"My Professor is Bigger than Your God"

Yesterday's Washington Post, right there on the front page of the Style Section (which is where the most important stories may normally be found), began a long article in this wise:

'St. Jack' and the Bullies in the Pulpit

John Danforth Says It's Time the GOP Center Took On The Christian Right

And the Post wastes no time in getting to its point:

Jack Danforth wishes the Republican right would step down from its pulpit. Instead, he sees a constant flow of religion into national politics. And not just any religion, either, but the us-versus-them, my-God-is-bigger-than-your-God, velvet-fist variety of Christian evangelism.

As a mainline Episcopal priest, retired U.S. senator and diplomat, Danforth worships a humbler God and considers the right's certainty a sin. Legislating against gay marriage, for instance? "It's just cussedness."

Your humble and obedient host has betimes been criticized for beating about the bush -- for slowly and cleverly (to his mind) building his case, and then springing excitedly from the metaphorical underbrush, to breathlessly announce his conclusion. Not so now.

The problem that Democrats, Reverend Danforth, the Washington Post, and the New York Times have with "religion in politics," is not that there's too much of it, but that it's the wrong kind: It's the kind they disagree with.

And, moreover, they are too cowardly (or perhaps merely too squeamish) to confess what they really think: That religion in general -- but Christianity and Judaism, in particular -- are bunk; unfit bases upon which to build a coherent structure of morality and ethics. There's all that smiting, and right and wrong, and evil and sin, and judgment. Goodness, all that Judgment. It's really, almost, well . . . not nice!

It is not so long ago that "religion in politics" meant left-wing politics. "Liberation theology" provided a Christian fig leaf for Communist thuggery, particularly in Central and South America. In America, it meant Father Robert Drinan, elected to Congress from Massachusetts in 1970, espousing opposition to Richard Nixon, and support for abortion. And should we ignore today the thousands of pastors who raise money for, and openly support Democrats? In an October 11, 2004, story, the Washington Post explained:

John F. Kerry used a Baptist pulpit Sunday to speak of eternal life and denounce President Bush, as [Reverend] Jesse L. Jackson and [Reverend] Al Sharpton joined him for a home-stretch push to energize African American Floridians who felt disenfranchised in 2000.

We recall no thunderous editorials from the New York Times denouncing liberation theology, Father Drinan, or Senator Kerry for mixing religion with politics. We are unaware of policy statements issued by the Democratic National Committee condemning resort to religion in secular matters. And there were no such thunderbolts from those sources because, in those instances, the right kind of religion was being invoked.

In this respect we cannot let pass the fact that, according to the Post, Reverend Danforth holds the view that "the right's certainty [is] a sin." Now he may be right, and he may be wrong, but "sin" is neither a political nor a moral concept. It is decidedly religious. To "sin" is to violate divine law. The former Senator, and the Post's writer, thus confess that it's not so much that they wish to eject religion from the arena of politics, but instead wish to fight it out in the trenches of the politics of religion.

Reverend Danforth's political opponents, in other words, have their theology wrong.

But on a deeper level, critics of "religion in politics" are really saying that they reject religion and religious authority and legitimacy. Their opponents believe, but they do not.

Imagine a political debate as to whether a legislature ought to pass a law making it a crime to engage in homosexual sex acts. The proponents -- introducing religion into politics -- contend that the Bible, and Christian tradition, teach that homosexuality and sodomy are morally wrong and sinful, and the civil law ought therefore to outlaw them.

Opponents have several choices. They can respond that it is inappropriate to criminalize something merely because it is morally wrong. "Should being angry with one's wife, or disrespectful of one's father, become a Class C felony?" they might ask. They could argue that, right or wrong, the behavior involved simply is without the impact on the public at large so as to warrant the State taking such heavy-handed cognizance of it.

And these are excellent arguments, of the sort with which the Gentleman Farmer would very often be inclined to agree.

But if instead the opponents of the proposed criminal statute argue that homosexuality is not morally wrong, and that homosexual sex acts are no different in moral or ethical terms than heterosexual sex acts, then they have a problem. They have now joined battle on an issue of morality, and their appeal is to the authority of reason, or science, or the judgment of some respected thinker.

When the proponents of the law rejoin with their appeal to religious authority on the question of morality, they put the opponents in a quandary. Their best argument is simply to reject the Bible and Christianity as meet sources of legitimacy: "The Bible is bunk, Christianity is silly, and the Chairman of the Harvard Medical School, a world-renowned psychiatrist, tells us that homosexuality is completely normal."

This is what they really think in such a battle of authority: "My-Professor-is-Bigger-than-Your-God."

But this they are without the stomach to do. And so instead they complain that those darned "fundamentalists" are trying once again to inject religion into politics, and create a theocratic state.