Article VI Blog

I spent a good deal of yesterday chastising myself for thinking about the politics of the Boston Marathon bombing.  The human tragedy is is immense.  I prayed and I prayed.  Not only for the victims and their loved ones, but for myself that I could resist the temptation.

I was not really tempted to “make political hay” of this, but I found myself planning political defenses.  I EXPECTED the political opposition to be opportunistic.  I was pleasingly shocked when the presidents statement was, at least in words, an apolitical statement of sympathy and resolve.  But this president has made so much political hay out of so much tragedy that I could not help but note that his tone and demeanor while delivering those words did not necessarily match them.  Therefore, I expect the hay making to begin soon and in earnest.  This is after all, the administration that famously holds, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”

I then I ran across a piece from Warren Rojas @ Roll Call under the headline:

No Separation of Church and State When Tragedy Strikes

The piece reprints eight tweets from Congressman, some of them famously left wing, calling for prayer in the aftermath of the bombing.  There is, of course, no dearth of church-going on the left, they just claim to keep it in “its proper place.”  No doubt these Congressmen will claim they were not acting as representatives of the government, but as individuals moved by what they were witnessing – but these were all on Twitter accounts bearing their offices and titles.  The old adage about there being no atheists in foxholes comes to mind.

From this there are two important lessons that I think we must make note of right now, if only to preserve them for our future political use.  We are swimming in  a political sea; I do not think it can be avoided.  I do not think we can afford to grant our opposition momentum here.

Lesson 1 – For our political opposition, religion is a target of opportunity, not conviction.  This means that they often are not attacking religion, but simply attacking our specific religious convictions, often in an effort to divide us one from the other and gain political advantage.  This is bait we swallowed whole in the last election and they reeled us in like catfish.  We have got to get smarter.

Lesson 2 – There is room to appeal to all but the most hardcore atheists through religion.  But it has to be the right appeal and it has to be sufficiently religiously generic so as to have broad appeal.

I will not go on about this at length – I will return to praying for those directly affected by this heinous act.  But I will hold onto these lessons.

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The Washington Times ran an editorial this morning under this startling headline:

The triumph of mediocrity

It’s a little piece about the enormous waste in a very small federal program.  Their comment:

What is striking about the floodplain restoration program is just how ordinary the errors and inefficiencies were. There was no smoking gun of corruption, no lavish payouts or accusations of improper influence. It was a triumph of mediocrity,….

That struck me deeply.  A Bible verse jumped into my mind:

1 Cor 12:31 – But earnestly desire the greater gifts.

And I show you a still more excellent way.

I wonder – do we as Christians still seek a more excellent way?  I wonder if our losses in the public square stem from that fact.  Another Bible verse:

1 Peter 2:12 – Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may because of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation.

I think perhaps this is what I mourn most deeply when I look at the waste land of Christian activity in politics.  We have conceded to mediocrity.  Oh sure, we have insisted on “excellence” on our issues – abortion, marriage, etc.  But have we insisted on excellence generally, in ourselves and in our governance?  If I wanted to get ugly I could point to countless churches that are administered as poorly, or even more so, than the agency the Washington Times calls to task.  Do I even need to talk about the personal peccadilloes of so many that have sought to lead us.

We pat ourselves on the back, thinking all along of that 2 Peter verse, when we are insulted for staying married to someone of the opposite sex and raising children – but what about everywhere else in our lives and the lives of our churches?  Are we really excellent?  Do we even strive for excellence?

The more I think about it, the more I think our problem is that we have aimed too low.  We have sought excellence on a few issues.  But what we should seek is excellence in all things – personal and public.  Radical, world changing excellence.  Christians in public service, not the elected or appointed – I’m talking about the run of the mill bureaucrat, should be excellent in that service.  They should be the ones that would prevent the kind of things the Washington Times points out.

The way forward does not lie in the grand electoral strategies and ground-breaking new communication tools – it lies in excellence.  The kind of excellence that can change everything.

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From the Washington Times:

The Rev. Robert Jeffress knows how to make headlines, as witnessed by a recent kerfuffle over whether or not NFL quarterback Tim Tebow would speak to the congregation at the reverend’s First Baptist Church in Dallas. (Mr. Tebow didn’t). Last year, the question was whether, Mr. Jeffress, having classified the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as not being Christian, would endorse Mormon candidate Mitt Romney for president. Mr. Jeffress did.

Dust-ups aside, Mr. Jeffress knows how to do one thing well, and that is preach the Christian Gospel in a town known for wealth, extravagance (Dallas is home to Neiman Marcus, after all) and, to be honest, more than a little ostentation. First Baptist, a 145-year-old congregation once thought to be in decline, is about as solid as one could imagine. It also has a link to the Washington area: Mr. Jeffress‘ radio program, “Pathway to Victory,” airs weeknights on WAVA-FM.

One measure of that rebound is the church’s rebuilt sanctuary opening on Easter Sunday, just behind a glass wall and an outdoor water fountain whose patterns rival anything on the Las Vegas Strip. Five years ago, just as the last recession was getting under way, Mr. Jeffress launched a $130 million capital campaign to cover the cost of renovating much of the downtown church campus. This was, by the way, a time when many downtown churches were bolting for the suburbs and church giving was hardly certain.

You know, when Jeffress was doing his anti-Mormon thing, I pegged the guy as an attention hound.  Let the record show that the man was willing to throw the nation to the Obama dogs for a second term for the sake of building a cool fountain in front of his church.

I just don’t get it.  The nation is under serious threat from many angles.  Consider the words of Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput, as passed on by Peter Kersanow:

Hosanna- Tabor is not an isolated case. It belongs to a pattern of government coercion that includes the current administration’s HHS mandate, which violates the religious identity and mission of many religiously affiliated or inspired public ministries; interfering with the conscience rights of medical providers, private employers and individual citizens; and attacks on the policies, hiring practices and tax statuses of religious charities and ministries.

Why is this hostility happening? I believe much of it links to Catholic and other religious teaching on the dignity of life and human sexuality. Catholic moral convictions about abortion, contraception, the purpose of sexuality and the nature of marriage are rooted not just in revelation, but also in reason and natural law. Human beings have a nature that’s not just the product of accident or culture, but inherent, universal and rooted in permanent truths knowable to reason.

This understanding of the human person is the grounding of the entire American experiment. If human nature is not much more than modeling clay, and no permanent human nature exists by the hand of the Creator, then natural, unalienable rights can’t exist. And no human “rights” can finally claim priority over the interests of the state.

Such is the very real danger we face.  True freedom lies in the ideas of faith, not in their absence.  And yet people like Jeffress and Phyllis Schlafly are willing to rip to shreds the only party that even tries to carry this message forward.  Jeffress appears to be about the basest of motives, lining his pocket.  Schlafly, on the other hand seems to be purely confused about the idea.  She seems to think that we can return the nation to its moral underpinnings through legislation.

Such legalism so misses the point of pretty much the entire New Testament that it is stunning in its miscalculation.

I got involved in this mess because I thought the Romney candidacy represented a turning point for American Christianity in politics.  That is turning out to be more prophetic than even I thought at the time.  There is a very real crisis brewing.

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That’s the best way I can come up with to describe Evangelicals generally and especially in politics.  The same sex marriage arguments of the last couple of days have brought the confusion to the fore.  For one thing it seems we are no better at distinguishing the legal argument from the personal/societal argument than the left is.  On talkradio across the spectrum, I heard more people offer more arguments that would get them laughed out of the Supreme Court than I thought possible – and I’m not a lawyer.  I can’t imagine what a lawyer would think about it.

• A large part of the problem has arisen because we cannot distinguish the personal from the political from the religious.
• Some of us want to play the victim.  (I ask you this Holy Week, was Jesus “a victim” on the cross?  I don’t think so.)
• Some confuse marketing with evangelism.  (“Branding” indeed.  If Jesus needed a brand he’d have hired a marketing firm.)

This piece by Congressman Steve King points out what a marriage license is, and what it is not.  People are currently granting the thing far more significance than it deserves.

It just seems like people cannot think straight anymore.  They’re disturbed, upset, discontent, unhappy – they desire, they want, the “need” – but they just do not seem to think things through in an organized and reasonable fashion.  They do not consider the ramifications of anything beyond their own personal and emotional perspective.  Nor do they seek to contain that personal and emotional perspective in a purely personal and emotional space, but rather demand that the Supreme Court impress it upon the nation by fiat.

Christianity is more than simple a vehicle of personal salvation.  Personal salvation is but a gateway – it is in fact the gateway to civilization as we have traditionally understood it.  And not because we no longer feel guilty.  Rather, because Christianity has taught us to rise above the purely personal and emotional – to the rational and societal.

If Evangelicalism is seeking a place to stand, perhaps it is there.  Perhaps they should consider not merely bringing people to the gateway.  Perhaps they should consider ushering them through and walking with them as they continue the journey beyond the personal and emotional.

I recently concluded reading a history of the city of Jerusalem, one of the oldest cities in the world.  I am struck deeply by how we seem to be regressing as a society – how we look more like Jerusalem of thousands of years ago, than the United States of just a few decades ago.

Only the church can fix that.

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Yesterday I analogized today’s Christians in our nation to the Jews in Jerusalem during and immediately following the time of Christ.  I wrote:

Christianity survived because between Christ and the destruction of Jerusalem (roughly 70 AD) it had spread its wings beyond Palestine and included the gentiles in the faith.  While it prescribed to the same moral/ethical code as its Jewish ancestors, Christianity was far less stiff-necked, far less rigid that the Jews of Jerusalem and environs.

Christianity was indeed persecuted by the Romans for a while, but it eventually won the day.

Right now it seems Christians find themselves in a similar squeeze as the Jews under the Roman occupation.  And if we behave like the Jews, we will likely be destroyed.  But if we behave like those Christians of old, we will find a way to survive.  So what was the essential difference?

The Jews were interested in ruling.  The Christians were interested in souls.

I need to refine that a bit, based on reading Victor David Hanson this morning:

Even in its third century, America is still the most meritocratic nation in the world. Unlike the caste system of India; the class considerations of Europe; the racial homogeneity of China, Japan or Korea; the tribalism of Africa; or the religious orthodoxy of the Middle East, America is still a place where one can offer a new idea, invention or protocol that is judged on its merits, rather than on the background, accent, race, age, gender or religion of the person who offers it.

[...]

The mixture of consumer capitalism and constitutionally protected free speech — and all sorts of races, religions and ethnicities — sometimes means that America can be a wild place with a popular culture that appears crass and uncouth to those abroad. Our generation’s $17 trillion national debt, unfunded entitlements and nearly 50 million people on food stamps might convince the Founding Fathers that they had spawned license rather than guaranteed liberty.

Yet the upside to the wild arena of America is that almost anyone is free to enter it.

My refined point is this.  The Jews of first century Jerusalem were not interesting so much in ruling so much as they were interested in “purity.”  Christianity in its spread to the gentiles (A decision not easily made by the way, read the Book of Acts carefully and uncover the hearty debate between Peter and Paul on this matter.)  plowed much the same ground that Hanson shows America plowing.  Christians in Rome looked quite different than Christians in Jerusalem who looked quite different than Christians in Athens.

Yet it seems the Christians of America, especially the Evangelicals, are insistent on some sort of dogmatic purity to qualify for the game.  From a checklist of issues to how they worship on Sunday morning, we seem always to be measuring candidates and leaders for their purity.

If we keep it up, like the first century Jews of Jerusalem we will be crushed.  What’s really sad to me though is that this stance is both unAmerican and, as we can see in the decision of the first century church, unChristian.  Which also says a lot about the relationship between Christianity and America.

This obsession with purity is also very unEvangelical.  The very heart of the Evangelical movement, in the spirit of Paul reaching out to the gentiles, is to reach out and make new Christians.  Something has indeed gone horribly wrong.

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In a Townhall piece that got quite a bit of traction, Kurt Schlichter says:

There is a whole group of potential allies out there – the Millennials who grew up familiar with technology but chafing at their helicopter parents and the politically correct hypocrisy of the education establishment. Many of them think of themselves as “liberal,” but they have little use for bums who want to lay about sponging off producers. Their liberalism is more about affectation and cultural posturing than about political positions – they reject the idea of the anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-sex conservative boogeyman they’ve been taught in the media, not conservatism itself.

These young folks have bought into the notion that conservatives are somehow obsessed with other people’s sex lives, which is false – conservatives are obsessed with their own sex lives, as the CPAC meat market demonstrates. But the wacky notion that some conservative is going to climb in their bedroom window to interrupt their trysting by making them pray has convinced this huge demographic to support an ideology that leaves them burdened with student debt and living in their parents’ homes – and thus unlikely to ever have sex to begin with.

The key to defeating this residual cultural affinity is twofold. First, conservatives need to avoid feeding old stereotypes with boneheaded maneuvers like making idiotic pronouncements about rape and writing jerktastic articles about how being a gay conservative is the result of a Marxist conspiracy. Remember, these young people grew up being taught to be tolerant. They’ll be tolerant of anyone – including hardcore Christians – who are themselves tolerant. We don’t have to accept anything we consider immoral – we just have to not be jerks about it.

Second, conservatives need to emphasize the pro-freedom agenda that both demographics share. Millenials have no desire to be dictated to about their snack options or hellfired by some drone either. Nor do they want to get arrested for jailbreaking their iPhone or sued for a $100,000 for downloading the latest terrible Mumford & Sons song. And for the few who have found jobs in the Obama economy, the tax bite on their pay stubs is just as unwelcome.

The first thought that ran through my mind was how difficult a prescription this is.  In an age where the mere setting of standards is considered “intolerant” how does on have standards and remain tolerant?  Well, if you read that carefully, it means standards have to be internalized rather than externally imposed.

On top of that comes this from McKay Coppins:

When the great Republican resurrection comes to pass, will conservative Christians be left behind?

Some leaders of the religious right are openly worried this week after a sprawling 98-page report released by the Republican National Committee on how the party can rebuild after its 2012 implosion made no mention of the GOP’s historic alliance with grassroots Christian “value voters.”

Specifically, the word “Christian” does not appear once in the party’s 50,000-word blueprint for renewed electoral success. Nor does the word “church.” Abortion and marriage, the two issues that most animate social conservatives, are nowhere to be found. There is nothing about the need to protect religious liberty, or promote Judeo-Christian values in society. And the few fleeting suggestions that the party coordinate with “faith-based communities” — mostly in the context of minority outreach — receive roughly as much space as the need to become more “inclusive” of gays.

To many religious conservatives, the report was interpreted as a slight against their agenda and the hard work they have done for the party.

I am thinking maybe people, especially Christian people, need to familiarize themselves with the history of Jerusalem and Christianity in the first century.  The Jewish authorities worked pretty well, to a point, with the Roman overlords.  They certainly worked hard to ingratiate themselves with that authority.  However, stiff about their rules and regulation, the Jews eventually revolted and were crushed in the worst possible way by the Romans.  Jerusalem was leveled – completely.  The Romans tried to wipe the Jews from the face of the earth.

Christianity survived because between Christ and the destruction of Jerusalem (roughly 70 AD) it had spread its wings beyond Palestine and included the gentiles in the faith.  While it prescribed to the same moral/ethical code as its Jewish ancestors, Christianity was far less stiff-necked, far less rigid that the Jews of Jerusalem and environs.

Christianity was indeed persecuted by the Romans for a while, but it eventually won the day.

Right now it seems Christians find themselves in a similar squeeze as the Jews under the Roman occupation.  And if we behave like the Jews, we will likely be destroyed.  But if we behave like those Christians of old, we will find a way to survive.  So what was the essential difference?

The Jews were interested in ruling.  The Christians were interested in souls.  Christianity eventually became the official religion of the Roman empire – not because it conquered the empire militarily or governmentally – but because it converted so many souls in the empire that the rulers had little choice.

Who is to blame if the Republican party and the nation generally feel like they have a choice?

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