Article VI Blog

Make no mistake – the Scandalrama that has erupted in DC represents new fronts in the Culture War.  Two fronts to be exact.

Corporate Culture

The breadth and scope pf the scandals indicate that this is not a few individuals going rogue.  Think of the number of agencies that we have heard about in the last two weeks that have been involved in corrupt, or at least unethical practices.  IRS leads the pack, but the DOJ, State, EPA, HHS and many others have come up with one problem or another.  THAT is a cultural problem within the government.

There is an important lesson that can be learned from this – Culture matters more than issues.  This is why litmus tests don’t work.  You see, I have no doubt that Obama knew little of all this garbage going in.  That does not make him any  less culpable, I just think it accentuates his bad management and makes his sins ones of omission, not commission.  I think it is pretty easy to form an image of the president has having hired all his cronies, let them go, and then going off to play golf, assuming the dimbulbs he hired had things well in hand.  I have no doubt everyone he hired was a card-carrying, ticket-punching liberal activist that hit the issue list just right.  But they clearly did not know beans about how to run a government.  (Politics and a campaign they knew how to do in spades, but not governance.)

Consider the latest response to come out of the White House:

Struggling to find his footing after one of the most turbulent weeks in office, President Obama’s aides have ordered the White House staff to spend no more than 10 percent of their time on controversies, Mark Landler and Michael D. Shear report. Democratic strategists are now working on a plan to intensify the administration’s focus on revamping immigration laws, reaching a budget deal and implementing the new health care legislation.

That is not leadership, that is accounting (10% of their time indeed!) and optics.  That approach is denial of the problem, not an effort to change the culture within the executive branch of the government.

As those of us of faith approach the culture war it is important that we see this clearly.  The culture war is not primarily about abortion and same sex marriage, it’s about a culture where such things do not rise to the level of being issues, just as the corrupt practices of the Obama administration should never have been issues to begin with.  That means we of faith need to learn how to lead the nation, not just complain about its wrong turns.  Which leads me to the second front…

Character Culture

One of the questions that has been niggling in the back of my mind for the last week has been, “Where are the careerists?”  The government is full of employees for whom this is a career, not a political appointment.  Think of those that testified about Benghazi, they were pros, not appointees.  Where are such people in the IRS?

Now, I am guessing based on yesterday’s testimony, that there were some structural hide-and-seek going on.  Miller yesterday tried to hide behind a claim that these applications were grouped for “efficiency.”  I have little doubt that was the internal claim of the agency.  I would suspect that the unit that got these grouped claims was staffed almost entirely by appointees, not career types, and thus they were able to ply their intimidation trade without much scrutiny or counter force.  But even such structural steps would be extraordinary and should have drawn some outcry from the career types.

Why did that not happen?  Well, for one, I have little doubt that the federal employee unions were pretty active.  But more importantly, I think it is because those career types did not have sufficiently developed character to see this for the problem that it was and then to stand and take the risks involved in crying out.  I think a few may yet appear now that they can count on Congressional cover, but someone should have come forward a long time ago as far as I am concerned.  (Of course what we do not yet know is whether someone DID go forward to, say, the White House where their complaints were greeted with complacency.  Yet another sin of omission.)

This is why the “religious test” that was so clearly and unambiguously applied to these applications is so stunningly awful.  You see, if religion can be relegated into some box that reads “only for Sunday morning worship” then people of the character that would have come forward won’t exist at all, anywhere.  Such ethics and courage do not grow in the wild; they must be cultivated.  Religion is one of the few forces in our nation that does such cultivation – at least it should.

The primary front on the culture war is the one where we continue to cultivate and fight for our right to do such cultivation.  If we do that then abortion and same sex marriage will be forgone conclusions, not issues at all.  If we do that then when the inevitable corrupt influences creep into government, people will be in place that will do what is necessary to keep that corruption from becoming endemic.

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At The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf responds to a Matt Lewis column with this opening:

In The Week, columnist Matt Lewis, a conservative who is regularly willing to criticize the right, explains why, despite his occasional frustrations, he isn’t tempted to defect. “I am repelled by the Left’s worldview, which implicitly argues that morality is subjective,” he states. “This is a natural outcome of a rejection of the numinous, but it’s an idea that has consequences. When there are no moral absolutes, we make policy decisions based on efficiency instead of compassion. Or we make decisions based on our own individualistic needs, not on what is right or good.”

Given his beliefs, I’d never urge Lewis to defect to the left for all sorts of reasons. But I don’t think the one he’s offered is what should hold him. The left encompasses a lot of people who believe in God, while the right has its atheists. I don’t think that there is any single world view that encompasses the whole left. And even if we presumed for the sake of simplicity that it makes sense to talk about “the” world views of the left and right, I don’t think the left embraces moral subjectivity any more than the American right, despite the fact that so many conservatives insist otherwise. How common is moral subjectivity on the left, according to Lewis? It is unclear, perhaps understandably, since he was constrained by writing at column length for print.

Pending clarification, let’s set the left aside and talk about the American right. To what moral absolutes does it subscribe in practice? Certainly some of the ones that are shared by the whole political spectrum. Slavery is wrong. So is rape. And genocide. Surely we can all agree that, on those significant questions, that neither the American left nor the American right are non-absolutists.

Friedersdorf then goes on to pick on the supposed “hypocrisies” of the right.  The use of torture in the gathering on information on terrorism being his biggest bug-a-boo, but along the way he also discusses immigration, Gitmo and arms control.  Then he says this:

In what moral absolute was their position grounded?

In other words, “How can we preach compassion when we engage in torture or deport the oppressed?”  There are three things at play here that need to be noted.

First, there is a difference between something being absolute and something being universal.  We must always act in compassion, that’s absolute.  But that does not mean we act compassionately to everyone, that’s universal.  Unfortunately, life presents us with situations where to act compassionately towards some we will be required to act harshly with others.  It is an unavoidable reality.  If a man is standing poised to kill another man, killing the threatening killer is, in fact, quite compassionate towards the intended victim, even if it is extraordinarily cruel towards the actor.  Someone is going to die in this situation, compassion cannot be judged solely on the fact that someone is killed.  Compassion is exercised in the choice of who dies and how.  Morality may be rooted in absolutes, but that does not make it simple, by any stretch.

The second thing at play here is the where the moral absolutes are rooted.  We cannot argue religion in public anymore, but there was a time we could invoke God.  However, even then, it was not good to argue theology in the public square.  Once we are discussing the complexities of applying our absolutes, the discussion will become theological very rapidly.  Theology, even amongst protestant Christians, is far more diverse today than it ever was at the time when the invocation of religion in the public square was more common.  In fact, there are some schools of theology that have grown not out of the religion in question, but purposefully to develop religious apologia for a political or social issue previously considered anathema to the religion in question.   For example, the last couple of decades have seen scores of theological arguments attempting to make homosexual practice acceptable; something Judeo-Christian thought as rejected as wrong throughout its history.

Because of the confusion between absolute and universal, the gate-keeping functions inside religion have failed to sort the wheat from the chaff in these arguments and all are deemed valid.  How is a public, largely not trained in how to think about these things, to judge what is a good application of the absolutes and what is not?  Are we to now argue theology publicly?  The result of this dilemma has been the sort of dogmatic approach that leads to the perceptions of hypocrisy that Friedersdorf presents.

The bottom line cause of all of this, and the third factor at play, was mentioned in that last paragraph.  It is the failure of the gate-keeping functions inside religion.  This failure has come as a) religion itself has become more personal that societal/cultural, and b) rather than fight inside the church, groups split off and form smaller groups that lack the critical mass to form the institutions needed to perform the function effectively.

Frankly, in today’s world, there is validity to what Friedersdorf has to say.  It should not be so, but that is a failure that can be laid squarely at the door of the faithful.  We continue to work on our series telling the 2012 election story.  Unlike the 2008 story, the 2012 is not themed so much in politics as it is in the failure of the religious to do and be all that they are supposed to do and be.  Thus that series will lead to a series on where Evangelicalism has failed.  Thus we will leave this third factor at this point and allow the deeper discussion to come at a later time.

We are not the hypocrites Friedersdorf wants us, or paints us, to be.  However, we have to be a lot smarter about our faith and its application in the public square if we do not want to appear as such.

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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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I spent a good bit of yesterday getting people that owe me money, some of them for quite a long time, to pay me the money they owe me.  In business we call this “collections.” Most business like mine is conducted on some sort of limited credit.  When the economy is pumping along, it is usually not an issue.  But when things are down, it can be a huge issue.  People hoard money, they stretch their credit to the limit and if they owe you money, you have to ask to get paid.

Usually collections are a matter of course, you ask for the money, you get paid.  Lately though it seems like it takes more than just asking.  Threats of, and actually withholding, delivery is becoming something I have to do more and more of to get paid.  Money up-front, C.O.D. terms and other more forceful methods are necessary to keep the receivables in line.

I find myself wondering why, if the economic signs seem hopeful – as the news proclaims and the market seems to think, am I having such a hard time collecting money?  Is money tighter than we are being lead to believe?  I think that is true in some markets and maybe I am stuck in those markets at the moment.  But I think there is more at play.  If the government is borrowing money at a break-neck pace, with no real plan or seeming intention to pay it back, why shouldn’t my customers?

The timely payment of debt is a matter of simple civility.  By incurring debt I have pledged to meet that obligation.  I consider myself an honorable man, a man of my word, so such an obligation is not to be taken lightly.  And yet, if my situation is any measure, people are taking that obligation pretty lightly indeed.  This is not a good thing.

When things are down in this fashion, a society/nation has two ways to turn – on itself or towards something bigger.  America has always been about something bigger.  Our word has always been our bond – we have always worked to improve for all so that things improved for the self.  But one is forced to wonder if the nation is responding that way in the current times.

James Lileks:

Empathy is always held up as a great virtue, but it’s remarkable how so few people have empathy with the total sum of the American experience beyond their own self-definition.

Daniel Greenfield:

There are two ways to destroy a thing. You can either run it at while swinging a hammer with both hands or you can attack its structure until it no longer means anything.

The left hasn’t gone all out by outlawing marriage, instead it has deconstructed it, taking apart each of its assumptions, from the economic to the cooperative to the emotional to the social, until it no longer means anything at all. Until there is no way to distinguish marriage from a temporary liaison between members of uncertain sexes for reasons that due to their vagueness cannot be held to have any solemn and meaningful purpose.

You can abolish democracy by banning the vote or you can do it by letting people vote as many times as they want, by letting small children and foreigners vote, until no one sees the point in counting the votes or taking the process seriously. The same goes for marriage or any other institution. You can destroy it by outlawing it or by eliminating its meaningfulness until it becomes so open that it is absurd.

Doug Wilson:

Anyone who has not noticed that “demands for apologies” have become one of the central political tactics of our day has simply not been paying attention. Like many effective tactics, it depends on an impulse that was originally good and right. It is the old Pottery Barn rule — you break it, it’s yours. Everybody knows that. But in our hyper age, we have gotten to the point where old high school pranks can be hauled out in presidential campaigns. This is simply pathological.

There is no civility here, there is only the desire to destroy what you have for the sake of what I want – whether it is destroying marriage of failing to pay debts, or forcing apology as a means of avoiding responsibility.  Why, after 200 years of pitching in and working together towards a compromise solution to any dilemma are we turning on ourselves and devouring one another?

Like the unleavened bread of this Passover season, we are missing an ingredient.  God, something bigger than all of us, is no longer a normal part of our thinking and discussion.

It’s Good Friday, the world is a dark, dark place.  At church, Easter is coming, the light will return.  But will it return to the nation?  Only a future more distant than Sunday will say for sure.  However, this I know – if we accept things as they are, if we keep our Passover and Easter celebrations within the confines of our Synagogues and Churches it will not.

I hate doing collections.  I hate having to point out to people that they are being dishonorable and uncivil.  I hate having to find a way to be nice to them when they are being so hard on me.  But I have found through long years of experience that such is just what I have to do.  Withdrawing means I never get paid.  Becoming completely adversarial just costs me more money.

So it is with putting our faith back in its place as the leaven of our society.  We have to undertake the unpleasant task of pointing out, and enduring, incivility while remaining civil.  We have got to step out of our ghettos.

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