God in the White House?

God moves into the White House?

by Barbara Kellam Scott, co-moderator of Semper Reformanda
January 19, 2001

[Published here on 1-20-01]

Never, before the U.S. presidential campaign just ended, have I heard such use of religion in American politics. It started with George W. Bush's citation of Jesus as the "political philosopher" who has most influenced him. It is continuing into Bush's nominations of advisers and Cabinet members. And exactly because I'm a member of the same dominant religious group that is being so aggressively promoted in this political season - Protestant Christians - the turned-up volume of piety scares me.

Partly I resist the intrusion of politics - both civil and ecclesiological - into how I live my faith. I'm a Presbyterian elder, an ordained lay leader, and deeply engaged in the political issues that are tearing at the denomination with a vehemence that hasn't been seen in a couple of generations. Beyond our own polity, though, we're a denomination with a long and proud history of civil influence and service - a signer of the Declaration of Independence, several presidents, numbers of members of Congress, as well as less formal positions of influence.

The director of the Presbyterian Washington Office was one of the religious leaders invited to make remarks recently at the White House when President Clinton signed a bill including $435 million in debt relief for developing countries, a step toward the goal of the "Jubilee 2000" campaign in which Presbyterians participated through our denominational Hunger Program. But this evidence of denominational influence, although acknowledged explicitly by the sitting president, a Democrat, was almost completely ignored by the official and unofficial denominational press. By contrast, even before Condoleeza Rice, a Presbyterian laywoman with no particular presence established in the denomination, was named to be national security advisor, she was pictured on the front page of the leading independent conservative Presbyterian publication. Rice seems to have become a more important Presbyterian because of her civil position in a Republican administration. At the same time, we let slip the concrete influence of the whole denomination, authorized by denominational policy, on a Democratic administration. I'd like to know how Rice has been influenced by the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program, and how she plans to use her experience as a Presbyterian in advising her president.

Even more than I'm concerned by the intrusion of civil politics into my church, I'm alarmed by the proliferating references to my faith in the context of civil politics. I was startled to hear Gov. Bush, in his acceptance speech, resurrect "compassionate conservatism," a phrase that had been wisely dropped in the campaign. Compassion is a vital Christian principle to me, but one I know as unconditional, unmodified by political strategies and philosophies. Compassion as I know it is specifically unchecked by the prudence in which a civil administrator, let alone a political figure with reelection hopes, must bound her/is policies. "Conservative compassion" would be an oxymoron, and I think the inverse may be as well. As a Christian principle, it must be Christianity in sensible shoes, and they pinch.

On the whole, though, I think it's the exclusivist vein of Christendom that upsets me most as it flows toward Washington. I'm glad that Gov. Bush has an active religious life and I appreciate his willingness to speak of it publicly. But he must be a president for all Americans - Baptists, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, animists, pagans, and atheists. As President, Bush will need to interact comfortably and respectfully with the leaders of legally theocratic non-Christian governments around the world. We as a nation cannot afford even a hint of religious arrogance in dealing with allies in Saudi Arabia or enemies in Afghanistan. We must be ready to help Turkey to find a workable blend of secular society with the demands of Islam on the passions of their people. We must help Israel to honor the rights of Jews and Muslims, as well as those of the tiny minority community of Christians.

Yet three out of the four sources quoted in a New York Times article about what "conservatives" expect and demand of the Bush administration are best known as leaders of the extreme Christian Right with no history of tolerance for non-Christian religions. The nation was once afraid that a Roman Catholic president would have policies dictated by the Vatican. We should perhaps be even more afraid of the influence on a conservative Protestant president of a self-designated panel of religious advisors whose pronouncements are unchecked by a College of Cardinals or a democratically organized, national body of discernment such as the Presbyterian General Assembly.

Conservative Christians' favorite among the Bush appointees so far, Sen. John Ashcroft, in his speech accepting nomination to be Attorney General, quoted my favorite passage from the Hebrew prophets, Micah 6, verse 8. It gave me shivers. I can well understand why he might want to emphasize God's call to "do justice," but that wasn't the translation Sen. Ashcroft chose. He apparently read the King James version, "to do justly." That becomes more a general statement about one's philosophy of life than a statement of policy grounding for an Attorney General of the United States. I might have been reassured if the translation had used parallel grammar for the second clause, which Sen. Ashcroft read as "to love mercy." The Hebrew word there is hesed, which includes mercy but goes far beyond to steadfastness and loyalty. It is often used in the Bible to characterize God's loving attitude toward humanity. Some other translations have, in the Micah, such phrases as "to love tenderly." And it is vitally important to know that this three-part call of what God "requires" of us is presented by Micah as the contrasting answer to a very conventional schedule of sacrifices to an angry, judgmental God.

I am not reassured by Sen. Ashcroft's reading of Scripture. I am not encouraged by the high moral tone that Gov. Bush and his nominees are working so hard to set for his administration. I am instead afraid that it will be a highly moralistic tone of triumphalism, judgmentalism, and exclusivism that will embarrass me in the name of Christ. I am afraid that religious institutions and the commitment to their neighbors that religious people live in service will be exploited to meet what are in fact our civil responsibilities to each other. I am afraid that God is being dragged kicking and screaming into the White House, to be imprisoned in the basement, tamed and regulated to the point of meaninglessness.