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Recently I agreed to become a regular contributor to washingtonpost.com's provocative blog on religion and politics: “On Faith.” My mission: to elucidate the intricate mysteries of Islamist politics. Something about my reputation for scholarly honesty and objectivity-- I was told--bolstered by my work with Arab democratic activists, suggested that I could make a compelling addition to the On Faith team! Who was I to argue?
Where are the passionate moderates in Islam, Madeleine Albright wanted to know. Why does all the passion seem to come from extremists?
The former secretary of State was speaking at the recent U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, sponsored by the Brookings Institution. To the Islamic world, her message was that what we need now is “moderates on the march, moderates with swagger.”
Admit it, Secular America. If Mike Huckabee had said something like this on the campaign trail you’d be locking and loading faster than you could hum John Lennon’s lyric “Imagine all the people, Living life in peace”:
And during the course of that sermon, I was introduced to someone named Jesus Christ. I learned that my sins could be redeemed and that if I placed my trust in Christ, He could set me on the path to eternal life.
And you’d probably be thinking again of applying for Canadian citizenship -- just ‘fess up: you were scouting properties in northern Manitoba back around Thanksgiving 2004 -- if the former governor of Arkansas declaimed:
In my next post I will perform an autopsy/eulogy of the 2008 Huckabee candidacy--the greatest thing to happen to Faith and Values politicking since George W. Bush identified Christ as his favorite philosopher (about which more anon).
But today I want to respond to the generally un-stimulating and jaw-droppingly repetitive comments made about my previous post. Most of these were submitted by self-identified secularists, liberals, atheists and outspoken critics of Georgetown University’s hiring practices (faculty members at Princeton, no doubt).
What does the failed presidential run of Mike Huckabee teach us about the standing of Evangelicals in politics today?
A great deal, I think. And as I embark on two posts devoted to this issue permit me to conjure up a handy slogan. Repeat it to yourself like a mantra, meditate upon it while you're on the elliptical machine, set it to the melody of the song “Maria” from The Sound of Music if you so desire. But remember: Evangelicals are not necessarily in crisis, they are in flux.
“Come with an example of a situation where you were judged by a stereotype. Tell about how it affected you and what you tried to do to address it.” A group of strangers tackled that tantalizing assignment one evening last month. We were invited to a lovely dinner at a private Washington home for an introduction to the “Public Conversations Project”.
Throughout the current campaign many pundits, myself included, have been riffing on variations of a theme entitled “what’s wrong with the Evangelicals?” But I think our definition of a perfectly functioning Evangelical polity is somewhat unrealistic. We are using the 2004 presidential election as a standard—and that’s a hard, nay, an almost impossible, standard to emulate.
Here are some of the unusual things that happened four years ago. First and foremost, in the person of George W. Bush, Evangelicals had themselves a keeper, an ideal candidate. In their eyes he was “one of us.” The leadership was squarely behind him, as was the rank-and-file.
The following remarks were delivered at the opening of a debate which will be aired on PBS over the next few weeks (Yes, check local listings).
The event took place in Richmond Virginia at the splendid Jefferson Hotel and was sponsored by the Miller Center for Public Affairs and MacNeil/Lehrer Productions.
There were four participants debating the proposition that “religion should have no place in politics and government.” I was, as you might surmise, on the “pro” side and my teammate was the Reverend Barry Lynn. On the “con” side were “On Faith” panelist Chuck Colson and Bishop Henry Jackson. It was a wild ride, but a civil one.
As Prepared for Delivery
There is No Religious Freedom Without Freedom from Religion
Tonight we are debating the proposition that “religion should have no place in politics and government.” Let me state from the outset that I--a garden-variety Jewish atheist—wholly concur.
Some years back my wife and I befriended three Moroccan brothers who had been summarily locked up for 10 years by the late king of Morocco. Tossed into a cell with little light and a ceiling so low that one of the brothers developed a hunched back, they were only released after a human rights campaign in France secured their freedom. One brother finally came to America, where he settled down in a small town in Texas. There he wrote his memoirs and discovered a kind of happiness, surrounded by people who new little of the world he came from, but who were kind and welcoming.
You can’t miss rising food prices if you do the grocery shopping or listen to the radio these days. They are causing real pain all around the world as family budgets everywhere are squeezed. There’s no end in sight, though hunger is much more prominent at least in policy discussions, from Davos to U.S. political campaigns.
Food was on the agenda for three events I attended last week, but I came away with a sense of frustration because they approached the question from such different perspectives, and the solutions offered seemed vague and slippery. It’s hard to see how we can move forward in this jumble of debates and narratives.
I want to preface these rather critical observations about Barack Obama’s “A More Perfect Union” address with non-faint praise. As far as I am concerned the good Senator is unequivocally the most intelligent and intellectually sophisticated politician in America today.
Why am I, as with many other members of the professorate, so enthralled by him? Well, for one he doesn’t merely wish to solicit our votes, he wants to edify us as well. Yet in many ways this relentless quest to enlighten the electorate was one of the major problems with Tuesday’s oration.
About a decade ago I was researching a book that required me to spend a good deal of time taking in numerous and sundry varieties of African-American oratory. I look back at those visits to churches, Afrocentric rallies, and community activist gatherings with fondness. They certainly alleviated the archival tedium of an otherwise dull scholarly project.
That’s because there is long tradition of outstanding and invigorating oratory in African America. How outstanding and invigorating? So much so that an accomplished speaker such as Senator Barack Obama would still be considered to be a mere promising Triple-A prospect by the lofty standards of black public rhetoric.
I had blundered, bigtime.
Speaking at an interfaith assembly, I had made the case that women's welfare would improve much faster if more women were in decision-making positions. A “rule of thumb,” I said, should be 30 percent women among leaders of any institution. With less than that, women are too often fighting tokenism. When the numbers of men and women are balanced, agendas and tone change.
Two women pastors, quite independently, drew me aside right afterwards. The term "rule of thumb", they told me, came from an ancient common law that limited the size of the switch a man could use to beat his wife: no larger than the diameter of his thumb. Since I was arguing for religious leaders to take action against domestic violence, my use of the phrase was particularly jarring.
Although I had initially conjured up the idea only to reject it as undemocratic, perhaps it is high time that we as a nation, believers and nonbelievers alike, consider the establishment of the 28th Amendment. Its majestic words would read as follows:
Section 1. The right of presidential aspirants to discuss religion, invoke sacred texts, or mention God on the campaign trail is hereby repealed
Section 2. Whenever a religious figure endorses any candidate for the presidency that candidate must reject aforesaid endorsement.
Section 3. The Congress shall have power to have the offending religious figure immediately deported to France
Last week, Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki issued a 72-hour ultimatum to Shi’ite militants in the port city of Basra to surrender their weapons. When they called his bluff, he extended the offer by a full week, underscoring the great risk that Maliki had undertaken in pursuing a military solution to the conflict with the fiery cleric Muqtada Sadr and his “Mahdi Army.” In today’s Iraq, political clout ultimately flows from the barrel of many guns. Thus Sadr’s thousands of loyal followers will not disarm. This was the message that Sadr implicitly telegraphed to the government in his “9 point response” to Maliki’s demands.
» Jacques Berlinerblau: Finding, inspecting, analyzing and understanding The God Vote 2008.
» Katherine Marshall: Faith in Action
What Islam Really Says About Violence, Rights and Other Religions
Gomaa, Fadlallah, Mubarak, Khan, Siddiqi, Ellison, others | On Faith
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