A Time to Laugh

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

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.