Indiscriminate Religious Attacks From The Left, Evangelicals Asking For It, and More
We are all in this together…
Christopher Hitchens is an “equal opportunity” hater of religion, but his latest piece on Romney rises to levels of vitriol rarely experienced in American commentary.
In a video response of revolting sanctimony and self-pity
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The Book of Mormon, when it is not “chloroform in print” as Mark Twain unkindly phrased it, is full of vicious ingenuity.
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So phooey, say I, to the false reticence of the press and to the bogus sensitivities that underlie it. This extends even to the less important matters. If candidates can be asked to declare their preference as between briefs and boxers, then we already have a precedent, and Romney can be asked whether, as a true believer should, he wears Mormon underwear.
This goes on and on. Of course, this is the man that wrote a book called, God Is Not Great. Which is the real point – Hitchens has it in for religion, and if he succeeds at banging Romney this way, Evangelicals will be next.
And they are asking for it…
In the form of Mike Huckabee. See the Straight from the Source sidebar for our take on Huckabee’s latest ad. But Robert Novak makes it plain:
The rise of evangelical Christians as the force that blasted the GOP out of minority status during the past generation always contained an inherent danger: What if these new Republican acolytes supported not merely a conventional conservative but one of their own? That has happened with Huckabee, a former Baptist minister educated at Ouachita Baptist University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. The danger is a serious contender for the nomination who passes the litmus test of social conservatives on abortion, gay marriage and gun control but is far removed from the conservative-libertarian model of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan.
Novak is here helping draw the line between religious influence and crossing the line into identity politics. Huckabee as we note in the sidebar is clearly playing identity politics.
As another example of asking for it, consider this piece from the American Spectator:
But clean, faithful living and friendly behavior isn’t the nexus for the Christians who have reservations about Romney, which most Mormons, Romney supporters and outside observers don’t seem to understand. Instead it’s about the Christians’ personal validation and legitimization of a religion they believe leads to the destruction of the soul.
Now is it just me, or is casting a vote for government office based on whether the vote would provide “personal validation and legitimization of a religion they believe leads to the destruction of the soul” not precisely ESTABLISHMENT of a religion. Oh sure, in this case it is a person in a voting booth and not government decree, but is it not de facto the same thing?
Lowell: The same writer, Paul Chesser, seems to have a bit of a fixation on validating Mormonism at the ballot box. He said this three weeks ago:
Critics of these evangelicals’ approach to voting say to deny Romney support because of his religion amounts to prejudice. But for the most part Christians believe that Mormon theology leads its adherents to an eternal separation from the Lord. Undoubtedly poll data following the primaries and general election will identify which candidate(s) the evangelicals supported. Do you think they want to stand before God, after they die, and explain why they helped elevate to the highest level of global influence a person who represents false Christianity?
I find it troubling that arguments like this are appearing in credible conservative journals like the American Spectator. Could not some Evangelicals say the same thing about Catholics or Seventh-Day Adventists? Once this kind of thinking becomes legitimate, where will it end?
Speaking of Identity Politics…
Some people have to “choose” an identity.
“Devout black churchgoers’ issue set is pretty much the same as other African Americans, which is big on economic issues, health care and dealing with poverty and education,” said David Bositis of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. “When African Americans say they are conservative, it doesn’t mean they are politically conservative. It means that they are conservative in terms of their personal behavior.”
The evangelical church’s racial split turns on that point. The black evangelical church developed a penchant for social justice and progressive politics as part of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. White fundamentalists steered clear and after the passage of Roe v. Wade made fighting legalized abortion their signature political issue.
This is going to get really ugly, really fast, and it points out one of the huge problems in identity politics – trying to conflate identities. This piece relies on the conflation black = liberal = Democrat. Each label is applicable in a different arena, they really cannot be equated because the intersection of the sets represented by each (for the math-challenged, I refer here to Venn diagrams that you may remember from school) is limited.
The efforts that started in the MSM, but seems to have been picked up by a certain section of Evangelicals with earnest, to equate conservative = creedal Christian = Republican cannot work. The other sets will unite to reject the label that is seeking to take over.
Quick Takes…
More on the “perfection” thing. Give me a break.
So, why precisely is this news?
Finally…
Tired as I am of the endless stream of Romney/Osmond comparisons, this made me laugh, and has a point.
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coltakashi on 27 Nov 2007 at 6:49 pm #
Hitchens’ piece displays the same blatant religious ignorance as his attacks on Christianity and religion in general. His main assertion, that a person who was a Mormon before the 1978 change in policy on priesthood ordination of people of African descent, is somehow responsible for that prior policy, could just as easily be applied to label as racist anyone alive in America before passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. How about asking Mike Huckabee why the Southern Baptists split from other Baptists, and about Baptist congregations that stayed racially segregated into the 1970s?
Hitchens apparently did not read the Washington Post story about the enthusiastic Mormon congregation in Nigeria who represent some 250,000 African Mormons. Hitchens is accusing Ghanaians and Kenyans who are Mormon of racism! He is accusing a million Brazilians (many of whom are black) of racism! He is accusing 1 million Mexican Mormons of racism! And so on.
Only the appalling ignorance of the general public allows this appalling ignorance about who Mormons are and what they believe to flourish in the media. The fear of people who actively oppose Romney’s election because it would give “prominence” to Mormons is that, once he takes office, Americans will learn what Mormons are really like, and will find out that people like Hitchens and various virulent anti-Mormons have been lying to them.
The claim that anything that leads people into a false religion must be suppressed, even if it means a violation of the First Amendment free speech clause and of Article VI, is precisely a desire to use government to oppress and censor a minority religion. It was precisely the same fear of Mormons acquiring political power that led to war by the Missouri militia on the Mormons, that led to the Illinois militia murdering Joseph Smith, that led to the US Army being sent to Utah by Buchanan. How can Christians who are worried about the persecution of Christians in foreign lands endorse the same kind of prejudice in America?
Mormons have been happily voting for Non-Mormons for governor, Senator, Representative and President for a century! In Utah’s first years they elected a Jew as governor and a Catholic as senator. Anyone who campaigned by explicitly talking about his association with the LDS Church would be criticized by Mormons for excluding other religions. When I was a political intern in 1972, our Republican candidate, Nick Strike (a Greek Orthodox member) was criticized for an ad that was taken by some to imply that he was Mormon. When my law professor, Edwin B. Firmage, ran for the House as a Democrat, his campaign brochure featured his association with Roy Wilkins of the NAACP and his grandfather, Hugh B. Brown, a beloved but deceased member of the Presidency of the Church (who was also a Democrat). He was not criticized for the Wilkins association, but for trading on his ties to the Mormon heirarchy (though he had written a biography of Brown and his middle name was Brown!). Utah elected Cal Rampton, a Democrat, to three terms as governor, despite his being a Mormon who imbibed regularly.
So here’s the story: Mormons are much more tolerant of everyone else’s religion in candidates than generic Christians are.
Perhaps the anti-Mormons who fear Romney’s election should consider this: Their display of religious prejudice is going to persuade a lot of people that the Mormons are nicer people and better at practicing Christianity than many traditional Christians. A Mormon president is going to have little influence on people’s conversion, just as displaying the Ten Commandments on public land has converted no atheist. What will drive people to Mormonism is the nasty and mean things that Christians say about Romney. It is a well documented fact that many converts to Mormonism first investigate it in reaction to irrational bigotry against it. In my personal reading of conversion stories, it has been a factor in perhaps 10% or more of conversions to Mormonism. Historian Leonard Arrington related the story of his wife joining the Church in that way. The current controversy has given the Church enormous publicity, like the story about Nigerian Mormons. Evangelicals who denounce Romney for his religion are sending people NOW to the Mormon Church, an effect that goes on every day, whether Romney is nominated or elected or not!
coltakashi on 27 Nov 2007 at 7:40 pm #
One postscript. The corrolary to fear that a Mormon president will bring more people into the Mormon church is that ANY prominent Mormon will do the same thing, and must be suppressed by “right thinking” Evangelical Christians. So kick Glenn Beck off the air. Deny Gladys Knight her Grammies, along with her multi-ethnic Mormon choir that won the Grammy for best gospel album! No Mormon professional athletes allowed (take that Danny Ainge), or any amateur ones either (sorry, can’t go to the Olympics). No Mormons promoted to general in the military. No Mormon university presidents. No Mormon CEOs, no Mormon authors, no Mormon scholars, no Mormon reporters. Round them up and put them in a concentration camp where they can’t take anyone else to hell. Take away their right to vote or serve on a jury. Better yet, kill their leaders.
It’s all been tried already. Which proved that America’s 19th Century “Christians” were a lot like the medieval “Christians” who turned the crusades to liberate the Holy Land into personal rape and pillage campaigns, and who persecuted Jews out of Spain, and conducted wars between Catholics and Protestants all over Europe. Not to mention the 20th Century “Christians” who operated the KKK.
What amazes me is that some Christians think they can lie about Mormons without sending themselves to Hell. Obviously, they worship a different Jesus than the one who taught about the good Samaritan.
coltakashi on 29 Nov 2007 at 8:57 pm #
Compared to Hitchen’s ignorance, one expects better of Kenneth Woodward, whose own essay and his defense of it to Hugh Hewitt were analyzed by you last April.
Woodward appreciates some religions, but doesn’t have the time or energy to actually learn anything about Mormonism, or at least to correct his understanding when his errors are pointed out to him.
This syndrome, which I will call “Woodwardism”, is the defining characteristic of all the religious people who attack Romney on grounds of his religion: an utter readiness to believe the worst things ever said about Mormons, without the willingness to invest the few seconds it would take to look at Mormon.org and LDS.org and find out what Mormons tell each other about what they believe.
Woodwardism allows religious ministers to state, and religion journalists to write, that the Mormon prophet might give orders to a Mormon president, when there is no evidence in history of any Mormon president directing any Mormon governor or Senator or Representative what to do. The Church does not tell members what to do with their
businesses, it does not tell generals where to deploy their troops, and it does not tell Senators how to vote on legislation.
Woodward has shown an obdurate unwillingness to believe what Mormons tell him they believe. For example, he has been called time and again for insisting that Mormons do not believe that there is any role for Christ’s atonement or grace in salvation, despite the fact that the Book of Mormon is repeatedly eloquent about it.
Woodward’s blindness clearly differentiates on a religious basis; it is not general. As the best example I know of, see his essay for First Things in October, 2002, entitled “The Last Acceptable Prejudice” at http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=2073.
In this essay, Woodward talks convincingly about how the media publish unjustified and excessive and unbalanced criticism of the Catholic Church. I think what he says is true. Unfortunately, in a beam-in-the-eye kind of way, Woodward seems utterly blind to the fact that he commits the same kind of sin against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And he has done it over decades of writing, despite it being pointed out to him time and again.
The mark of someone who really knows their subject is that, when you ask him questions about a statement they made, he can tell you the facts and analysis that led him to that conclusion, subtle shadings that add dimension and meaning and solidity to his previous statement, and adapt the explanation of it to the audience and make distinctions as to
the limits of his assertion.
There is none of that in Woodward’s response to Hewitt. Under questioning, it all falls apart. His essay is shown to be a thin facade over a light frame of prejudice and ignorance.
I know, based on some of his other writings, that Woodward is capable of better things. But he clearly has never thought that Mormons were worth the investment of his time or contemplation. He has never believed there was something worth learning about them or from them. There is no evidence that Woodward in his writings that he has read the book by Millett or the one by Robinson, both mentioned in your analysis, that simply try to explain Mormon doctrines intelligibly to Evangelicals.
That is especially ironic, because a number of non-Mormon scholars are finding all sorts of interesting depth and meaning in Mormonism that they think should be considered by others, as a matter of shining light on more universal religious and philosophical concerns. Harold Bloom praised Joseph Smith as an original religious genius. Margaret Barker finds in Smith and his religious publications a remarkable correlation with her
own modern analysis of the ancient Israelite faith that was practiced in the pre-Exilic temple in Jerusalem. A body of scholars spent two days reviewing Smith’s impact on aspects of religion and society at a symposium at the Library of Congress.
I don’t think Woodward has paid attention to any of that. He long ago filed Mormons into their “corporate religion” pigeonhole, and he is not interested in appreciating Smith as a “genius”, even at a time when more and more of his “radical” religious ideas, such as post-mortal salvation for the dead who have not heard the gospel, are emerging from modern theologians’ contemplation of what the Bible really says. He thinks that, as far as Mormon theology goes, “there is no there there”, forever ignorant because he is too fastidious to reach in and learn how deep it really is.