history in rhetorical scholarship about how to judge. Ancient rhetoric, after all, was simply the study of wisdom. And it’s when we’re exposed to those with whom we might disagree — those who are not-us (which includes everyone) — that we learn how to be wise.

For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter’s courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent’s willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.

President Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address

Mary Poppins was always my favorite record growing up. Yes, I said record. I wore grooves in it. I loved singing along with my Sister Suffragettes. It was actually my own personal spoonful of sugar (listening to the music) while I did my chores (cleaning my room). This was before VHS players, of course. And we didn’t go to the movies (good fundies that we were). So the record was all I had. I did read the original, however.

My boys were watching the DVD in the car this week. What I would have done to have TV on those long trips, let alone a recording of my fav movie I’d never even seen! When you listen to something behind your head, while you’re mindlessly driving around town, you hear it differently — deeper or something.

Disney produced the film in 1964. Julie Andrews, having just been rejected for the role of a cockney flower-girl, played the “practically perfect” witch/nanny in-between her roles of queen and nun (her role as a man would come much later). She beat out Audrey Hepburn for the Oscar for Best Actress that year too. Sweet revenge!

Mary Poppins ever-so-gently needles its audience to consider those who are most-often forgotten. Its story is really the same as The Sound of Music when you think about it. It’s talking to us parents more than entertaining our kids. Just like the show M*A*S*H was set in the Korean war so that it could really talk about Vietnam, Mary Poppins is set in 1910 so it could nudge parents about mid-century problems.

The second-wave of feminism hadn’t really begun yet, so Mrs. Banks’ tribute to her fellow suffragettes just seemed quaint back then. Norman Vincent Peale had not yet accused Dr. Spock of ruining America by his permissiveness, so that anxiety had not been named as such.

The stark class difference between Mrs. Banks and her hired help point up the fatal flaw of independence. The cook and maid endure their mistress’s middle-class eccentricities. They even dutifully harmonize along. But she ignores their working-class needs. Just like Mr. Banks ignores her.

And they all, for the most part, ignore the children. Katie Nanna can’t stand them. The cooks won’t tolerate them. And the rich bankers are nothing but irritated by them. The upper, middle, and working classes have no time for the children. Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Banks can even fathom minding their own children.

For the most part, each adult member of the Banks household is independent — each is an island. They work separately, on their own interests and within their own spheres. When they do cross into another’s “path,” the interactions are hollow, rushed, or predictable.

And the children mess up that predictability. Yes, they are disorderly and chaotic. But more than that, they are dependent. They defy isolation. They mess up independence. And while the adults mistakenly think that minding the children ruins their economy, their success, and their political activism, nurturing a child is a pretty politically radical thing to do.

Now Admiral Boom does watch over the children as they pass by. But not until filled-with-magic Mary Poppins “pops in” do the children get included. She flies in (literally) with a bottomless carpetbag, order, routine, and even a parallel universe — a community — full of silly words and two-dimensional animals. She introduces them to Bert, Uncle Albert, the Bird Woman — the lowest class of jobless vagabonds who simply enjoy life and, so, enjoy children.

That’s what’s so practically perfect about Mary Poppins. She knows what’s important. Enjoying children and communing as a family is the most radical thing we can do. The whole movie is like a “Carpe Diem” for parents.

I think we’ve lost that spirit again. We need more of that Poppins woman in 2009. The show is on Broadway right now. Conservative Evangelicals, especially, have caught some kind of hideous idea that the solitary adult work is more important, more spiritual, more rewarding than our children. We think that being independent is more valuable that being together. We insist that the parents are the center of the home and that children should serve the parents. What is wrong with us?

We are no different from the Banks! . . . Or worse.

Spit-spot! Stop! Enjoy life. Our children are life. Take some tuppence for paper and strings and get your own set of wings. . . . go fly a kite!

Let him begin by treating patriotism . . . as part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely a part of the “cause,” in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce. . . . Once you have made the world an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing.

Screwtape on How to Ruin a Believer’s Faith in C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters

I just finished David Kuo‘s book Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction. In essence, he writes to remind himself and fellow Christians that Faith can never be a means to a political ends. He wants to foil Screwtape’s plan.

Several things struck me. I did notice his keswidispicostalistic soteriology here and there, but that’s not really a big surprise. His story of identifying with an ideology, being dazzled by its powerful sparkle, ignoring obvious ethical dilemmas in favor of power, enduring his own surprising and life-changing personal crisis, and chucking it all (when termination was inevitable anyway) was so familiar. I saw myself in his words.

He worked for the Christian Right in the 1990s-2000s — for Bill Bennett, Ralph Reed, and John Ashcroft. He wrote speeches and created talking points. Eventually, he became a big part of George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism.”

As a speech writer for the Christian Right and the Republicans, he admits that he propagated flat-out lies about Bill and Hillary Clinton, and he determined to apologize to them personally for that slander. He really didn’t want to, but he knew he should. Then God dropped the opportunity into his lap. It was awkward, halting, and impromptu. Completely uncomfortable. Read:

His apology didn’t make huge, long-lasting political waves. It was just a brief, forgettable sound bite the next day. There were no law suits afterward. But that’s not why Kuo did it. He apologized because it was right, because he was being true to his Faith, and because it was a reminder to him and to those around him about who God is and how much we need Him.

It’s also a way to infuriate Screwtape.

Kuo brings up Bob Jones University several times. My heart sinks every time he does. He describes it as the “ultrafundamentalist” place where “compassionate conservatism” died — where George W. Bush’s catering to the microcultural elements of the Christian Right was more klutzy than “stealthy.” Kuo explains W.’s election strategy: convince Evangelicals that making him President was the only way to advance their social conservatism. “He was born again. He loved Jesus. He hated abortion and loved the family.” But the only way to actually get him into office is by downplaying that religious conservatism.

In other words, W. said to the theo-cons, “Hey, I’m just like you, but I have to play the ‘moderate’ game so that I can get you what you want when I’m in office.” And, according to Kuo, the nation saw that strategy naked and bald at Bob Jones University in February 2000.

It’s chilling to see that event through the eyes of a fellow believer but a BJU-outsider.

The effort at Please-Reconcile.org is coming upon its first milestone. This Wednesday they are sending the letter to the BJU Board and Administration with 400+ signatures of BJU alumni and friends and neighbors imploring the current administration to reconcile their past racist policies. Read the list of signees and their comments. These people are earnest, careful, and prayerful. None of us would be signing if we didn’t care deeply about Bob Jones University’s ministry and its people.

I’ve read the documents at Please-Reconcile.org, and I am stunned and grieved. I’ve said it before — I really had no clue, but that is exactly the problem. Again, I’m sorry.

So if you’ve graduated from, worked for, attended, or been taught by anything Bob Jones University, if you know someone from BJU or if you’ve purchased a book from their Press, if you have ever read about, written about, or heard about that place, if you’ve ever choked on institutional racism, if you’ve ever had to clarify misconceptions about Christ because of BJU’s interracial dating ban, please prayerfully consider signing the letter.

Many theo-cons are working to foreground racial reconciliation as a conservative value in order to heal a very broken GOP. As tempting as it is to emphasize this pragmatic and political reason for reconciling the sin of racism, I can’t forget David Kuo and C. S. Lewis’s admonition. It’s not about the politics. It’s about reminding ourselves that we are each full of sin and that God is faithful in spite of us.

We confess. God takes care of the rest.

If we claim that we’re free of sin, we’re only fooling ourselves. A claim like that is errant nonsense. On the other hand, if we admit our sins—make a clean breast of them—he won’t let us down; he’ll be true to himself. He’ll forgive our sins and purge us of all wrongdoing. If we claim that we’ve never sinned, we out-and-out contradict God—make a liar out of him. A claim like that only shows off our ignorance of God.

I John 1:8-10

The inside of the White House doesn’t have the luminous quality that you might expect from television or film; it seems well kept but worn, a big old house that one imagines might be a bit draughty on cold winter nights.

On a chilly January afternoon in 2005, the day before my swearing-in as a senator, I was invited there with other new members of Congress. At 1600 hours on the dot, President Bush was announced and walked to the podium, looking vigorous and fit, with that jaunty, determined walk that suggests he’s on a schedule and wants to keep detours to a minimum. For 10 or so minutes he spoke to the room, making a few jokes, calling for the country to come together, before inviting us for refreshments and a picture with him and the first lady.

I happened to be starving, so while most of the other legislators started lining up for their photographs, I headed for the buffet. As I munched on hors d’oeuvres, I recalled an earlier encounter with the president, a small White House breakfast with me and the other incoming senators.

I had found him to be a likable man, shrewd and disciplined but with the same straightforward manner that had helped him win two elections; you could easily imagine him owning the local car dealership, coaching Little League baseball and grilling in his backyard – the kind of guy who would make for good company so long as the conversation revolved around sport and the kids.

There had been a moment during the breakfast meeting, though, after the backslapping and the small talk and when all of us were seated, with Vice-President Cheney eating his eggs benedict impassively and Karl Rove at the far end of the table discreetly checking his BlackBerry, that I had witnessed a different side of the man.

The president had begun to discuss his second-term agenda, mostly a reiteration of his campaign talking points – the importance of staying the course in Iraq and renewing the Patriot Act, the need to reform social security and overhaul the tax system, his determination to get an up-or-down vote on his judicial appointees – when suddenly it felt as if somebody in a back room had flipped a switch.

The president’s eyes became fixed; his voice took on the agitated, rapid tone of someone neither accustomed to nor welcoming interruption; his easy affability was replaced by an almost messianic certainty. As I watched my mostly Republican Senate colleagues hang on his every word, I was reminded of the dangerous isolation that power can bring, and I appreciated the wisdom of America’s founding fathers in designing a system to keep power in check.

“Senator?” I looked up, shaken out of this memory, and saw one of the older black men who made up most of the White House waiting staff standing next to me.

“Want me to take that plate for you?” I nodded, trying to swallow a mouthful of chicken something-or-other, and noticed that the queue to greet the president had evaporated. A young marine at the door politely indicated that the photograph session was over and that the president needed to get to his next appointment. But before I could turn around to go, the president himself appeared.

“Obama!” he said, shaking my hand. “Come here and meet Laura. Laura, you remember Obama. We saw him on TV during election night. Beautiful family. And that wife of yours – that’s one impressive lady.”

“We both got better than we deserve, Mr President,” I said, shaking the first lady’s hand and hoping that I’d wiped any crumbs off my face.

The president turned to an aide nearby, who squirted a big dollop of hand sanitiser in the president’s hand.

“Want some?” the president asked. “Good stuff. Keeps you from getting colds.” Not wanting to seem unhygienic, I took a squirt.

“Come over here for a second,” he said, leading me off to one side of the room.

“You know,” he said quietly, “I hope you don’t mind me giving you a piece of advice.”

“Not at all, Mr President.” He nodded. “You’ve got a bright future,” he said. “Very bright. But I’ve been in this town a while and, let me tell you, it can be tough. When you get a lot of attention like you’ve been getting, people start gunnin’ for ya. And it won’t necessarily just be coming from my side, you understand. From yours, too. Everybody’ll be waiting for you to slip. Know what I mean? So watch yourself.”

“Thanks for the advice, Mr President.” “All right. I gotta get going. You know, me and you got something in common.”

“What’s that?” “We both had to debate Alan Keyes. That guy’s a piece of work, isn’t he?” I laughed, and as we walked to the door I told him a few stories from the campaign.

It wasn’t until he had left the room that I realised I had briefly put my arm over his shoulder as we talked – an unconscious habit of mine, but one that I suspected might have made many of my friends, not to mention the secret service agents in the room, more than a little uneasy.

As I’ve been a steady and occasionally fierce critic of Bush administration policies, Democratic audiences are often surprised when I tell them that I don’t consider George Bush a bad man and that I assume he and members of his administration are trying to do what they think is best for the country.

After the trappings of office are stripped away, I find the president and those who surround him to be pretty much like everybody else, possessed of the same mix of virtues and vices, insecurities and long-buried injuries, as the rest of us.

No matter how wrongheaded I might consider their policies to be – and no matter how much I might insist that they be held accountable for the results of such policies – I still find it possible, in talking to these men and women, to understand their motives, and to recognize in them values I share.

This is not an easy posture to maintain in Washington. The stakes involved in policy debates are often so high that I can see how, after a certain amount of time in the capital, it becomes tempting to assume that those who disagree with you have fundamentally different values – indeed, that they are motivated by bad faith, and perhaps are bad people.

Outside of Washington, though, America feels less deeply divided. Spend time actually talking to Americans, and you discover that most evangelicals are more tolerant than the media would have us believe, most secularists more spiritual. Most rich people want the poor to succeed, and most of the poor are both more self-critical and hold higher aspirations than the popular culture allows. Most Republican strongholds are 40% Democrat, and vice versa. The political labels of liberal and conservative rarely track people’s personal attributes.

All of which raises the question: what are the core values that we, as Americans, hold in common? One core value, individual freedom, is so deeply ingrained in us that we tend to take it for granted.

Barack Obama, Audacity of Hope

There are a few things that still feel democratic in our “democracy.”

The library still feels democratic. There we all shuffle around, looking for and at the same books. Checking them out for free. Hushing exuberant preschoolers. Click-clacking on stiff computer keyboards. Struggling to make eye contact with the soul scanning the bar codes. Traipsing out to the car with a big stack of cellophaned opportunity while wee ones scamper up on to the landscaping.

Traffic is still democratic. We all basically follow the rules. We all stop at lights, stay in the lines, drive the designated direction, show proper respect for the sick or dead.

You feel democracy at state parks. You feel it at free city museums. You feel it in the park.

It’s not the same at the store. That’s not democracy. That’s being a cog in the commodification wheel. Gathering, unloading, watching, weighing, paying, loading, walking, buckling, unloading. Leaving, driving, stopping, driving, unloading, filing away, throwing away, consuming. Returning the damaged bag of chicken fritters. Ho-hum. A girl’s gotta eat. And smell good. And coif the ‘do. And soothe itchy dog paws.

But voting is still democratic. And it felt especially democratic (little d, mind you) today. I’ve never seen the lines so long at 9am. Never in the 8 years I’ve been voting at this polling place. And granted, I feel sorry for all those A-K people whose line was 3-4 times as long as my little L-K line.

But we all stood. Disoriented. Cranky. Distracted. Determined. Neighbors waving, laughing, complaining, helping, bossing, explaining. Poll-watchers in funny jumpsuits watched. Election workers in ugly aprons guided.

It was exhilarating! I pressed that touch screen so carefully. Wrote in one name for Soil and Water Dude. Avoided voting for the two guys I know a little too well. And I voted for a democrat for the first time in my life.

I got my sticker and left. Got my free coffee at Starbucks. After we plant some tulip bulbs, we will have an all-American dinner tonight (chicken-n-dumplin’s) as we watch the returns.

This is a historic election. Like Roosevelt was for my grandparents. And Kennedy was for my parents. And even Reagan was for my teenage self. Just like Geraldine Ferraro’s 1984 defeat was the death of second-wave feminism, I think Sarah Palin’s defeat today is the death of the Christian Right. It’s time for it to go.

It feels like a clean slate. A new start. And I’m eager to see what God will do next. I know that my brothers and sisters on the Right think it’s punishment. I’m not convinced.

Ask me again in four years.

In Bloomington, Indiana right off the main drag is People’s Park. It’s a very bohemian place, as my Mom would say. I’ve heard Bloomington police officers quip that they like having the park because it keeps all the rabble-rousers in one place where they can be observed and controlled. It’s a way to keep the peace.

Randy Balmer describes American culture similarly. He argues that the reason American politics are generally so conservative (and European politics are so not) is that the Founders sectioned off all the zealous creativity to religion and the private sphere when they separated Church and State so that the government could operate rather uneventfully.

But the church has not been so separated from the state in the last forty years. At least, not the conservative Evangelical church and the political Right. Here’s how Balmer remembers it all:

Then, a Southern Baptist Sunday school teacher, Jimmy Carter, began to lure evangelicals (Southerners especially) out of their apolitical torpor. Televangelist Pat Robertson, for instance, claimed to have “done everything this side of breaking FCC regulations” to elect Carter in 1976. Four years later, however, Robertson and many other evangelicals abandoned Carter in favor of Ronald Reagan. By then, the Religious Right, this loose federation of politically and religiously conservative organizations that coalesced as a political movement during the Carter administration, had taken on a life of its own.

Leaders of the Religious Right threw their considerable heft behind Reagan in the 1980 election. In so doing, they turned their backs on Carter…The fact that Reagan, as governor of California, had signed a bill legalizing abortion didn’t seem to bother the leaders of the Religious Right; nor did the fact that he was divorced and remarried, a circumstance that had disqualified Nelson Rockefeller from any hopes of evangelical support in the 1960s. Although Newsweek had pronounced 1976 “The Year of the Evangelical,” that declaration turned out to be four years premature; all three major candidates in the 1980 election claimed to be evangelical Christians.

In fairness, not all evangelicals jumped on the Reagan-Religious Right bandwagon. One evangelical publication cautioned that “more space in the Bible is devoted to calls for justice and care for the poor than the fact that human life is sacred.” The editorial warned of the dangers of single-issue politics. “Too narrow a front in battling for a moral crusade, or for a truly biblical involvement in politics, could be disastrous,” Christianity Today concluded. “It could lead to the election of a moron who holds the right view on abortion.”

Pollster Louis Field determined that, without evangelical support in the 1980 presidential election, Reagan would have lost to Carter by 1 percent of the popular vote. This is not the place to argue whether Reagan’s policies were good or bad, Christian or not Christian, but rapturous leaders of the Religious Right crawled into bed with the Republican Party in 1980 and heralded Reagan’s election as a harbinger of the Second Coming. Indeed, Reagan’s election in 1980 and his reelection four years later cemented the political alliance between the Religious Right and the Republican Party. Ever since, shamelessly exploiting the “abortion myth,” the fiction that the Religious Right mobilized in direct response to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, leaders of the Religious Right have preached that neoconservative ideology and Republican Party policies offer the most compelling representation of the evangelical faith.

As I’ve processed the intense reactions to my single, relatively insignificant, so-far-one-time vote for a Democrat, I’ve come to realize that fundamentalism is not a religious movement that spills over into politics. No, it’s a political movement that uses religious devotion to make it stick.

That’s why every statement is read as overtly persuasive and even coercive when it may be nothing more than expressive.

That’s why the predictably first response to an Evangelical voting for Obama is “You think it’s gonna be any different over there with them?” It’s a flip in politics that’s assumed, instead of an entirely different and nonpartisan construction of how our faith informs politics.

That’s why, I’m coming to believe, the reactions to our voting for Obama are eerily similar to the reactions to our not spanking our kids. Both acts are seen as deviant, dangerous, disloyal, and unbiblical. Both invite boundariless lectures. Both are really just outside the tradition of the Religious Right.

And that’s why, I guess, people are, to my utter shock, far less bugged by our leaving BJU — maybe because BJU is really not as much at the center of the Religious Right as the GOP and punitive discipline (a.k.a. James Dobson) are. I’m just not sure yet.

But this melding of Faith and Politics, this Titantic of the Religious Right is heading straight for the iceberg. We all see it coming. Some of us have jumped off long ago. Like David Kuo. Some of us are trying to throw life preservers to those still on board. Some are trying to play hymns of comfort for the inevitable demise. Some may even stubbornly go down with the ship.

We all know, of course, this will give us a chance to comically correct our own tragedy and dismantle our calcified integration of our Faith and our Politics.

We need something new.

I got a glimpse of this something new the other day. I was corrected on this very point — that I inadvertently assume that my Faith is the center of everyone‘s political judgment — and by straight-up comedy no less. Aasif Mandvi appeared on the Daily Show to “comment” on McCain’s reaction to his poll worker who didn’t trust Obama because “he’s an Arab.” McCain responded with “No . . . He’s a decent family man.”

I personally was so relieved by McCain’s dispelling ugly rumors that I didn’t even see the obvious flaw in his reasoning. As soon as Mandvi appeared on screen though, I started to laugh . . . . and get the point — to ironically see my own blindness.

Colin Powell expanded on the same point but more deliberatively:

He’s right. It shouldn’t matter. In the United States, it doesn’t have to matter.

And it shouldn’t matter to those of us who passionately, whole-heartedly follow Christ either. This is not a plea for a can’t-we-all-just-get-along permissiveness that ignores obvious differences. It’s a plea to put aside the fear and act in power, love, and soberness like Paul advised Timothy.

If we follow Paul’s advice, if we work in our vocations like Luther advised, we’re not going to try to protect a movement or promote a party. We’re not going to get mad when someone steps outside of the cultural morés. And the government won’t have to worry about cordoning us off into a kind of “Preacher’s Park” where they can watch us, contain us, and check us off as supportive but irrelevant.

And our all-important faith in Christ won’t be reduced to the ghetto of civic life either — an ugly, amatuerish spray-painted scrawl that the world drives by at 70 mph.

I wrote my book to tell the Left they didn’t need to fear fundamentalism. So I’m writing now to tell the Religious Right to stop acting so scared and so scary.

This past weekend, we went to see a Civil War Re-enactment. Since Grant and I are living history junkies, we thought this would be a vivid way to learn about an earlier time. My oldest brought his powder horn and dummy rifle (while I was the one who accidentally clobbered a Confederate general standing on the sidelines!). My youngest brought his revolver. We were ready.

Now, I’m a Detroiter — a Yankee! ::gasp:: — living in South Carolina — that state with a proud rebellious streak of red clay pan. When my oldest found himself getting lost in the noisy amateur theater and asked me, “Mommy, which ones are the bad guys?” I struggled to answer as I stood among my dyed-in-the-wool Carolinians watching the faux fight. I snuggled him close and said, “Oh honey, it’s complicated. They are all Americans.”

We left the battle early when it ambled too far down the hill to see, and we wandered toward the camp. Three “confederates” played some old-timey music for us with their bass fiddle, guitar, and mandolin. We were all entranced by the smell of the wood smoke, the cold autumn bite in the air, the sight of those beautifully simple white tents in a row, and the sound of a century ago. In a low-country drawl, one gentleman told us about their infantry and this all-encompassing hobby: “Yeah, we all have to play Yankees some of the time. Everybody owns two uniforms — one for each side. And if anybody won’t play a Yankee, we show them the exit! It’s no fun if you don’t have two sides.”

Burke would be proud. To be able to don the vestments of the opposing side is just that kind of comedic irony that keeps you from taking yourself too seriously. The guy you’re fake-shooting at today might be your compatriot next weekend. To walk in the shoes of the other side even for play-acting keeps the fight from becoming tragic. Brother against brother is as easily brother with brother even in just a week.

In other words, you have to act in this week’s skirmish in a way that makes next week’s alignment still possible.

And this election season I’ve seen that kind of comedy very clearly in one candidate’s words.

I have never seen Burke’s tragedy and comedy play out so predictably in an election. Oh sure, there are extremes on all sides. Many of Obama’s supporters, for instance, have skewered Hillary Clinton and have made their candidate a tragic hero. Humans are bent toward tragedy.

But in the candidates’ words themselves you can see their dramatically different metanarratives. McCain’s is simple. There is evil and he alone will destroy it. It’s a stock morality tale — with clear-cut characters for who’s good and who’s evil. Of course, in his telling, good is us and ours and evil is them and theirs. And he’s the hero in his story, rescuing the damsel America from the evil terrorists/Democrats/economy/communists/media/intellectual urban elite. He portrays himself alone as the hero. No matter what antics he tries to pull, McCain-as-Hero has been the consistent trope.

Obama’s story is more complex. There is no clear-cut good and evil. And, no matter how his supporters are portraying him (and it is nauseating. Don’t get me wrong), in his own words he is not the hero. He will even say that he‘s not fixing the problems. We are fixing the problems. “Yes, we can!” as the public-address-cum-music-video repeats.

All in all, McCain’s drama is tragic. Fear is the agency for destroying a clearly defined enemy of evil. Within Obama’s talk it’s us-vs.-the-problem.

There are many legit criticisms of Obama. I can understand doubting that the system can solve the problems that Obama claims it will. That’s fair enough.

But I can’t help but conclude that many have so internalized the black-and-white story of tragedy that they simply resist the complexity Obama dramatizes. They shrug it off as mere “eloquence.” They yell threats at crowded rallies. They hang him in effigy.

That’s why we were all relieved to see this recent comic relief — both candidates dressed like funny penguins and laughing at themselves. While some hacks were turning even that into a competition, it did help us all visualize a country post-November-4, after the battle, when we might be aligned with the person against whom we’re fighting now.

My oldest wanted a Civil War hat on Saturday. He chose a “blue coat hat” because “I like blue. And brother, you get a grey coat hat. Then we can switch!” . . . But he didn’t want a hat. He wanted a chicken.

For the first time in my life this year, I’m not voting straight ticket for the Republican party. And boy! are people ticked about it. Judging by the intense reaction, you’d think that quitting my life’s ministry, changing churches, and leaving fundamentalism entirely is nuffin’ compared to my simple, generally-private, individual little vote for Barack Obama.

I’ve gotten a lot of questions — sincere ones, curious ones, flabbergasted ones, and peeved ones. I’ve put off answering them thoroughly because I’m slow and pedantic. My reasons needed time to stew.

Before I state my reasons, let me point out that there are many political conservatives who are also voting for and even endorsing Obama, and the reactions they’ve received have been even more vicious than mine. Kathleen Parker has become my newest hero. And her analysis of the Right stunned me this week because it’s so . . . familiar:

The truth few wish to utter is that the GOP has abandoned many conservatives, who mostly nurse their angst in private. Those chickens we keep hearing about have indeed come home to roost. Years of pandering to the extreme wing — the “kooks” the senior Buckley tried to separate from the right — have created a party no longer attentive to its principles.

But this isn’t about jumping on the conservative bandwagon. Especially a bandwagon I’m not sure I’m even on anymore.

I’ve had people accuse me of just wanting to vote for Obama because it’s an anti-establishment thing to do and that I’m just reacting to leaving BJU. ::shrug:: Grant and I both were impressed four years ago when we heard him speak at the DNC. We both looked at each other and said, “Why isn’t he running? I’d vote for him now!” And this is when we were still in the BJU-fundy camp.

Here are the issues that compel me to vote for Obama (in order of importance):

The War. We need to get out. Yes, we need to get out smoothly, but it needs to be sooner rather than later. McCain sounds all primed to start new conflicts, and I’m not supporting that.

Health Care. I do not trust McCain’s approach to health care and neither does the New England Journal of Medicine. They state it more clearly than I, but while I have my doubts about Obama’s plan, McCain’s sounds like a complete disaster.

Education. “No Child Left Behind” is a joke. McCain doesn’t think it’s too bad — “a great beginning.” That doesn’t bode well. Obama, at least, admits the problems.

Human Rights. I couldn’t agree more with Senator Obama on this one. And McCain, having a great moral reason to stand his ground on torture, seems to flip-flop.

Economy. This is a biggie. In fact, I believe it’s one of three really key criticisms conservatives have against Obama (the other two being experience — which McCain nullified when he chose Palin — and abortion). I understand that the Milton Friedman fans think that the freer the market the better the country. I don’t agree. I don’t passionately disagree either, but I think that only a naive view of history past the 20th-century will allow you to think capitalism is actually fair and wholly good.

I’m impious on this one. I don’t think the free market system is all that and I don’t think it’s more socialized opposite is the greatest evil. Both are riddled with problems — both moral and economic. I understand that in an economic ethic profit is the only value, but I do believe there are other ethical perspectives to consider.

What I do know is that the status quo is not working. But I know that life as we know it will not end if we take a different tactic.

If allopathic medicine is not working, sometimes you go to its homeopathic opposite.

The irony is not lost on me either that those who are crying the loudest about Obama’s plan for the economy make significantly more than our <$50K. Significantly more.

===================

My friends on the Christian Right insist that the two most important issues which should compel me to vote for McCain are same-sex marriage and abortion. I listened closely during all four debates, and the only time same-sex marriage came up was with the VP debate. And when it comes to policy, both Biden and Palin had the same conclusions. So that’s a toss-up and moot.

And now abortion — the Mother of all Christian Right issues.

I will state unequivocally that I have chosen to believe that life begins at conception. Now, technically we don’t know if life begins when a heart starts beating or at the quickening — when the ancient Hebrews believed it began. But I’ve chosen to give the benefit of the doubt to the Creator on this one and assume that life starts at conception. As a consequence I believe that I have four children waiting for me in Heaven.

Now, I have Christian mommy friends who disagree with me on that point. They believe that life begins sometime between conception and the quickening, and the losses that they’ve experienced were not real “people.” That’s fine. I don’t know. Christians have disagreed about this throughout the centuries. I just know what I’ve chosen to believe.

Thus, except when the life of the mother is in danger, I believe that abortion is an immoral choice. That is the position I was taught growing up, the position that I heard taught in Ethics class at BJU, and the position that I believe best reflects the ancient Biblical principles of always preserving life.

So when it comes to the bottom line on abortion, I am in agreement with most of my conservative Evangelical friends on the Right.

But I am not convinced that anything we’re doing now is working. I know conservative Evangelical women who have always voted “pro-life” but have had an abortion. It seems that our means to saving unborn lives has been ghettoized to the judicial branch alone. I don’t believe politics will solve this one. This problem rests squarely on the Church’s front door.

So I took the issue “off the table” as a voting issue. . . .

Until the last presidential debate. I actually cringed when Bob Schieffer brought it up. I didn’t want to hear Obama confirm all the horrible things I had heard about him on this issue.

I was genuinely surprised.

Obama explained the legislative two-step that was going on with that infamous born-alive bill. But then Obama actually repeated things — even exact phrases — that I had been saying for over 15 years.

But there surely is some common ground when both those who believe in choice and those who are opposed to abortion can come together and say, “We should try to prevent unintended pregnancies by providing appropriate education to our youth, communicating that sexuality is sacred and that they should not be engaged in cavalier activity, and providing options for adoption, and helping single mothers if they want to choose to keep the baby.”

Those are all things that we put in the Democratic platform for the first time this year, and I think that’s where we can find some common ground, because nobody’s pro-abortion. I think it’s always a tragic situation.

Wow. When my freshman speech students would come to me with their persuasive speech topics, abortion was always a “tired topic.” “We all agree in here,” I’d say. “So you have to think of a fresh angle on that issue. No one — even those who support abortion rights — wants more abortions. So that’s some common ground. What can we all do to reduce the number of abortions?”

No one ever took me up on that idea.

But Obama just said it himself. And I know where he got it. He got it from Tony Campolo who stuck his neck out on the issue — amidst a lot of flack — and was welcomed within the Democratic party to find a moral and practical common ground on reducing abortions.

I was impressed and surprised that I was impressed. I thought McCain would match that since that’s one issue he and I fundamentally agree on, right?

Oh dear. How did he blow that one? I was all set to agree with him on it, and then he belittled the one reason that old-school Christian Right agree that abortion should be considered. It was an oddly revealing and condescending moment that disappointed me greatly.

Jim Wallis found more optimism in McCain’s words highlighting this debate statement:

We have to change the culture of America. Those of us who are proudly pro-life understand that. And it’s got to be courage and compassion that we show to a young woman who’s facing this terribly difficult decision. … But that does not mean that we will cease to protect the rights of the unborn. Of course, we have to come together. Of course, we have to work together, and, of course, it’s vital that we do so and help these young women who are facing such a difficult decision, with a compassion, that we’ll help them with the adoptive services, with the courage to bring that child into this world and we’ll help take care of it.

I was stunned that even that grave issue could be handled with such care that my anticipatory cringing could be turned to surprised nodding within a few minutes.

===================

So my Campaign 2008 stock issues are the War, Health Care, Education, Human Rights, the Economy, and now after the last presidential debate Abortion as well. And for me the majority of those decidedly flow toward Obama.

I’m not trying to convince you to vote for Obama on November 4th. I’m only trying to convince you that I have my reasons for the way I’ll cast my vote. And those reasons are informed by facts, reason, and my religious beliefs.

Chickens can be taught that only one specific pitch [of a ringing bell] is a food-signal. . . . If one rings the bell next time, not to feed the chickens, but to assemble them for chopping off their heads, they come faithfully running, on the strength of the character which a ringing bell possesses for them. Chickens not so educated would have acted more wisely. Thus it will be seen that the devices by which we arrived at a correct orientation may be quite the same as those involved in an incorrect one.

Kenneth Burke, Permanence and Change

Did you hear about the guy in NYC who was so closely following his car’s navigation system that he drove straight down a set of railroad tracks . . . right into an oncoming train? No kidding! He and the passenger barely escaped by jumping out of the car.

Piety can be a bad thing.

Burke called it the difference between motion and action. Breathing is motion; sighing is action. The former is involuntary. The latter is intentional and meaningful. Burke explained further that while evolution described the evolving force as simply moving, creation centered on active, intentional God.

You get the picture.

Burke wanted us to act like humans, not move like chickens. Don’t follow the talking box in your car to your certain demise!

And when it all comes down to it, I’m pretty positive that that’s why Republicans, specifically those on Christian Right, are so ticked right now. We had been going along, following what our pastors, Christian radio personalities, family, teachers were telling us: “Vote Republican. Don’t mess this up. Just vote Republican. They get us. They understand. They are fighting for us. Just do it.”

Don’t act. Just move.

And now we’re face-to-face with the realization that we got PWNED.

John Whitehead from the Rutherford Institute is as blunt and accurate as you can be:

Like moths flickering about a hot flame, the leaders of the Christian Right are eager to get close to political power. But as anyone who has played the game knows, politics is corrupt and manipulative. And the Christian Right was manipulated by the Bush Administration.

And we’re processing the grief. Deep down, nearly every reaction I’ve got to my recent and public less-than-loyal-to-the-GOP comments can be described as denial pure and simple. And to this participant in and student of American religious rhetoric, the reactions cluster around certain topoi, all variations on the red herring fallacy. So I give you:

The Top Ten Campaign 2008 Fallacies from the Religious Right

(Dog Latin gratis)

“What about them?” Formal Name: Tu Quoque.

• Let’s get this one out of the way. Because after my friends on the Religious Right read that header, they’re already muttering “You gonna give equal time to them, aren’t you?” under their breath. Let’s face it: I don’t know “them.” I haven’t spent my life with “them.” I don’t get vituperative reactions from “them” when I disagree with the standard GOP line. So this is all in the family right now.
• Potential Retort: “That’s not my project.” It worked in grad school. Might work here.

“They are all liars!” “They both do it!” Formal Name: also Tu Quoque.

• This is usually the first line of defense, and what it really reveals is severe undertow of cynicism. It’s the Republican version of “Yo Mama!” As an attempt to put the opponent on the defensive, it’s usually general and imprecise so an effective defense is impossible.
• Retort: You can’t respond with some Zen-like “Aren’t we all liars deep down?” No, you have to reflect feelings. “It is easier to be mad than sad.”

“What about Jeremiah Wright?” Formal Name: Religio est Freakium. It’s a combination of Ad Hominem and Guilt by Association with an extra dash of freak-out over weird religions.

• This is the response I get the most. And it irks me. Because it’s like asking a doctor on the sidewalk, “Hey, I’ve got a pain right here. What could that be?” Your doc isn’t gonna tell you without research and observation. And neither am I! I’m trained in studying religious discourse, and a clip shown ad nauseum on Fox News doesn’t cut it. I know enough about American-grown religion in the black community a la the Nation of Islam to know that we white people just don’t get it. And this white woman is not going to attempt to get it quickly.
• Secondly, HELLO? I spent 20 years within what was for all intents and purposes a pretty racist place. And I don’t buy their defense of racism. There was good there. A lot of good. And, like all human institutions, there was a lot of foolishness, even dangerous and hurtful foolishness. People in glass houses . . . .[/rant]
• The Left is doing it about Sarah Palin too. Everybody’s up in arms that she’s a Pentecostal. And yeah, she is. That doesn’t make her evil. It may reveal a part of her, but it doesn’t reveal all of her.
• Retort: “Can we get back to the issues?”

“How could you?” Formal Name: Argumentum ad Betrayalium. It’s the opposite of Argumentum ad Verecundiam. And it’s related Bandwagon.

• This response is more emotionally weighty than the flabbergasted and understandable “Can you explain this one to me?” It communicates that feeling of (unjustified) betrayal that you’re not voting for the Republican candidate instead of the justified betrayal that the GOP has delivered a real loser candidate. It’s a diversion because it’s easier to be mad at an unemployed goof like me than to get mad at someone powerful or out-of-reach. The real problem here is a lack of personal boundaries.
• Retort: “Thanks for your concern. Would you like some bean dip?”

“Terrorist!” Formal Name: Reductio ad Terroristum.

• There’s nothing you can say after that.
• It’s just like Reductio ad Hitlerum with a 21^st-century twist. Or Reductio ad Arabium: “He’s an Arab!” Or Reductio ad Abortum: “He kills babies with a hammer!”
• Retort: We need to update Godwin’s Law with Camille’s Corollary: “As the Religious Right’s candidate falls in the polls, the number of accusations that the opposing candidate is not a Christian will demonstrate an inversely proportional rise.”

“Polemic!” Formal Name: Reductio ad Spinum

• I believe this response is intended to mean “Quit stalling. Get to my point.” But in the grand scheme of things, it is expressing frustration at argumentative creativity. It means, “Quit dancing and stick to the talking points.” Personally, I don’t stick to the talking points. That’s not what I do. If you don’t like it, talk to someone who’ll respond like you want them to.
• Retort: “Huh?”

“How could you fall for all that celebrity/eloquence/schmaltz/rhetoric?” Formal Name: Reductio ad Gorgias

• Okay. I’ll ignore that slam on my academic discipline for now. . . . There has been a ton of schmaltz. No doubt. On all sides. And it is tiring. But who says I am falling for it? Do I buy Dr. Pepper because I like the jingle – even if it is a great jingle? Nope. I like the taste.
• Retort: “I’m not.”

“At least, vote for third party!” “Whatever you do — don’t vote for third party!” Formal Name: Reductio ad Authoritum est Rubberium et Tu est Glueium

• Talk about an argumentative tennis match. “Third party is the least of all evils;” “The third party is the biggest waste of your civic energy.” “At least be consistent with my values and vote for Bob Barr;” “You think Ralph Nader could actually win?” Whatever it is you’re planning to do is wrong and you must do the opposite. Which is also wrong so you must just vote for the GOP: it’s the only possible choice.
• Retort: “Vote your conscience. I’m voting mine. That’s all you have left after this campaign.”

“If you think you’re offended, well, I’m offended more.” Formal Name: Reductio ad Colbertum

• It is an attempt to pirate the usually left-wing trope of “political correctness.” It falls flat. It’s like when a rich friend complains that his boat needs a new whatever-it-is-that-boats-need while your dishwasher is broken, your credit cards are maxed out, and your goofy, incontinent dog is bald from all the obsessive licking.
• Retort: The only way to respond is to imagine the person is channeling Stephen Colbert. Then, with comic irony fully intact, you may move on. WristStrong!

“Either you’re for us or you’re against us.” Formal Name: Reductio ad Absurdum

• This is the most sacrilegious of the fallacies because it takes a Scriptural phrase and imposes that formal either-or bifurcation on anything and everything. “You’re either for McCain or you’re a communist.” “You either love America or you’re voting for Obama.” “You either are smart and agree with me or you’re an argula-eating, Huffington-reading loser.”
• Retort: “Says who?”

The Christian Right has been so painfully loyal to the GOP since the 1980s, and now we’re hearing the warning whistles and seeing the light coming closer and closer. And we’re bickering amongst ourselves about who jumped off the tracks first. Just ACT!

Be pious to the Gospel! Don’t be pious to the Party.

Right next to their portrait of Jesus Christ (which I always imagined was the then-contemporary Walter Sallman portrait), my paternal grandparents had another picture — a portrait of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I still have it. It hangs in my “office” (I am, after all, the self-appointed chair of Rhetorical Studies of the School of Lewis) next to my “I Love Lucy” Barbie doll collection. The portrait itself has outlasted the glass that protected it.

Grandma always said that FDR saved their home. According to all my grandparents, the New Deal made it possible for my family to stay out of the Poor House.

My family’s stories have always been flavored with a political zest. My parents were children of immigrants and didn’t speak English when they started school. Governmental programs made a real, material difference in their working class lives. I grew up hearing that labor unions were a good thing. A very good thing. And Social Security? Sure, there were problems, but it was overall a much-needed enterprise and Dad explained specifically and personally why. At U of M, my Dad was actually nominated to be president of the campus Communist party. He did refuse to run, but not because he disagreed.

So when I attended my very, very Republican and very, very middle-class-and-white Christian day schools, I knew that the opinions they presented as Truth weren’t as plainly so. They insisted that prayer should be in public schools like it used to be; my Mom remembered that she never prayed in school (she did enjoy the honky-tonk piano playing from her classmates though!!). They said unions were evil; Dad said they were necessary. They talked like America won every conflict it was forced to enter; Dad reluctantly and with a heavy sigh told me about Vietnam. I do vaguely remember my dad writing a lengthy letter to my third-grade teacher correcting her about her goofy perspective on dinosaurs, but I can’t for the life of me remember the specifics. And when I came home saying that my U.S. history teacher said that “Nixon was the best president our country had ever had,” my dad was flabbergasted and stated baldly and loudly, “BUT HE LIED!”

I’m saying all this not to say that my family was completely correct in their perceptions of FDR’s policies. I have studied enough history to know and to understand the criticisms. Nor were my Christian Day school teachers completely in error (although I do think Dad and Mom had the upper-hand argumentatively).

I’m just saying that there was always a tension. Even from elementary school. It was more than a bemused detachment a la MST3K that all Gen-Xers relish. There always was a tension between the critical but sharp focus in those family snapshots and the glossy but fuzzy ABeka illustrations in those fundamentalist history books. A conflict between personal stories and official (and politicized) memory. Maybe it was more like a conversation between the two. But I always knew that even in school history was an often-commodified reflection, deflection, and selection of reality that contradicted my own experience.

And it was a very, very good thing.