Article VI Blog

It’s the weekend, I need to preach.

Consider a column from Ross Douthat this past week:

During his years in the political wilderness, though, Gingrich found religion – both as a convert to the Roman Catholic Church and as a born-again champion of socially conservative causes. He’s spent the last decade producing books and documentaries about America’s Christian heritage. He raised money for a referendum to recall the judges who legalized same-sex marriage in Iowa. His public rhetoric borrows the tropes of the religious right — emphasizing the dangers of secularism, attacking the usurpations of activist judges, and so on. And when he talks about his checkered personal life, it’s always in the language of sin, repentance and redemption.

Man oh man, is that ever the Evangelical narrative!  “Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me, I once was lost but now am found….”

But found for what?  A man shipwrecked on a lifeless desert island can be “found” by the next guy to get shipwrecked.  I guess it’s nice to have company while you die of starvation and thirst, but I cannot help but think there has to be more to this finding thing than just having company in our distress.  Yet too often in Evangelical churches throughout America, the narrative they preach never extends beyond the simple salvation message.  It never asks the question “Now what?”

So many Christians today live their lives in a manner no different after their conversion than before, except now they consume “Christian” branded stuff – music, books, TV and movies.  They never discover the spirituality and genuine character creation of true and deep faith in a supernatural Creator and Redeemer.  Rather than a church, they are  marketplace – one that Newt Gingrich has clearly learned to tap into.

Such faith in name but not necessarily reality is hardly new.  Douthat points out how younger generations view the church today, a church that the Gingrich narrative really does reflect:

Conservative Christianity in America, both evangelical and Catholic, faces a looming demographic challenge: A rising generation that is more unchurched than any before it, more liberal on issues like gay marriage, and allergic to the apocalyptic rhetoric of the Pat Robertson-Jerry Falwell era. To many younger Americans, religious conservatism as they know it often seems to stand for a kind of institutionalized hypocrisy — a right-wing Tartufferie that’s incensed by the idea of gay wedlock but tolerant of straight divorce, forgiving of Republican sins but judgmental about Democratic indiscretions, and eager to apply moral litmus tests only on issues that benefit the political right.

Rallying around Newt Gingrich, effectively making him the face of Christian conservatism in this Republican primary season, would ratify all of these impressions. It isn’t just that he’s a master of selective moral outrage whose newfound piety has been turned to consistently partisan ends. It’s that his personal history — not only the two divorces, but also the repeated affairs and the way he behaved during the dissolution of his marriages — makes him the most compromised champion imaginable for a movement that’s laboring to keep lifelong heterosexual monogamy on a legal and cultural pedestal.

My parents generation did not worship in the strip malls and mega-churches of today, but in tall steeples and and old buildings with labels like Presbyterian, Episcopalian, and Methodist.  But we noted the hypocrisy rampant in those vital social institutions, as this generation notes it in us.  It is from our noting of such hypocrisy that the strip mall and mega churches of today were born.  Apparently we have thrown off the robes of denominationalism for the Hawaiian shirts of Evangelicalism, abandoned the organ for the guitar, but we have not truly changed the tune.

That means we continue to lose on both the cultural and the religious fronts.  I hardly need to document here our cultures continued slide into ugliness.  And who knows what the current generation will come up with to replace the replacement for the reformed.  Jospeh Knippenberg is hopeful:

I haven’t given up on them entirely: some of them will migrate toward religion as they accept some of life’s responsibilities and meet some of life’s challenges.  But a religious witness that seems less politically calculated and calibrated, that is less tied to the exigencies of the moment, and that is not burdened by so much personal baggage may serve the interests of “the church” much better.

I am more guarded.  I am hopeful in God and His promises, but in little else.  God has promised in the end to make things right, but He has also pointed out it is a long and difficult path to that end.

But what I do know is this, Newt Gingrich, as a presidential candidate representing religious faith represents the worst of what we are now, not the best.  I know, his story is perfect – redemption from the darkness – the most Christian of Christian narratives.  The question is; however, is he really out of the darkness, or simply at the mouth of the cave inviting us to join him in semi-darkness?  The ego he has shown in some of his comments as he has reached front-runner status would indicate a lot of darkness remains in his life.  People of deep and abiding faith are invariably people of deep and abiding humility.  And then there are the scuttlebutt and rumors I refuse to repeat….

Knippenberg said:

I’m half-tempted to say that I’d rather have a candidate and a president, less closely identified with conservative Christianity, whose feet I and my fellows can hold to the fire over issues that are close to our hearts rather than someone as mercurial as Gingrich who presumes to know what we want and speak for us.  This doesn’t mean I want someone hostile to my concerns, but perhaps a sympathetic fellow traveler, rather than a self-appointed spokesman and leader.

That makes a lot of sense to me.  Politically, he’s right – we can hold such a fellow traveler accountable instead of be accountable to him.  Religiously, such a candidate would allow us to get to the log in our own eye, rather than focus on the speck in the other guys.

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…If the press, so willing to be accusatory towards Romney for not appearing on the Sunday Shows, has figured out that it might not be a political dodge?  Note this from National Journal’s telling of his first recent appearance:

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney will make his first Sunday news-show appearance in nearly two years when he appears on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace. The pretaped interview is to take place on December 17 in Charleston, S.C., and will air the next day. [emphasis added]

Most of these shows are done live and a lot of us, Gov. Romney included, have more important things to do on a Sunday morning than show up in a TV studio.  Heaven forbid that in all their harrumphing about Romney not coming to them at the allotted hour, that they might understand God was more important than they are.

And while we’re wonderin’, does Gingrich gave a clue how Obama-like this sounds?

Newt Gingrich told Larry Kudlow in an interview on CNBC that it “just occurred to me” that Mitt Romney “should be thanking me. He should be thanking me because I did the macroeconomic things necessary to make his career possible!”

Now THAT is an ego.

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We’ve been writing a lot lately about suspicion of Mormons.  This would be different than bigotry.  Bigotry is the statement, “I won’t vote for a Mormon because ___________.”  Suspicion is that little check that says, “They’re nice people, but _____________,” as if looking for an excuse not to like, or vote for a Mormon.  There is not enough anti-Mormon bigotry out there to beat a Mitt Romney, or a Jon Huntsman, but I wonder if there is enough suspicion for a skillful political operative to play upon and prevail?  Last time, bigotry played in Iowa, and Iowa alone, but absent that keystone to his national primary strategy it became an steep uphill struggle for Romney.  This time, Romney is playing the game in a way that neutralizes a similar occurrence in Iowa.  But suspicion is a much harder thing to overcome – particularly when religious suspicion is coupled with the political suspicion that seems so rampant in the nation at the moment.

It is suspicion of Mormons that makes things like the “Book of Mormon” musical effective political weapons.  By ringing the “odd” or “weird” bell, such things serve to reinforce suspicion.  Into this suspicious environment comes a story from Christian Post about a traditional Christian planting a church in South Logan Utah.  Here’s the lede:

The pastor of a successful church in Utah is moving his family to back to Ohio with no specific plans, admitting that leading a Christian congregation in a predominantly Mormon community has taken a mental and emotional toll.

The story then examines at great length the “toll” this pastor has born.  Frankly, there are two ways to read the story.  One could read it as there is something insidious about working in a predominantly Mormon community that exacts this “toll.”  The other could read it that this person simply did not have what it takes to do the job he thought he was supposed to be doing.  How do you think suspicious people are going to read this story?  And if you say the second read, you’re fooling yourself.

There are also two very important question to ask about this story.  The first is “Why now?”  You have to remember that this blog is pretty doggone plugged into stuff like this.  We have not seen a story like this until now – until we are getting to the short strokes of the primary.  The timeline in the story is indistinct.  It is obviously relatively current, but one must wonder if its release is timed in some fashion.

The second question is why THIS story?  Pastors leave the ministry over depression every day – lots of them.  There is nothing unique in Evangelical circles about a guy discovering that his “call” is not what he thought it was – and that is depressing regardless of what you think your call is.  It happens to people called to ministry of all sorts, not just ministry to Mormons.  Frankly, this story, as written, could be repeated about at least a dozen people I know, taking out the word “Mormon” and substituting “youth” or “the poor” or “Africa” or….

We must conclude that this story is a STORY because it rings the suspicion bell.  That’s why the editors think people will read this story when they will not read a story about the other several dozen pastors that left the ministry depressed the same day.

The marvelous Parade magazine profile of the Romney clan that appeared this Sunday past should allay such suspicion as it paints a very normal, if very successful, family.  Nothing to be suspicious about.  But in an age when success is often viewed with suspicion, one wonders.

You see, suspicion, while less violent than bigotry, is often as unreasonable, and far more transmittable.  From the parade of not-Romney’s to stories about traditional Christian pastors in Utah, Mitt Romney is an object of suspicion – unwarranted, unfounded, unreasonable suspicion.  Suspicion that causes people to doubt his word, when the same words from another’s mouth are embraced.  Suspicion that causes his changes of heart to be flip-flops while in others they are genuine conversions.

Suspicion, born in the bigotry of only a few, but fanned by the media and political opposition.  Reason is the enemy of suspicion.

We need to ask the media for more reason

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Democrats Gleeful At Prospect Of Running Against Gingrich

And this is from a VERY left wing source (Talking Points Memo) with no interest in bolstering Romney.

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One must set aside the now standard WSJ Romney-bashing in December 1′s Daniel Henninger column, but he does capture the spirit of how I think many of us that are trying to figure out what is best for the country are feeling:

While I merely grumbled, my former Wall Street Journal colleague Robert W. Merry explicitly wrote “Bring Back Those Smoke-Filled Rooms” last month on the website of the National Interest magazine, which he edits. Notwithstanding distaste for the politicians picking candidates, he wrote, “consider the dangers inherent in our system now, when candidates emerge based on their own judgment of their overwhelming talents and virtues, rather than those of their political peers, and when the vetting process has been truncated to a point where it relies on happenstance to save the system from people nobody really knows and who may be hiding serious flaws”—he was writing about Herman Cain—”that add up to political liabilities. It was a pretty good system we had in the old days.”

[...]

Instead of a candidate-vetting process carried out quietly by party leaders, it’s now done randomly by a Hydra-headed national media. Any flaw or past stumble is metastasized into a public nightmare for spouses and children. So they say No. In their place we get mysterious candidates who have wandered in from Nowhere Land or obscure state senate seats.

Henninger is bashing the slate of candidates, and I agree, there are some real whoppers in the field.  But the field as a whole is not bad, the ratio of wheat to chaff is just not as good as it used to be.  Broadly speaking, I think it is good that the candidate is selected by the party faithful and not the privileged few, the problem in the end is the “Hydra-headed national media” and their attempts to gather for themselves the power once exercised by the cigar-smoking political barons.  The media elite seem willing to capitalize on public ignorance and disinterest to wield that power rather than inform the public and allow them to exercise their judgement.

But this too is changing.  New media is breaking the stranglehold of the Hydra.  At the moment, it seems like new media is just adding heads to the beast, but this revolution is far from over.    The current system seems to work in the end, after all, Herman Cain is gone, and with good reason.  It just seems like it takes a lot more work to get to such points than it should.  And unfortunately a lot more salacious work than it should.  But whether you think it good or bad, we are where we are today and we have to deal with the election in front of us.  So, the first question is, “What’s driving the Gingrich surge?”

Heat, Light or Prejudice

We watch religion here, and in order to be thorough about it,  sometimes other forces in the campaign miss our attention.  There are many who think the parade of “Not Romneys” is about something else, and they have a point.  Mid-November, Michael Medved said its about anger.  Somewhat echoing that sentiment this week was Hugh Hewitt:

The MSM narrative about these events is as wrong as usual when it comes to deciphering the thinking of conservatives. GOP primary voters aren’t looking for an anti-Romney. They are looking for the nominee who will take it to Obama and his allies in the media every single day. Governor Romney’s solid base of support has been built on the expectation that he will do so even though he has been careful in his roll out. Romney’s debate performances have routinely focused on and blasted the president, and this accounts for his early lead in New Hampshire and strong national showing in head-to-head match-ups with the president.

But it has been a restrained approach, a foreshadowing of the summer and fall game plan, one designed not to exhaust the energy and commitment of the anti-Obama activists.

As Geraghty pointed out there is little ideological difference between Romney and Gingrich, Molly Ball at The Atlantic calls Gingrich, “a more bombastic Mitt Romney.”  Charles Krauthammer thinks we are down to the lesser of two imperfects, a more practical echo of Henninger.  But Ramesh Ponnuru goes all in for Romney.  And when I say “all in,” I mean in detail and at length:

Republicans should not be gloomy about this prospect. Romney isn’t merely the candidate who is likely to win the Republican primaries. He’s the candidate who should win them. That’s why he’s likely to win.

Gingrich, like all rapid risers, has some serious flaws not yet examined.  Yes, to some extent, I am talking about his marital issues.  Our co-blogger John Mark Reynolds points out at WaPo that there are limitations to the Prodigal Son narrative when political power in involved.  The Atlantic Wire points out some focus group data that says Gingrich still has some repenting to do.  The party elite just don’t like Gingrich.  He is kinda playing into the Romney strategy.  From a practical standpoint, Gingrich is behind the curve and highly disorganized.  Then there is his ego.  Which brings us back to temperament, anger and character.

For many, it is Gingrich’s combativeness that overrides everything.  Such combativeness is great in a media personality, and that is where Gingrich has spent the last decade or so.  But if that is what we most need in a president why don’t we stop all this and draft Rush Limbaugh?  Frankly folks, back to our original point about the Hydra-headed media, while blasting the MSM, we cannot overlook the role that the more bombastic elements of Talkradio have played.  The American people seem to know they need more, yet here we are.

For some, the road to support of Gingrich is at best “tortured.”  K-Lo interviews World Magazines Marvin Olasky.  Olasky has shown signs in the past of being reasonable on religion, but he works for an utter religious bigot (Joel Belz).  Olasky did what amounts to an Evangelical hit piece on Gingrich last June, but he cannot bring himself to say much nice about Romney either.  He tries to downplay the religious angle, but when his magazine has published the absolute ugliest stuff to come from the right, to call his attempts “disingenuous” is to be kind.

The psychology of prejudice is a funny thing.  People know that it’s unacceptable in this context, but it remains a powerful force.  So they construct elaborate blinds around it and attempt to justify it.  That seems to be what Olasky is up to, but it ignores political reality.  (See Krauthammer above)  The effect of such is twofold.  In Olasky’s case it simply relegates him, and his magazine, to irrelevance.  No one would dare give them overt power.  The other effect is more insidious, however.

Many can apparently suppress their prejudices, but they remain psychologically persuasive even if they remain unexpressed.  Thus when a Gingrich and Romney are quite similar ideologically, Gingrich is somehow “more appealing.”  Not to mention that these suppressed prejudices read with interest, as opposed to discard, the kind of stuff that has come from the pen of Olasky’s publisher.  They also come into play, when seemingly areligious stories like this from Michael Barone and refuted by Karl at Hot Air roll around.  The suppressed prejudices reinforce the “oddness” of the story.  Hence the “weird” angle we have been told to expect from the Obama campaign.

Yet another piece setting up the “weird” angle appeared in the Boston Globe this week:

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney says his faith’s prohibitions on premarital sex, alcohol consumption, and caffeine use have had a “liberating” effect on his life rather than an inhibiting one.

Now, speaking of “weird,” that is entirely and 100% Biblical.  (See Galations 5:1 for just one example.)  And yet this story will resonate as “weird” with many traditional Christians.  The suppressed prejudice makes our own beliefs somehow seem strange.  And so with that we should turn to…

…The Pile Of Mormon Stuff

Is Rick Perry going there? (again?) There is nothing overt about this latest Iowa ad, but like Mike Huckabee before him, having dog whistled once everything he does on faith has to be viewed with a jaundiced eye – especially in Iowa.

And speaking of Huckabee, he hosted on of the forum things on his show last night – it got almost no press.  One is tempted to say that is because of media bias, and it probably is to some extent, but it is also because, given the Hucksters audience, it appealed to a limited set of voters:

While Huckabee said all the candidates did “an outstanding job,” Cuccinelli — himself a tea party hero who recently signaled he would run for governor of Virginia in 2013 — didn’t feel the same way. In a post-forum interview on Fox News, he blasted Gingrich’s moderate stances and also said he wasn’t persuaded by Romney.

We spent a lot of time last cycle talking about how the Mormon issue was a two edged sword.  As a conservative opposed to Romney, it is an effective card to play in certain circles, but in playing it, one opens the door to the left playing the bigot card.  Consider the latest issue of Time, cover storied about why ROmney seems to have a hard time catching on:

Romney has problems he can’t do anything about. He’s wealthy, a member of the Establishment in a party that is trending very strongly toward right-wing populism. He’s also a Mormon, which is rarely mentioned by Republicans, but is an obvious disadvantage among the party’s evangelical protestant base.

Think about that they take a “weird” hot at Romney and Republicans in one sentence.  David Gergen tries a similar stunt.    Some are being completely “in your face” with the whole swipe at Republicans thing.

We looked early in this post at how many think it’s about anger, or some say “rich, aloof,” but again, psychology is such a tricky thing.  I am not sure we will ever be able to truly sort the Mormon issues from the non-Mormon issues in Romney opposition.  What I do know is that ever voter better ask themselves who can beat Obama, and put every other question in second place.

Given the proclivities of the Mr. Obama with regards to public faith, I’ll take any faith over none.  We are continually seeing the mere mention of God pushed out of places where it used to be some common.  Consider this YouTube clip form 1969.  Nixon is greeting the Apollo 11 astronauts back from the moon and concludes by calling for prayer!  Just imagine this president doing that.  Not a pretty picture, is it.

And then consider that one of the hallmarks of religion generally is that it helps us to improve, to achieve our ambitions to be better people.  And yet, this president seems to demonize ambition.

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