Good Friday greetings to our readers.

Morton Kondracke spells out the depth of Obama’s problem, and makes it pretty clear why that problem is political, not religious:

In the 1960s, black Americans had a choice whether to side with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. or Malcolm X — the healer who sought to fulfill America’s highest ideals through nonviolent struggle, or the raging polarizer who tried to mobilize blacks out of resentment of whites.

Jeremiah Wright — not just back then, but to this day — took the Malcolm X route. And Barrack Obama chose the Rev. Wright as his pastor.

John’s tied up today, but notes by e-mail that Kondracke’s piece “makes the point that populism builds disunity, which ties Obama’s current problems in a neat knot with Huck’s approach.”

Ah, yes, Mike Huckabee. What does he think about all this? Not surprisingly, he continues as the would-be conservative voice of populism. David Freddoso quotes him at The Corner:

It is interesting to me that there are some people on the Left who are having to be very uncomfortable with what Wright said when they were all over a Jerry Falwell or anyone on the Right who said things that they found very awkward or uncomfortable years ago. Many times, those were statements lifted out of the context of a larger sermon. Sermons, after all, are rarely written word for word by pastors like Rev. Wright, who are delivering them extemporaneously and caught up in the emotion of the moment. There are things that sometimes get said that, if you looked at them in print, you’d say, “Well, I wouldn’t have put it quite that way.”

Really? A pastor extemporizes his sermons and sometimes, well, just goes “over the top” a bit? Like saying “God d**n America,” in church? From the pulpit? This is a very forgiving view indeed!

Freddoso later reports from an e-mail he received from a Lutheran pastor who sees the preacher’s duty a little differently:

[T]he sermon cannot be the mere flippant, crass, light, or half-considered thoughts of the moment. It is a frightfully serious thing to mislead the people of God . . . the judgment on those who do so is severe. I tremble at it when I must go up to preach on Sundays, praying always that God will not let me mislead his people . . . That Mr. Huckabee & Mr. Wright believe these considerations to be outweighed by the need to create, or get caught up in, an emotional moment is itself very disturbing . . .

One does not toy with the things of God.

With Mr. Huckabee it is often (usually?) difficult to tell just what he takes seriously and what he does not. I hope John will weigh in, since he’s attuned to creedal Christian ways in a manner that I will never be.

Oh, well, a joyous Easter weekend to all.

John (briefly): The orthodox Christian view of the pastoral, and in some cases priestly, office varies hugely in its details across the spectrum of denominations. The Lutheran pastors presents what is the predominant mainstream Protestant view, and Roman and Orthodox Catholics kick that up a notch. However, lower church traditions, like the Baptists, AME, CoC, Pentecostals take preaching somewhat less seriously.

What they all share in common is an understanding of the pastoral, or priestly, office as occupied by someone that is “set aside,” someone that uniquely and specially represents Christ in this world. A person occupying the office has a special burden to represent the grace, truth, sacrifice, and love of the Savior.

Problems arise when we try to figure out how to fulfill that role in contexts outside the church, like politics. In one real sense, Wright and Huckabee have been confronted with the same problem. Kondrake illustrates the essential difference in the MLK and Malcom X approach to civil rights. Creedal Christians have a similar choice when confronted with religious competition from Mormons. We can take the Bill Keller approach, or we can rely on the fact that God’s grace in us will make itself apparent and attractive to those around us, creating opportunities for frank but cordial discussion.

The problem is that both men, Wright and Huckabee, saw the political battles they were fighting as essentially religious ones. Wright went Malcolm X/Bill Keller all the way. Huckabee was nearly Pharisaical in his efforts to appear like MLK, but do Malcolm X underground.

This is where the much discussed separation of church and state is SO important. In the end, both men are trying to have religious wars on political turf - that is the essential problem. This, by the way, is why MLK was effective and Malcolm X remains a somewhat disgraced figure. MLK fought political battles on political terms, but as a man changed and improved by his faith. That is all I ask of any politician of faith.

It is a shame Mike Huckabee could not figure that out.

And that is a lot more than I intended to write.

Postscript from Lowell: Today’s Ramirez cartoon seems appropriate on several levels:

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Just assume, for a moment, that lightning strikes and John McCain selects Mitt Romney as his running mate. Would The Question rise up to bite them both?

We’re not seeing much lately among the punditry suggesting a lot of concern about that. Joe Gandelman, at The Moderate Voice, says McCain has been making interesting noises about Romney as a veep nominee:

The Republican party’s Presidential nominee to be, Senator John McCain, is now dropping hints that, yes, he would indeed seriously consider his former nomination rival former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney as his running mate. . . . it would make sense. It would be perhaps the first Republican ticket in many years containing two media savvy politicos who know how to talk to the TV camera but also come across well on the TV camera.

Gandelman’s source is this Boston Herald Story, in which McCain is quoted as saying that

the former Bay State governor ran an effective primary campaign and is a rising star in national politics.

“Millions of Republicans voted for him,” McCain said during a swing through New Hampshire. “He’s earned himself a place in the future of the Republican Party.”

Notably, Gandelman lists the “downsides” to such a ticket, and . . . none of them includes Romney’s Mormonism!

Similarly, the CBS News blog (to which Gandelman links) says Romney’s attacks on McCain during the primary races could come back to haunt Romney. I don’t really think so, but again, like Gandelman, CBS does not mention Romney’s faith as a reason he’d be a bad choice.

What is going on here? Several possibilities come to mind.

First, these pundits could simply be clueless. Maybe the elephant in the room suddenly disappeared, but I don’t think so - not after 20 months of the news media talking about him incessantly.

Next, maybe the pundits are right - or a little bit right. Psychologically, maybe it doesn’t bother hard-core Evangelicals as much for the veep nominee to belong to a faith that upsets them so. That’s illogical, but I’m talking about psychology. Even though the vice president really is a heartbeat from the presidency, most of us don’t really believe the unthinkable will happen.

And yet . . . and yet . . . McCain needs to do what he must to win. If he really thinks he needs all the conservative votes he can get, then why would he risk alienating hard-core Evangelicals by choosing Romney?

Then again, those people are already about as alienated as can be. A “M & M” ticket would presumably not make anything worse.

As you may be able to tell, I am frankly undecided as to whether The Question would haunt a McCain-Romney ticket. What do you think?

John Takes A Stab: My off-the-cuff answer is “depends on Huckabee.” I am speaking metaphorically here. Let me break that down a bit. Most Evangelicals would have voted for Romney if there was not something they perceived as a more viable alternative in the race. There is a level of unease concerning Mormonism at the highest levels of government (no logic here, it does not seem to exist at the lower levels - it is a symbolism over substance thing) that can be overcome, relatively easily, unless someone specifically manipulates that unease, in the primaries that someone was Mike Huckabee.

That would be troubling for a Romney veep slot save for one fact - no one on the Democratic side comes with sufficient Evangelical credentials to pull off that manipulation. We are watching Obama’s religious credibility evaporate before our very eyes, and Clinton’s went away about a decade ago. No Evangelical leader worth the title is going to say a word at this point, they know the damage this whole thing has wrought.

If Romney is the veep choice, there will be rumblings - something like aftershocks from a major earthquake. There might be some that cause a little damage, but nothing fatal. The worst is over, the significant damage done. My guess is the only people that will pay attention at this point are political junkies.
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The “Other Speech”. . .

Obama took to the podium yesterday to address the maelstrom surrounding himself and his former pastor Jeremiah Wright and race in general. You can read the speech here. There is some interesting reaction at RealClearPolitics and On Faith looks at the related and more general question. Amongst the reaction quote at RCP is Ben Smith of Politico:

A smart colleague notes that this speech is the polar opposite of this year’s other big speech on faith, in which Mitt Romney went to Texas to talk about Mormonism, but made just one reference to his Mormon faith.

Obama mentions Wright by name 14 times.

Smith is right, but this surface analysis misses the deeper and far more important issues. This deeper and meatier analysis is hinted at in this piece from Religion News Service:

When Sen. Barack Obama faced the cameras in Philadelphia on Tuesday (March 18), he was caught between his roles as politician and parishioner, forced to condemn his pastor’s words as he tried to advance his own campaign for president.

Experts on the black church say the controversial comments of Obama’s former Chicago pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, have put Obama in an awkward and uncomfortable position. At the same time, however, they have given him a chance to discuss race — including something about the black church — with white Americans.

“The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Rev. Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour of American life occurs on Sunday morning,” Obama said in his speech at the National Constitution Center.

But, with his typical insight, John Mark Reynolds cuts to the heart of the matter (quoting us in the process):

Obama’s Wonderful Speech: His Problem Should Be Political Not Religious or Racial

JMR is absolutely correct. Obama has some huge political problems here, but he should not have religious or racial ones. Sadly, I do not think Obama did anything to help himself on this front. Rather than untangle what within the black church has become a near Gordian knot of religion, race, and politics, he seeks to reinforce that mix without drawing any clear distinctions between them.

This takes us back to the Smith quote above - the deep contrast between Obama’s and Romney’s speech is that Romney endeavored to define the boundary between religion and politics, while Obama worked to fuzz it. This contrast marks the great divide between liberals and conservatives. The irony in this contrast is almost too good to be true. That it is the liberal that values the knot instead of seeks to jettison religion completely, is somehow sweet justice.

But I also think it is deeply reflective of how politics influences religion as much as vice-versa. With some notable exceptions, the black church is more political institution than spiritual one, as Obama himself seems to describe in his speech.

Which brings me to an interesting thing I have noted in all of this. Despite the fact that Jeremiah Wright’s church has HUGELY different values than the average conservative Evangelical church, and with its adherence to liberation theology, which is also radically different than traditional Evangelical theology, there is little coming from the Evangelical voices in all of this. There are exceptions to that observation, but the voices, particularly compared to what Romney had to withstand, and nearly quiescent. Some of that silence, of course, has to do with the fact that as a Democrat fight, not a conservative Republican one, but those voices claimed theology first, not party first, so I would expect them to be as loud about the errant theology here as they were about it there.

Wright’s theology does agree with the average Evangelical on what is generally considered “the essentials” (trinitarian, grace based salvation,…) while Mormons do differ in those “essentials.” However, when it comes to how votes are cast and policies are drafted, Wright’s thought will result in wildly variant results. This fact makes the silence somewhat mind-boggling.

Obama could have served himself and the nation much better by trying to clarify the line between religion and politics, but he failed in that effort. This fact alone limits greatly the value of Obama’s typically outstanding oratory. It is a shame.

Elsewhere…

The CSM looks at David Gushee looking at “the Evangelical Center.”
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The Dems Have Played With Fire . . .

. . . and they are reaping the whirlwind. They are playing religious identity politics, and they are learning it is a force probably beyond their control. The Republicans have hinted at it, but that have been largely balanced by forces arguing against it, because identity politics are largely un-Republican. Charles Krauthammer thinks identity politics is all the Democrats have left to distinguish the candidates.

Of course, they have played identity politics for a very long time now, but racial identity and religious identity are two very different things. Religious identity comes with these pesky truth claims that make people hold it much tighter, and distinguishing religious competition from political competition is very, very difficult as an intellectual exercise; many just can’t pull it off. And thus religious identity is a much more volatile game and I think the Dems are being hanged by their own over-confidence.

It does not help when we see the MSM’s obvious double standard when it comes to religion in the primary from the different parties. American political memory is short, but not this short. Romney has been out only a matter of weeks and even casual observers can detect the obvious differences in the coverage and that is going to haunt the Dems deeply. But apparently they cannot help themselves.

They have a very real problem. Said Peter Wehner on the Commentary magazine blog:

It strikes me that the religious Left commits some of the same fundamental errors as the religious Right did during its heyday: too closely associating Christianity with politics; implying that a proper reading of the Bible will easily translate into a partisan agenda; tending to belittle and demonize political opponents. Both Pat Robertson’s and Jim Wallis’s willingness to vulgarize their Christian faith in order to advance their political agendas has been problematic for both sides.

But where the religious Left has set itself apart is in its stand on political issues. It was wrong, profoundly wrong, in its views on the nature and threat of Soviet communism; on its enchantment with “liberation theology” and Marxist dictators like Fidel Castro and Daniel Ortega; in its unmitigated hostility toward capitalism; in its one-sided criticisms of Israel; in its opposition to welfare reform. The list goes on. And as Reverend Wright has reminded us, there is a very deep, almost bottomless, hatred for America that runs through the hard Left and among some on the religious Left.

For decades, all the media glare has been on the short-comings of the Robertsons and Falwells. Fair enough: they are deeply flawed figures. But it’s long past time to concentrate attention on the words and mindset of those on the hard religious Left–people who attempt to pretty up the noxious views of Ward Churchill and Noam Chomsky in the garb of religious faith and “social justice.”

I could not agree more. The Democratic left is ill-equipped to pull itself back from this brink. The Repubican party, by nature of its fundamentals will recover, but for the Dems this is a natural result of its fundamentals - Their self-destruction continues.

Has Romney Created The Perfect Mormon Storm?

That seems to be the opinion of Richard Bushman.

Bushman said in the last 10 years, there has been huge exposure of Mormonism to the world. The “perfect storm” of Mormonism, Bushman called it, began with the Olympics in Salt Lake City, moved past Joseph Smith’s 200th birthday and onto Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.

Mitt was in charge of two out of three of those cited events. So do all those Mormons we have heard from who wish Mormons would “keep their heads low” dislike Romney?

This is going to be looked upon as a fascinating period in American history.

Lowell, chiming in: There are Mormons I know who dreaded Romney’s entry into the race because of the attacks and ridicule that they (correctly, it turns out) thought would be heaped upon their church. Others I know (who overwhelmingly seem to be politically liberal Mormons) are now sorry Romney entered the race because they think his “flip-flopping” and collaboration with “right-wing” groups reflect poorly on their church.

I reject both points of view, which I am convinced are represented in very small minorities.

Of the first group, I ask: Should we hide our faith “under a bushel?” Since when is it part of our religion — not only Mormonism but Christianity at large — to keep a low profile? How do we square that notion with “go ye into all the world?” Besides, I don’t know about you, but I am not willing to live in a virtual Mormon ghetto.

And to the second group, I say: Remember that a political candidate does not represent his or her church. That is a ridiculous burden to place on anyone. After all, aren’t liberals supposed to be sophisticated, not provincial? In any case, I’ll make you a deal: You don’t have to be responsible for Mitt Romney, and I won’t be responsible for Harry Reid. That’s a fair trade, although I really think I am getting the better part of the bargain, given the hyper-partisan manner in which Senator Reid conducts himself.

Deep Thinking . . .

I found this blog post very interesting.

Everyday people follow politics as though it was their religion. Democrats and Republicans cite their respective political parties’ positions as if they were gospel, and adhere to overarching principles and their corresponding candidates with a passion unmatched in social circles except maybe sports and “the Church.”

I think there is a very important point here. The confusion between the two hurts both.
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Well, as things have turned out, Barack Obama seems to have brewed the perfect politico-religious storm. Our email and comments, and even leftie commentators, albeit in an entirely different fashion, seem to want to draw great distinctions between the religious perils that have fallen on Obama and those that fell on Mitt Romney.

There are distinctions to be very sure, but do those distinctions truly make a difference?  With the very notable exception of what we mentioned on Friday, the storm that currently surrounds Obama is about what his pastor, not he, said. Now, his pastor was an official part of his campaign, but name a campaign yet where someone has not been booted for saying something egregiously stupid. You fire them, you move on (think John McCain and the John Hagee endorsement), but that does not seem to be happening here. Yes, it’s true that Obama, contrary to Romney, invited religion into his campaign instead of simply campaigned as a religious man, but most candidates invoke religion in the course of the campaign. Circumstances forced Romney to be hyper-sensitive; Obama’s statements are standard fare  (save those we cited Friday, which amazingly do not seem to be at the center of this storm); Romney was the exception - and what is happening to Obama proves Romney’s wisdom on that account.

I have a real problem with the guilt-by-religious-association aspects of what is happening to Obama right now.  Now, understand something, Obama is the last man I want to be president of the United States, but this blog is about the proper role of religion in politics, and that is a bi-partisan thing.  The presumption is that because Obama’s long-time pastor said these things, Obama must be like that.  Now, I have no idea what Obama is like in these fields, I am not paying that much attention, but I do want evidence of what Obama thinks - not his pastor.  Heck, I disagree with my pastor about 65% of the time; my denomination, taken as a whole, is on the almost opposite end of the political spectrum from me - that is one of the great things about religion in American.

We cannot condemn a candidate for something one of his associates said, or on the basis of religious affiliation - it is about the candidate, simple as that.  If there were statements of Obama agreeing, we would be in a different situation, but so far, I have not seen that evidence.

The second point I want to make is this:  Remember in the old days when everybody thought this was going to some down to Mitt v. Hillary?  We spent a lot of time wondering what the general was going to look like on the religious front.  Lowell and I both felt that it was going to be very, very ugly in comparison to the primary.   I think this incident is proving our point for us.  This whole thing stinks to me of the Clinton smear machine.  Obama’s pastor’s beliefs have been out there in public since this whole thing started.  We mentioned the radically near-racist nature of the church more than a year ago.  The timing, the way the story is staying alive after the pastors resignation from the campaign, all of it, smells of manipulation of the press, and nobody does that better than the Clintons.

If this attack is allowed to stand, whether the Clintons are behind it or not, though I strongly suspect they are,  it will become a legitimate weapon in future political arsenals.  No one, Evangelical, Protestant, Mormon, Catholic, or otherwise, will want that to be the case.  There is not a single religion that cannot be dug into without unearthing something that can be used to smear a candidate.

The nation does not need this, and might become something else altogether if it goes unchallenged.

Lowell adds:  Very briefly, we have stated on this blog since Day 1 that we don’t think a candidate’s religion should matter, except in the most extreme circumstances.  I think the three-point test advanced by John Mark Reynolds in August 2006 can be useful here: 

First, the religious beliefs of the candidate should be held by a significant number of people and by a group willing to defend them (even if unsuccessfully) in a rational manner.

Second, the group in question should not have religious claims that will naturally lead to horrific, or at least far out, public policy.

Third, the group should have a long track record of generally playing by republican rules in areas where it is dominant. No group is perfect, but the Presidency is too powerful a prize to trust to a new group that might have secret authoritarian leanings.

We don’t know enough to know whether Obama’s church meets these tests, but I have a strong hunch it does.  The key is that Prof. Reynolds is talking about the religious beliefs of a candidate, not the statements of others who are members or leaders of the candidate’s church. 

On the first test, the Trinity United Church of Christ to which Obama belongs is “the largest congregation in the whole United Church of Christ.“  Yes, Obama’s particular congregation does appear to be very afro-centric, which is disturbing or off-putting to many (including me), but it is no small, whacky sect.

I think it passes the second test easily.  This is from the Trinity mission statement:

Trinity United Church of Christ has been called by God to be a congregation that is not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ and that does not apologize for its African roots! As a congregation of baptized believers, we are called to be agents of liberation not only for the oppressed, but for all of God’s family. We, as a church family, acknowledge, that we will, building on this affirmation of “who we are” and “whose we are,” call men, women, boys and girls to the liberating love of Jesus Christ, inviting them to become a part of the church universal, responding to Jesus’ command that we go into all the world and make disciples!

I don’t see any “horrific” or “far out” public policy coming from that.

As for the third test, I don’t see any “secret authoritarian leanings.”  People might not like the tone of the church’s mission statement, but that is unrelated to Obama’s fitness for the presidency.

Yes, we as voters can ask all the questions we want about Jeremiah Wright’s outrageous anti-American statements, and whether Obama agrees with those rantings — but who really thinks he does?  Absent any evidence to the contrary, once Obama repudiates Wright’s statements, I think the matter is over.  Similarly, once McCain repudiated Hagee, that question went away.  And , all Romney had to do about the LDS Church’s former policy on African-Americans was to make it clear he did not agree with the policy and was overjoyed when it ended.  End of questions.  As John says, we need to view religious guilt by association with a very jaundiced eye.
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It was not that long ago that we made a virtual sport of puncturing Huckabee’s claims to divine oversight, approval, and guidance of his campaign. We have, to date, largely ignored Obama’s religious issues because, to date, it was about the church he belonged to, not him. Well, that is rapidly changing:

Barack Obama has put his religion back into the headlines, trumpeting the power and salvation of faith and asking a church audience in South Carolina to help him become “an instrument of God” and join him in creating “a Kingdom right here on Earth.”

Obama has long been trying to capitalize on messianic-type energy to compel his campaign forward, but this is the first time I am aware that that he has claimed actual prophetic status. What was bad for Huck is bad for Obama. I am not sure I need to cover the ground too much here; we have been over it so much. But I do one observation and a hypothetical.

The first is to compare and contrast the news coverage of all this. Obama’s church is now getting a going over that is not that dissimilar, though much less intense, than what Romney’s church did. Now, much as it pains me to say anything nice about a Democrat, he does not deserve this anymore than Romney did. At least until he crossed the Huck line in these claims. What is extraordinary, though, is how much coverage this utterance from Obama has gotten compared to when Huck said the same things repeatedly. I guess if you claim divine intervention from the majority religion, its not news, but from something a little different like Obama’s church it is?

And now the hypothetical. Imagine Huck v Obama. Two men, running for president, both claiming to be God’s best representative. What is the net result of such an election battle? I can promise you it is not good, not good at all. Religious war comes to mind, at least rhetorical war. It would be bad for politics, bad for the churches involved, and bad for the nation in general. That’s why the common convention has been to avoid this kind of stuff.

I find myself shaking my head in amazement - and praying for some wisdom for our candidates.
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