natalie's narrative

Wallis and company on "Meet the Press"

Even though it aired a week ago today, I still want to comment on the "Meet the Press" with Revs. Jerry Falwell, Richard Land, Jim Wallis, and Al Sharpton ... albeit through reading the transcript and not actually watching it.

Granted, the show was trying to help their ratings by 1) focusing on those "moral values" again, and 2) having Falwell and Sharpton, I wish that Land and Wallis would have been the only guests. Those two seemed like the most articulate, and I would like to see them in a discussion about what living out the gospel really means. Anyway, here are a few quotes from the show, which may make this post repetitive since I've already talked about defining values differently. I just like the way that Wallis describes his position:

On the Sojourners' newspaper ad:

REV. JIM WALLIS: Well, Christians voted both ways in this election. God is not a Republican or a Democrat. That should be obvious. The values question is critical. The question is how narrowly or how broadly we define values. So we say that poverty is a religious and moral value. So is the environment. So is the war in Iraq. These are moral values that require a lot of discussion. I welcome the moral-values conversation. I really do. It's the soul of our politics, the compass of our public life. But how narrowly or how broadly we define the values is the question.

In this election, there were competing values, so a lot of Christians voted both ways because we wanted to vote all of our values, not just one or two. I think the Democrats are often uncomfortable talking about faith values, when it's even about their agenda. The Republicans want to narrow, though, or restrict values to one or two issues--important ones, but one or two. I think the Democrats have to recover their heart and soul; Republicans need a broader and deeper agenda about values.

On the separation of church and state (ie pastors endorsing candidates):

REV. WALLIS: Well, the separation of church and state does not mean the separation of values from our public life. I think we all agree with that. The question is: How do we bring values into our public-- King did it best. He did it by bringing the purposes of God for justice and peace into our public arena. He was welcoming. He was inviting. No one felt left out of that conversation. He reminded us of this wonderful vision of a beloved community where no one gets left out and those who are always left out have a front-row seat.

I think there's a lot of common ground here. If values can be used to bring us together, faith and value should not be a wedge or a weapon that destroys and divides, but the bridge that brings us together and finds some new common ground, and I think we can do that and should do that.

Also, when Falwell, in trying to attack Wallis for not voting for the "pro-life" candidate, tried to point out some Psalm about life being sacred (why wouldn't that also apply to war and capital punishment?), Wallis mentions that there are 3,000 verses in the Bible about the poor. Wallis later comments that "Jesus isn't pro-rich, pro-war and only pro-American. We don't find that Jesus anywhere in the Bible." There was a pretty interesting dialogue between Sharpton and Land, too, about the fact that Dr. King had to fight against the Southern Baptist Convention, and people are still fighting against the SBC today...

I like the way that Wallis articulates his beliefs and the beliefs of many other evangelicals who don't want to align themselves fully with the red-state mentality. He has a good tone, a conciliatory one that brings together evangelicals who are divided.

What about the other "moral issues"?

It's safe to say I'm disappointed with the results of the election--not at all because I'm a Kerry supporter, though. Recently I've learned a lot about what the Gospel truly is; it is not merely spiritual but also physical. Granted, as Jason pointed out in a comment to one of my earlier posts, the government does not and should not take on responsibilities that the church should have, but it does help if we elect an administration and congresspersons that are not against things for which the church is (or at least should be) working.

My disappointment comes from the repeated mention in the media of "moral issues," and such issues were the reason for Bush's victory. Like I've pointed out many times before, isn't aligning yourself with the rich also a moral issue? What about having an ethos that doesn't respect life? Both candidates failed in that last question, but nonetheless I wish that "moral issues" weren't so narrowly defined. The media has singled out evangelical and other Christian voters in this election, because they tipped the scale. They felt a strong need to ban same-sex marriages and to elect a president that will take a stand against abortion (although, as a pro-life ethicist has shown, abortion rates have risen and will probably continue to rise under Bush's policies). That's great that they took a stand, but is anyone getting energetic about any other social issues? Of course not, because that would be hitting a little too close to home.

I'm going to quote Andrew Walls again, because he really gets to what I'm trying to say about this election, and maybe many conversative Christians' attitude in general:

"We can use the sense of Christian identity to legitimate some group's economic and social interests. That is civil religion--and it is an ever-present peril when Christianity is well established in any community. When we give way to this we draw the teeth of the Scriptures so that they will not bite us, while still hoping that they will bite other people."

from The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith

One last thing: look at the way some perceive us Christians now, which is simply as identifiers with one camp, rather than thinking, non-politically-partisan believers in the Gospel. Here's a quote from Friedman's piece today in the NY Times:

"Mr. Bush held onto the same basic core of states that he won four years ago - as if nothing had happened. It seemed as if people were not voting on his performance. It seemed as if they were voting for what team they were on.

This was not an election. This was station identification. I'd bet anything that if the election ballots hadn't had the names Bush and Kerry on them but simply asked instead, "Do you watch Fox TV or read The New York Times?" the Electoral College would have broken the exact same way.

My problem with the Christian fundamentalists supporting Mr. Bush is not their spiritual energy or the fact that I am of a different faith. It is the way in which he and they have used that religious energy to promote divisions and intolerance at home and abroad."

Election Eve

On this day before the election, the one thing that I am driven to do the most is pray--to pray for the church. I've already voted, so my prayers can move from whom do I choose to the American Christians' having wisdom tomorrow when they are connecting those arrows or punching those holes. It's not an easy choice in terms of the president, because neither is consistently pro-life, and that issue seems to be one of the two main issues to which Christians latch on, the other being homosexuality. Why pray? Well, Jim Wallis pointed out in a SoJo email the power that Christians could potentially have in this election:

"Moderate Catholics and Evangelicals may help decide this election. They are what widely respected University of Akron researcher John Green calls 'centrist' Catholic and Evangelical voters who comprise 19% of the electorate and are concentrated in some of the most important swing states."

"Centrist Catholics outnumber conservative Catholics by 2 to 1. And Green points out that only one third of Evangelicals are solidly in the Religious Right camp. How the moderates in each group decide to vote could clearly decide the election. So what are the religious values in this election? If there are only two, Bush will win enough religious votes to win the election. But if enough of those Evangelical and Catholic centrists decide that their religious and ethical values apply to more than just abortion and gay marriage, Kerry has a real chance to win this election."

I pray that the church will vote all its values tomorrow.

Another thing I pray is that the US church will listen to its fellow believers around the world concerning US foreign policy. The African, Asian, European, and Latin-American churches certainly have a different perspective than do we on matters like war. Since we are all members of one global body, we in the US would do well to consider the wisdom of our fellow members.

Casualties of Faith

Maureen Dowd, op-ed columnist for the NY Times, commented today on Bush's faith. The article laments how devastating Bush's beliefs have been to policy on the war in Iraq, and Dowd refers to the Paula Zahn interview of Pat Robertson (Sojourners was mentioned in that interview, by the way). Here are a few of my favorite quotes from the article:

"J.F.K. had to fight the anti-papist expectation that his Oval Office would take orders from heaven. For W., it's a selling point. Some right-wing Catholics want John Kerry excommunicated, while evangelicals call the president a messenger of God. 'God's blessing is on him,' the TV evangelist Pat Robertson says, adding, 'It's the blessing of heaven on the emperor.'"

"Mr. Bush has shown all the evangelical voters who didn't like his daddy that he gets, as Mr. Robertson puts it, 'his direction from the Lord.'"

"The president has this strange notion that his belief in God means detailed and perfect knowledge of everything that God wants. He may wish to keep his head stuck in the Iraqi sand, but he may discover that the Almighty has His own purposes."

I liked the last quote because I think that a lot of Christians, not just Bush, give the impression that we have the absolute truth, we've got it figured out. A professor I had last year, Jerry Root, made sure we knew the difference between believing that an absolute truth exists and claiming that we know everything about this absolute truth. Perhaps the evangelical belief that we have a direct line to an all-knowing God needs to be tempered with the reminder that we don't know it all! I wish my fellow Christians would quit playing the God card, especially for political purposes. The girls I went to Cleveland with this past weekend and I decided that we didn't want to identify with the name "evangelical" anymore, precisely because of the influences of the above-mentioned fundies.

Bible-Believers vs. Social-Gospelers

In chapel on Friday, we had the privilege of hearing Dr. Marla Frederick, a professor of cultural anthropology at Harvard who specializes in African-American studies. She shared her struggle with studying anthropology while also being an evangelical Christian. Even though I am only an undergraduate student of anthropology, I can definitely relate. Dr. Frederick had a hard time reconciling the fact that almost 90% of those in the field of anthropology are either atheists or agnostics, while at the same time, Billy Graham commented once that he regretted not furthering his undergraduate study of anthropology and going on to get a Ph.d in the field. Dr. Frederick fought for her faith, though, and now she feels that anthropology has helped her to become an even stronger Christian. How encouraging!

After her personal testimony, Dr. Frederick moved on to something a little more controversial. I must say she is one of the first people I have heard who discussed politics in such a positive way. She talked about how we as Christians many times choose to construct our own definitions of "sin" and "morality," relying on cultural interpretations rather than scriptural. For example, we are quick to label abortion, lust, and lying as sin, but when it comes to more structural sins like corporate greed, materialism, or racial stereotyping, Christians aren't so quick. We rename those things, calling them instead "opportunity," "progress," or just shrugging our shoulders, saying, "That's just the way things are."

Dr. Frederick then told us about her experience in Boston, discussing politics with Christians. All of the Christians in that area with whom she had talked were Democrats, and she had only recently discussed politics with a Christian Republican when she visited Beeson in Alabama! She commented on the fact that Christians are divided between the ideologies behind the Democratic and Republican parties, and she encouraged us not to set up camp with one side or the other, with the so-called Bible-believers or the social-gospelers. Instead, our faith embodies beliefs from both sides, because we can focus on issues like poverty and racism at the same time as personal, individual sin. It's not like we have to choose between one or the other. In fact, we cannot pick and choose which parts of the Gospel we want to live out. The Hebrew word for justice and the word for righteousness are the same word. Truly living out the Gospel means that we emphasize holiness and righteousness and justice and mercy. Dr. Frederick was in a way correlating Republican tendencies with the former and Democratic with the latter. I think that she was definitely very brave saying what she said at a school where many believe that God has ordained one specific political party!

The Passion of the Bush

A right-wing response to Fahrenheit 9/11 is being released on DVD this Tuesday: "George W. Bush: Faith in the White House." The New York Times' Arts section has an article today on this documentary that will be distributed to thousands of American churches. I thought the following paragraph interesting, but the rest of the article is worth a read, too. It mentions Richard Land, the "Left Behind" series, and Sojourners founder Jim Wallis. Although I agree with the premise of the article, of course there are things (such as the South Park reference to "how Jesus got killed") that are a point of departure.

More than any other campaign artifact, it clarifies the hard-knuckles rationale of the president's vote-for-me-or-face-Armageddon re-election message. It transforms the president that the Democrats deride as a "fortunate son" of privilege into a prodigal son with the "moral clarity of an old-fashioned biblical prophet." Its Bush is not merely a sincere man of faith but God's essential and irreplaceable warrior on Earth. The stations of his cross are burnished into cinematic fable: the misspent youth, the hard drinking (a thirst that came from "a throat full of Texas dust"), the fateful 40th-birthday hangover in Colorado Springs, the walk on the beach with Billy Graham. A towheaded child actor bathed in the golden light of an off-camera halo re-enacts the young George comforting his mom after the death of his sister; it's a parable anticipating the future president's miraculous ability to comfort us all after 9/11. An older Bush impersonator is seen rebuffing a sexual come-on from a fellow Bush-Quayle campaign worker hovering by a Xerox machine in 1988; it's an effort to imbue our born-again savior with retroactive chastity. As for the actual president, he is shown with a flag for a backdrop in a split-screen tableau with Jesus. The message isn't subtle: they were separated at birth.

The Evangelical Left and Right

Wheaton's newspaper, the Record, focused on political views at Wheaton in this week's issue. From a survey of the student body, 72% of students support Bush and 11% Kerry. An interesting trend when the results are divided by class is that students become more liberal while at Wheaton. Five percent of freshmen say they will vote for Kerry, compared to 17% of seniors. In addition, 77% of students say that they have become more liberal since they began at Wheaton. According to a professor, "Higher education itself has a liberalizing effect on young people, quite apart from anything else they'll experience...My guess is that seniors leaving Bob Jones University are more liberal than when they were freshmen."

The "Focus" section of the paper took a look at evangelical partisanship. Evangelicals who emphasize a more individualistic faith, with a focus on personal sin and relationship with Christ, consequently gravitate towards political issues that "connect most directly to an individual person and his or her choices." Since, according to these evanglicals, the church is a means of personal salvation and morality, "conversion is the answer to social problems." Since individual choice has a strong influence, homosexuality and abortion are important to this group.

On the other hand, evangelicals who focus more on corporate sin view the church as an "agent of institutional transformation," stressing social justice issues like poverty. This group believes that "bringing the Kingdom of God to earth is a part of redemption," as compared to the conservative group who views life on earth as simply a preparation for heaven, emphasizing righteous living while anticipating the second coming.

One thing this article addresses that I am very excited about is an initiative by the National Association of Evangelicals. Titled "For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility," it encourages Christians to become multi-issue voters. This document focuses equally on left and right issues--both stewardship of the environment and same-sex marriage, for example. It also challenges evangelicals "not to equate Christian faith with partisan politics."

The reason why I like this stance taken by the NAE is that I remember feeling guilty when reading a chapter from one of John Piper's Godward Life books that deals with abortion. He insists that Christians and other pro-lifers should be single-issue voters. Also, in the pro-life group I am involved in at church, I have heard people more than once compare the worth of the lives of US soldiers with the lives of the unborn when discussing who to vote for in the presidential election. Such comparisons bothers me, and besides, voting for the candidate who does not support the war would be hinged on more than saving soldiers' lives. My point is, I don't think it is right to state that God is on one side, and if one doesn't vote based on a specific issue (like abortion), one is not doing the will of God. This is my take on the issue, but then again, higher education has corrupted me, I guess!

Republicans Admit Mailing Campaign Literature

Republicans Admit Mailing Campaign Literature Saying Liberals Will Ban the Bible

*sigh* ...but what if you are a politically liberal, Bible-believing Christian?

American evangelicals are the subject

American evangelicals are the subject of a New York Times editorial today! Michael Hout and Andrew M. Greeley write:

"While it is true that white evangelicals tend to be more conservative socially, as well as religiously, than the average American, there is little correlation between religious conservatism and political conservatism. For example, in the social surveys, about 40 percent of Americans who believe in the literal, word-for-word interpretation of the Bible describe themselves as 'politically conservative.'"

We talked about the relationship between political and religious conservatism the other day in Social Research, because most of us in the class as well as the professor are not conservative politically. It becomes frustrating when, on one hand, we are perceived negatively by other evangelicals when we don't necessarily choose, for example, to support Bush. On the other hand, non-evangelicals automatically assume that, because we are religiously conservative, we will be so politically, too.

Hout and Greeley try to get rid of some of these assumptions, which is a good thing for a girl like me who is a member of a Southern Baptist church but cringes at the thought of Bush and Cheney another four years.