{"id":4935,"date":"2006-02-02T13:36:15","date_gmt":"2006-02-02T13:36:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/st-jack.html"},"modified":"2006-02-02T13:36:15","modified_gmt":"2006-02-02T13:36:15","slug":"st-jack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/st-jack.html","title":{"rendered":"“St. Jack”"},"content":{"rendered":"

No, not C.S. Lewis, but apparently John Danforth. <\/a><\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

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." As he sees it, many Republican leaders have lost their bearings and, if they don’t change, will lose their grip on power. Not to mention make the United States a meaner place.<\/p>\n

Danforth is no squalling liberal. He is a lifelong Republican. And his own political history shows he is no milquetoast.<\/p>\n

A man of God and the GOP, he is speaking out for moderation — in religion, politics, science and government. The lanky figure once dubbed "St. Jack," not always warmly, for the perch he seemed to occupy on Washington’s moral high ground, expects people will sour on the assertive brand of Christianity so closely branded Republican.<\/p>\n

"I’m counting on nausea," he says.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The reader who passed this on comments:<\/p>\n

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[This]… really rubbed me the wrong way.  The irony is that he lectures the "religious right" for being preachy and yet I am not sure anyone could beat him for sanctimoniousness.  He preaches tolerance and yet wants to flush the religious right’s influence from the party.  Also, he seems incapable of seeing that a) there are non-religious moral arguments against embryonic stem-cells and b) that huge swaths of people who seem pretty accepting of homosexuals don’t want to legalize gay marriage. <\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/div>\n
There is also irony that others are noting that someone who was part of the Republican party before its ascendancy is lecturing Republicans on how to make a healthier party (perhaps healthier certainly not a winning party).  Jimmy Carter and Jim Wallis have cameos too.  Sometimes you have to wonder if they realize that when something like marriage amendments pass by large majorities in every state in which they are on the ballot it probably isn’t "divisive." <\/em><\/div>\n
<\/em><\/div>\n
I am not the biggest fan of the Evangelical wing of the Republican party nor many of their public arguments but this just strikes me as ridiculous.<\/em><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No, not C.S. Lewis, but apparently John Danforth. 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…<\/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-4935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n"St. Jack" - 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\/02\/st-jack.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""St. Jack" - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"No, not C.S. Lewis, but apparently John Danforth. Jack Danforth wishes the Republican right would step down from its pulpit. 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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\/4935","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=4935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4935\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}