Swami Uptown Archive: February 2005

Continued from page 5

Amy Sullivan is an editor of The Washington Monthly. She has written about religion and politics for publications including the Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, and The Washington Post, and has served as a commentator for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, NPR's Morning Edition, and other news outlets. Previously, Sullivan served as a legislative assistant to U.S. Sen. Tom Daschle and as editorial director of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. She holds degrees from the University of Michigan and Harvard Divinity School.

The State of Our Union Is...Oh, Who Cares
February 4, 2005 | 11:20 a.m.

I was all set to share witty and insightful observations about Wednesday's State of the Union address and then I decided to look back at my commentary from last year (sorry...the link's not working at the moment) and now I'm just depressed. Bush was far cockier and combative last year, lacing most of his speech with straw man arguments ("From start to finish," I wrote, "the thing was chockfull of false choices--you can go backward or you can go forward. You can undermine educational standards or you can support me. You can tear apart the American family or you can support me. You can encourage children to get STDs or you can support me.") And the Democratic response--while predictably underwhelming--included some lines that sounded pretty good. So good, in fact, that they reappeared in this year's response ("Social security should be a guarantee, not a gamble.") In short, the president came off as an obnoxious trash-talker and the Democrats introduced some decent rhetorical comebacks. And, as we know now, it didn't much matter.

So you'll excuse me if I'm less than enthusiastic about the exercise of dissecting this year's address. Instead, I'll offer some select thoughts:

The phrases "we must be good stewards of this economy" and "the road to providence is uneven and unpredictable" were the only ones this year that contained any religious undertones, and even then, it's a stretch to characterize them as specifically religious. The sparse use of religious rhetoric is mostly due to the fact that Wheaton grad (and former head speechwriter) Michael Gerson wasn't the architect of this speech. But it also reflects the fact that Bush doesn't need to communicate with his base in code anymore. In fact, much of the middle section of the speech--the part about "the values that sustain a free society"--was a layer cake of conservative rallying cries: "Government should not undermine them [values]," "Marriage...should not be redefined by activist judges," "Culture of life."

Once again, Bush banged the drum, warning religious conservatives that government could take away their right to hold beliefs, that government could undermine what they hold dearest. Although most of Bush's political compatriots don't like the idea of affirmative action for racial minorities, they're all for affirmative action for religious folks. It may seem like Grassy Knoll conspiracy theorizing to many liberals, but this stuff works. Those 1960s court decisions taking prayer and Bible reading out of schools were what first energized religious conservatives to enter politics, and they haven't been forgotten. Today's gay marriage and Pledge of Allegiance cases are seen as additional proof that an elitist society and political structure is trying to persecute their minority beliefs. This, despite the fact that evangelicals hold virtually all of the GOP leadership positions in the House and Senate, run the White House, and had dictated Justice Department policy for the last four years.

Most of the commentators after the speech went on and on about how Bush "hit it out of the park" and considered it an eloquent masterpiece. I realize that I'm not incredibly objective, but I've now listened to and read the address half a dozen times and I'm just not getting that. For instance, can anyone tell me what "We must never turn away from any citizen who feels isolated from the opportunities of America" means? If what he means by "never turn away" is that we should lend a helping hand to those in need, particularly those urban youth he highlighted, then I'm confused. Because in the last two years, Bush has eliminated all funding for Youth Opportunity Grants, a federal program that used to spend $225 million giving job training to young people.

The section on expanding the use of DNA evidence in criminal cases momentarily threw me. And then I remembered that public support for the death penalty has fallen by at least 15 percentage points in the last ten years while concern over whether prisoners have been wrongfully convicted has grown. The claim that Bush doesn't pay attention to polls is demonstrably untrue and this is a prime example of the White House crafting an initiative around poll numbers. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but I'm tired of hearing about how this president doesn't need to take a poll to know what he thinks.

Hi Diddly-Do!
February 4, 2005 | 11:20 a.m.

That paragon of Red State moral values, Ned Flanders, is front-and-center in this Sunday's Super Bowl episode of "The Simpsons," appearing in the halftime show of a cartoon version Super Bowl to produce a biblical pageant and preach to the crowd.

What If She Means It?
February 4, 2005 | 11:20 a.m.

Earlier in the week, I wrote about Hillary Clinton's recent remarks about religion and Democrats. Now, in this article elsewhere on Beliefnet, I take a longer look at the various explanations floating around for "why this? why now?" and raise the incredible possibility that she actually believes what she's saying. Take a look.

Prayer and Pancakes
February 4, 2005 | 11:20 a.m.

I didn't make it to Thursday's National Prayer Breakfast for a number of reasons--not that I seem to have missed much (Bush's speech lasted just eight minutes and consisted mostly of thank you's)--but I did attend a pre-breakfast dinner on Wednesday night before the State of the Union. And yes, the idea of a pre-breakfast dinner struck me as odd, as well.

I guess I'd always thought of the National Prayer Breakfast as a mildly interesting annual event, one or two hours of eggs, bacon, and homilies, that was practically required for any politician who considers him- or herself religious. I had no idea that it's much more like an evangelical trade-show, a multi-day conference that takes over the Washington Hilton (best known as the site where President Reagan was shot) and involves countless Christian vendors, a furious amount of religious networking, and lots of women who look disturbingly like Pat Nixon.

And everywhere, there are members of the Fellowship (also known as "the Family"), the group that puts on the whole shindig. What's the Fellowship, you ask? Oh, are you in for a treat. This 2003 Harpers article by Jeff Sharlet--he's currently working on a book about the group--provides an inside look at the organization, led by Doug Coe, one of those "25 most influential evangelicals" listed in Time this week.

State of the Union
February 3, 2005 | 4:00 p.m.

I'm swamped by my day job at the moment, so State of the Union commentary will have to wait a few more hours. The switch in head speechwriters from Michael Gerson to Bill McGurn was evident--fewer (read: almost none) coded religious references; more hit-you-over-the-head conservative button-pushing phrases. I guess there's no need to be subtle when you've already won your second term. Again, I'll have more thoughts shortly. Please excuse me while I go back into the archives to see what all of those Republicans who were wildly applauding the Laura Bush anti-gang initiative (which, in all seriousness, sounds like an excellent idea to me) had to say about Bill Clinton's similar initiatives that included funding for midnight basketball, after-school programs, and school uniforms. If memory serves, nearly every conservative responded to the Clinton proposals with...oh, what's the word I'm looking for? Mockery? Ridicule? Yeah, that sounds about right.

What Is Time Magazine Talking About? Part 2
February 3, 2005 | 4:00 p.m.

One of the other stories in the Time magazine cover package on evangelicals is about Democratic efforts to reach religious voters (it's only available online to subscribers, unfortunately). The article does a fairly decent job of outlining the various Democratic leaders who are spearheading this discussion and the institutional changes already underway (e.g., the DNC's creation of a center for religious outreach). But the reporter--Perry Bacon, Jr.--writes with the apparent assumption that Democratic values don't appeal to religious voters. "Religious voters might like the music," he concludes, "but they're unlikely to be seduced by it as long as Democrats stick to their core positions." That's only true if by "religious" you mean "conservative."

It's bad enough when members of the media automatically equate "evangelical" with "conservative." (And, yes, I'm aware that the majority of white evangelicals voted for Bush, but they didn't all go Republican. There are millions of liberal evangelicals, too. Ever hear of Jimmy Carter? Bill Clinton? John Edwards? They're not alone.) But painting "religious voters" with the broad brush of conservatism is irresponsible. Democrats do need to realize that it's not enough to stick with health care, education, and prescription drugs, and assume that voters will realize that they're also really good people. But addressing their image problem isn't just window-dressing--when the entire Republican presidential campaign is a religious outreach program, you better believe the DNC needs to hire at least one person (and preferably a whole slew) to fight back.

I'm Taking My Church and Going Home
February 3, 2005 | 4:00 p.m.

What many people don't know is that the battle over gay marriage and the ordination of gay priests in the Episcopal Church hasn't gotten much further than a lot of angry talk for one simple reason: Individual churches don't own their buildings--the diocese does. So if you want to leave the denomination, that's fine. But you're going to have to turn the church building back over to the diocese and find your own, thank you very much.

As you can imagine, this isn't going over very well with some of the Episcopal churches that are most up-in-arms about the idea that their denomination might express tolerance of homosexuals. It has been a particular problem in Virginia, where a dozen conservative churches brought over a bishop from England last year to preside over confirmations rather than use their own bishop, who has taken what they believe to be too liberal of a position. So, the Washington Post reports, a Virginia state senator has introduced a bill that would "allow congregants to vote to leave their denominations and keep their church buildings and land, unless a legally binding document such as a deed specified otherwise." Hmm. If it's that easy, why would anyone stay in a pesky denomination anymore?

What Is Time Magazine Talking About?
February 2, 2005 | 11:00 a.m.

I hadn't seen this week's Time magazine, with its cover package on "The 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America," as well as a piece on Democrats and religion, until a reader pointed it out. Having read it, I'm now having trouble seeing straight, so I'll need to parcel out my comments in installments.

For now, I'll just say that a list of the nation's most prominent evangelicals that doesn't include Jim Wallis or Tony Campolo or Ron Sider or Richard Mouw is appallingly incomplete. And I say that having the greatest respect for David Van Biema, the Time religion reporter who penned the piece. It is simply absurd and insulting to publish an article purporting to identify the leaders evangelicals look up to while ignoring the existence of evangelicals who are to the political and theological left of Tim LaHaye. Of the 25 evangelicals profiled in the magazine, I can only identify three, maybe four, who can even be charitably defined as centrists. The remainder are solidly on the right, religious conservatives who command a following--there's no doubt about that--but whose influence does not span the entire evangelical community.

Farewell to Shrummy
February 2, 2005 | 11:00 a.m.

This is slightly off-topic, but we can't be all-religion all-the-time here. It may just be a coincidence that Kerry campaign strategist Bob Shrum declared he was leaving the world of Democratic consulting and moving to New York to teach just one week after my article advising Democrats to fire Shrum (along with a number of other consultants with equally awful win-loss records) appeared. I can't prove causation. The thanks of a grateful nation is enough for me.

Now, as Shrum and his wife prepare to leave D.C., they've put their house on the market and are asking $1.4 million more than they paid for it just over one year ago. Why the price increase? It seems that in addition to advising John Kerry, Shrum spent much of the year helping his wife remodel the house. As she explained to the Washington Post, "This house was done to be the perfect house for the Kerry administration." In other words, the Shrums were just getting ready to be the cocktail party spot in a city filled with Democratic administration types.

Hey, Bob? You know what would have really made it the perfect house for the Kerry administration? IF YOU HAD ELECTED KERRY TO THE FREAKING WHITE HOUSE FIRST.

Crosses and Cubicles
February 2, 2005 | 11:00 a.m.

An article in Tuesday's Boston Globe about a movement that advises Christians on how to practice their faith in the workplace reminds me of one of the more inexplicable decisions made by the Kerry campaign. Few people are aware that John Kerry introduced the Workplace Religious Freedom Act, along with unlikely cosponsor Rick Santorum, during the last Congress, and that he has been the prime mover behind similar legislation since the mid-1990s. The main reason few people are aware of this fact is that, to my knowledge, Kerry never mentioned it during the campaign and it was noted way at the very bottom of the "People of Faith for Kerry" page on his campaign website.

Here's a relatively uncontroversial issue--it's about freedom of religious expression, after all, not freedom to proselytize--that has the support of religious minorities like Sikhs and Muslims, civil liberty advocates, and religious conservatives. And yet not one peep from the Kerry campaign. If Karl Rove had been handed an opportunity like that, you wouldn't have been able to pick up a paper without reading at least five anonymous quotes from "close friends of the candidate" attesting to his commitment to protecting the rights of people of faith and reminding voters that he's a good man with a good heart.

Happy Groundhog Day
February 2, 2005 | 11:00 a.m.

So many quotes to choose from in the classic Bill Murray movie. But I'm going to have to go with:

"Don't drive angry."

Words to live by. Especially when you're in Boston. Happy Groundhog Day, everyone, with a special helping of good cheer going out to faithful reader Brett in Missouri, who is the only person I know who throws an annual Groundhog party. If you really want to get in the celebratory mood, read this essay in--of all unusual publications for me to link to--the National Review on the movie, which has apparently become some sort of spiritual touchstone for people of many faiths.

Silence on Sudan
February 1, 2005 | 6:00 p.m.

You heard plenty in Bush's inaugural address about how it's our divine duty to traverse the globe to look out for those who are oppressed by encouraging (sometimes via a little arm-twisting) their home countries to adopt democracy. And you're sure to hear more of the same in tomorrow night's State of the Union address. But it's hard to believe that this is anything more than an idea embraced in theory by many in the administration. Watching the inauguration, I kept yelling at the television, "Oh, yeah? So does that mean we're going into Sudan?" and when I heard that during her confirmation hearing, Condi Rice omitted Sudan from the list of countries in need of protection from oppression, I wasn't much happier. A lot of pretty words don't mean much if we're going to turn a selectively blind eye to suffering countries.

Stop the Presses!
February 1, 2005 | 1:00 p.m.

I suspect you're all as shocked as I am to read in today's New York Times that conservatives don't believe Hillary Clinton is really religious. In recent speeches, they say, she's starting talking about God and morality, which they find awfully convenient. And that's stunning, because conservatives have always thought very highly of Mrs. Clinton and have been willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

To be fair, further down in the article, Times reporter Raymond Hernandez admits that many people say faith has always been important to Clinton--she taught Sunday School in Arkansas and I can personally report that she attended services at Foundry Methodist just up 16th Street from the White House whenever she was in town. So why did the Times decide to spin the article this way? Everyone knows that conflict plays well in news, but the he said/she said formulation is even more strained here than usual: "Hillary Clinton talks about religion; conservatives say she's a big faker." Well, then. Who to believe?

If Hernandez had dug just a little bit deeper, he would have learned that Clinton has been convening her colleagues in the Senate to discuss ways to "reclaim" concepts like faith and values and morality since well before the election. In 2001, she headlined a panel the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life put together to discuss faith-based social services. And anyone who paid attention to her husband's mantra that abortion should be "safe, legal, and rare" knows that both Clintons believe abortion rates should be lower.

Unfortunately, this reality doesn't fit neatly into the boxes most political reporters have for politicians--Republicans are genuinely religious; Democrats are natural secularists, and if they talk about religion, it's insincere. Need more examples? The day before the election last fall--a Monday--John Kerry took a quick break from the campaign trail to attend a mass for All Saints Day. It wasn't a campaign stop, it was just a Catholic guy going to church. Did it get covered? Barely--a sentence here or there in a wire story, but nothing like the photos of Bush leaving church over the weekend that blanketed papers that same day. You can almost see reporters' brains melt down as they're presented with information that seems to contradict what they "know" about Democrats and religion. Can. Not. Compute.

And While We're At It...
February 1, 2005 | 1:00 p.m.

Allow me to extend my rant for one more thought. It's both annoying and wrong for Democrats to paint all evangelicals--heck, sometimes even all religious people--with the same broad brush of intolerance, ignorance, and conservatism. But it's equally wrong for conservatives to act as if all Democrats are godless heathens who hate religion. "You stupid Democrats," they say. "If you would just venture into a Red State every so often, you might realize that there are millions and millions of people who are motivated by their faith." Fine. But if they're spending so much time out in the heartland, then surely they've run across the millions and millions of progressive religious folks who don't embrace the politics of division.

If conservatives are going to set themselves up as the experts on "real America," then they shouldn't be allowed to pretend that they've never met a religious Democrat. The whole tradition of prairie populism--pioneered by good Lutherans and Catholics and other heartland denizens--suggests otherwise.

Praying in the Closet
February 1, 2005 | 1:00 p.m.

I don't know about you, but I'm sure pumped about the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday morning. Or at least I would be, if I could get a press pass for the event. (Apparently, reporters aren't really encouraged to attend. I think the organizers have the wrong take on this entirely. Shouldn't they see it as an opportunity to reach out to members of the godless elite media?) While I was surfing around to see if I could figure out another way in, I came across this amusing essay written by The New Republic's Gregg Easterbrook on the occasion of last year's Prayer Breakfast. Easterbrook argues (with tongue somewhat planted in cheek) that the whole concept of a public prayer breakfast is un-Christian, because Jesus specifically preached against public shows of piety. "When you pray," He said, "go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen." It's not a verse we're likely to hear at Thursday's breakfast.

Hello. I'll Be Your Blogger This Week
January 31, 2005 | 11:30 p.m.

Do not panic. Do not adjust your computer monitor. Jesse is off enjoying a well-deserved blog vacation, and I'm filling in as the resident liberal blogger for the first week of his absence. It's a pleasant homecoming-of-sorts for me--four years ago, when I was still tooling around on training wheels, testing out the whole idea of writing about religion and politics, a start-up website called Beliefnet published a few of my essays. I was hooked from the start and thrilled to discover that there was an audience for the two topics that matter most to me. I soon set off on my wobbly writing way and now it's my pleasure to return for a few days to share my analysis, commentary, and random musings.

Readers should know where a writer is coming from when they read opinion commentary; here, then, are a few notes about me before we begin. Religiously, I'm currently a member of the Episcopal Church, but I'll always be a recovering Baptist at heart. Politically, I'm firmly on the left side of the aisle, but I spend a fair amount of time taking fellow liberals to task for stereotyping all religious people as crazy Bible-thumping Red-Staters. I'm a Democrat precisely because of my faith, not despite it.

Stick around. With the State of the Union and National Prayer Breakfast both taking place this week, I have no doubt that Bush the Occasional Church-goer will give us plenty to discuss.

You Say 'Values,' I Say 'Values'
January 31, 2005 | 11:30 p.m.

The fact that The New York Times even finds it necessary to run stories informing readers that many religious folks (evangelicals, even!) consider things like, oh, poverty and war to be moral issues strikes me as somewhat depressing. But that's where we are. Thirty years of brilliant strategy have allowed religious conservatives to define the ABCs of moral concerns as abortion, buggery, and capital gains tax cuts. Sigh.

As the Times article reports, however, a broader consideration of what constitutes a moral issue is supported by both liberal and conservative people of faith.

Glen E. Stassen, a professor of Christian ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., said his students, who were largely conservative, agreed that poverty should be part of the moral values discussion. "A lot of Christians who are worried about abortion see poverty as a pro-life issue, because if you undermine the safety net for poor mothers, you'll increase the abortion rate and infant mortality rate," Dr. Stassen said. "We've seen that happen since welfare reform, just as the Catholic bishops predicted."

Dr. Stassen, who describes himself as "pro-life," added that many evangelicals, including his students, want to change the current moral values rhetoric because they think it drives people from, rather than to, the church. "They're both offended and worried that it will persuade people concerned about justice that they should not be Christians," he said.

Stassen's last point reminds me of a question raised by the oft-discussed so-called "God Gap"--the finding that those who attend church most often tend to vote Republican and those who never attend church tend to vote Democratic: What if it's not that liberals left churches, but that churches left them? In other words, it's perfectly possible that over the past thirty years, liberals have not suddenly become less religious, but they have found it more difficult to stay in churches that have become more tied to conservative political agendas. We don't really know enough right now to say with any certainty which way the causal arrow points. But neither do those who point to church attendance findings as proof positive of the growth of "godless secular liberalism."

Casting Ballots
January 31, 2005 | 11:30 p.m.

Just for a moment, set aside your beliefs about whether or not the U.S. should have invaded Iraq, whether our policy there for the past two years has made any sense, and whether there is any hope of peace and stability in the near future-and take a look at photos of Iraqis voting yesterday (the link to photographs is in the box on the side). They are all striking images, but one in particular moved me. It shows an elderly woman being pulled to the polling station in what looks like a wheelbarrow, and it immediately brought to my mind the story of the men who carried their disabled friend to see Jesus and ended up lowering him through the roof of a house so that he could reach his goal. The determination on these faces, and the knowledge that they braved violence that killed dozens on Election Day in order to get to the polls, is inspiring and humbling.

This Week in God
January 31, 2005 | 11:30 p.m.

Stephen Colbert of "The Daily Show" was already one of my favorite people; now I adore him even more. Over the weekend, I caught part of his "Fresh Air" interview with Terry Gross and learned that despite what you might think, given his signature irreverent segment, "This Week in God," he's a committed Catholic. "I was actually my daughter's catechist last year for First Communion," he told Gross, "which was a great opportunity speak very simply and plainly about my faith without anybody saying, 'Yeah, but do you believe that stuff?', which happens a lot in what I do." As someone who's been referred to around the office as "Jesus Girl" or "Bible Girl" just because I know who Michael W. Smith is, I feel your pain, Stephen.