Bad theology from a Bush critic
But then, of course, what else is new?
David Kuo's Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction is eseentially a hit piece on the Bush administration's support of faith-based initiatives. Among other faults, it manages to completely confuse the Two Kingdoms. The matters involved in those "faith-based initiatives" are worldly matters- matters, in Luther's terminology, of the "Kingdom of the Left Hand-" the realm of Law, in which believers and non-believers alike participate on an equal basis. They do not participate in the realm of the exclusively Christian, the Kingdom of the Right- the unique realm of faith, the arena of the Gospel.
Here is a cogent response to Kuo's rather disingenuous thesis.
David Kuo's Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction is eseentially a hit piece on the Bush administration's support of faith-based initiatives. Among other faults, it manages to completely confuse the Two Kingdoms. The matters involved in those "faith-based initiatives" are worldly matters- matters, in Luther's terminology, of the "Kingdom of the Left Hand-" the realm of Law, in which believers and non-believers alike participate on an equal basis. They do not participate in the realm of the exclusively Christian, the Kingdom of the Right- the unique realm of faith, the arena of the Gospel.
Here is a cogent response to Kuo's rather disingenuous thesis.
Comments
I do strongly suspect that Kuo's comments (including his ascription of contempt for Christians to those in the White House) would be a surprise to Tim Goegelin, President Bush's (and Karl Rove's) in-house liason to the Evangelicals- and a deacon at Immanuel Lutheran, a confessional LCMS congregation in Alexandria, Virginia to which I belonged when I lived in the DC area a couple of years ago.
Politics, in Lyndon Johnson's phrase, is "the art of the possible." There are certain things you can accomplish legislatively if you have the votes. A Republican majority does not necessarily translate into a majority for legislation you or I would like to see passed for moral reasons. American political parties are, by necessity, coalitions; that's how we get by with two major parties instead of three or four or five, like most democracies have. We have yet to get to a point where most of that legislation is politically viable- not merely in terms of the members of the House and Senate (including some members of the Republican caucus), but in terms of the electorate generally. Then, too, remember that Iraq and the War on Terror have of necessity so completely absorbed the energies of this administration that aggressive pursuit of the domestic agenda simply hasn't been possible. And remember- even the "Religious Right" has been down on the President and Congress for all the spending that has led to the deficit. Never mind that the deficit is pretty much accounted for by making up for the neglect of the military and our intelligence and homeland security capabilities by the Clinton Administration! Many of these initiatives cost money- and ironically, a great many Christian conservatives are in the camp which is already giving the President heat for spending so much!
Much of the agenda we'd like to see accomplished lies outside the purview of either the Executive or the Legislative Branches. One of the great ironies about the talk among some conservatives of sitting out this year's elections is that for the Democrats to take control of the Senate- or even to substantially reduce the Republican majority- would in effect end the best chance we are likely to get for a majority on the Supreme Court willing to reverse such abominations as Roe v. Wade and
Cruzan v. Director. One more justice would probably do it- and yet, if the Republican majority goes away or even is substantially reduced, a potentially pro-life nominee probably could not be confirmed by the Senate.
Finally, it's a fact of life that there are certain groups which are, to some extent, taken for granted by each party. I recently saw an article comparing the
status of the Religious Right with the Republican Party to that of labor unions (civil rights groups might work, too) in the Democratic Party. The governing assumption is that they have nowhere else to go. And human nature being what it is, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. The primary attention is given to that aspect of the agenda which will make groups which the party is more likely to lose happy, rather than those it feels are safe.
Does this argue for making the Republican Party uneasy about keeping the Religious Right? Perhaps- but there's a price to be paid. Right now, the price is likely any prospect for the reversal of Roe, Cruzan and the other goofy rulings by the Supreme Court over tha past thirty or forty years which have undergirded the Culture of Death.
A better course, I believe, is to recognize that this administration is about over. It would be hard for it to learn many useful lessons from this year's elections, since the next election will be for its successor. The time has come to get in back of somebody
like Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee or
Sam Brownbrownback and push the agenda to the front burner in terms that make it clear that the Christian Right will not be put off.
The urge to cut off our noses to spite our faces is strong, especially since the Christian Right has not yet had sufficient experience of power to have learned to wield it wisely. That's a lesson social conservatives have to learn- hopefully not the hard way.