{"id":1380,"date":"2006-06-07T00:14:21","date_gmt":"2006-06-07T00:14:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/brownbacks-faith.html"},"modified":"2006-06-07T00:14:21","modified_gmt":"2006-06-07T00:14:21","slug":"brownbacks-faith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/brownbacks-faith.html","title":{"rendered":"Brownback’s Faith"},"content":{"rendered":"

A WaPo examination, one of many we will undoubtedly see in the next couple of years..<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

But how can a person be humble and also believe he should be president of the most powerful country in the world?<\/p>\n

"It’s one of the most humbling things on Earth," Brownback says, his voice soft. "Look at the nature and the difficulty of that job and the greatness of this country and the need to be humble and wise to serve. Plus it’s just, it’s like, pride was the first sin and humility’s the first grace . . ."<\/p>\n

"I think Reagan had it right that you don’t pursue the presidency, it pursues you."<\/p>\n

But a man who expects a crop must first till the soil. Brownback knows this. He still goes home to his childhood farm for the spring planting and the fall harvest of the wheat.<\/p>\n

He used to keep a tennis ball can filled with Kansas dirt in his office as a symbol "of what I physically return to," he says. "It’s just a great reminder that you serve for a period, you serve for a season and then you move on."<\/p>\n

Brownback says he imagines future generations walking the halls of Congress and nobody knowing who he was. He imagines people passing a "Brownback Room" and someone saying, "Who was he?"<\/p>\n

Perhaps someone else might answer that Sam Brownback was a complicated man, who thought himself a servant and a potential president at the same time, who imagined his life forgotten even as he dreamed of a room named after himself.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A WaPo examination, one of many we will undoubtedly see in the next couple of years.. But how can a person be humble and also believe he should be president of the most powerful country in the world? "It’s one of the most humbling things on Earth," Brownback says, his voice soft. "Look at the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nBrownback's Faith - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/brownbacks-faith.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Brownback's Faith - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A WaPo examination, one of many we will undoubtedly see in the next couple of years.. But how can a person be humble and also believe he should be president of the most powerful country in the world? "It’s one of the most humbling things on Earth," Brownback says, his voice soft. "Look at the…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/brownbacks-faith.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-06-07T00:14:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Brownback's Faith - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/brownbacks-faith.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Brownback's Faith - Via Media","og_description":"A WaPo examination, one of many we will undoubtedly see in the next couple of years.. But how can a person be humble and also believe he should be president of the most powerful country in the world? "It’s one of the most humbling things on Earth," Brownback says, his voice soft. "Look at the…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/brownbacks-faith.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-06-07T00:14:21+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/brownbacks-faith.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/brownbacks-faith.html","name":"Brownback's Faith - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-06-07T00:14:21+00:00","dateModified":"2006-06-07T00:14:21+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/brownbacks-faith.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/brownbacks-faith.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/brownbacks-faith.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Brownback’s Faith"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1380\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}