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Schism is hardly the word that one would associate with
a monolithic organization like the Republican Party. Yet there are signs that
the political bulldozer that has been rolling over head-in-the-sand Democrats
on all levels of government is developing some rather nasty fuel leaks. On March 30, in an op-ed piece
in the New York Times, John Danforth, the former Republican senator from
Missouri and current U.N. ambassador, let fly at his fellow Republicans for
transforming “our party into a political arm of conservative Christians.” As
a result of their grandstanding in the case of Terri Schiavo, their
preoccupation with gay marriage and their opposition to stem-cell research,
said Danforth, the party has “gone so far in adopting a sectarian agenda that
it has become a political extension of a religious movement.” Worried that Republicans have
lost sight of such core values as lower deficits, limited government and a
free and open economy, Danforth struck hard with his declaration that “as a
senator, I worried every day about the size of the federal deficit. I didn’t
spend a single minute worrying about the effect of gays on the institution of
marriage.” Interesting to note that Danforth,
in addition to his political career, is a graduate of Yale Divinity School,
where he earned a Bachelor of Divinity. He is also ordained to the clergy of
the Episcopal Church. Out in Ohio, meanwhile,
hellzapoppin in the state’s beleaguered Republican organizations. Three days
before Danforth’s remarks were published, columnist James Dao reported that
Christian conservatives were out to take over local government offices and
the Republican Party. Under the umbrella of the
so-called Ohio Restoration Project, Christians are mobilizing some 2,000
“Patriot Pastors” to train candidates to run for local and state offices.
Their goal is to take over the Republican organizations in all 88 Ohio
counties and to elect Christian conservatives first to city councils and
county boards and then to state posts. Like Danforth, they claim that
the Republican Party has lost touch with its base. Unlike Danforth, they
maintain that the party faithful are clamoring for opposition to same-sex
marriage and abortion, as well as a return of Christian morals to the public
schools. Where local Republicans come
down in this philosophically schismatic upheaval became a bit clearer with
the recent announcement by two local religious leaders of their intention to
run for seats on the James City Board of Supervisors and the WJC School
Board. There is no indication that the
ferocity of approach that characterizes the Ohio Restoration Project is
present in Virginia. But if Steve Suders is able to defeat John McGlennon in
the Jamestown District race for supervisor, we shall have two Christian
conservative clergymen on the board. What’s troubling about Suders
is that he seems to be much more in consonance with the Patriot Pastors than
Jay Harrison, the other minister. Harrison at least gives lip-service to the
distinction between his duties as a
pastor and those of a public servant. Questions arose about Suders’
credulity when he claimed in an interview with the Gazette’s Paul Aron that
we must decide whether we want atheism and humanism or Christianity and God
in the schools. Arguing with near comic casuistry that atheism and humanism
are religions - and indeed the religions now omnipresent in the schools and
in government - Suders advocated that we replace them with a religion that
fosters morality. His religion of choice is clearly Christian-based. What
Suders evidently fails to understand is that our word “religion” has for its
base the Latin “religio,” which means a sense of right or an understanding of
moral obligation or moral duty. Hence, if he declares humanism and atheism religions, he must
logically conclude that inherent in them are the schematics of morality. What
he then must explain is why Christian ethical values are superior to humanistic
ethical values, since both, if they are truly religions, embrace the concept
of moral rectitude. But this he cannot do.
Rather, says Suders, if you
eliminate Christianity and God from the equation, you wind up with a “mess.”
We can assume only that this mess includes Judaism, Buddhism, Islam,
Shintoism and all the other non-Christian religions, which are apparently so
far down on the morality scale that they rank only a mark or two above
atheism and humanism. How utterly fatuous. Such moral conflicts go to the
heart of what Danforth was trying to convey. When a political party becomes
so entangled in the complicated mesh of one religion, it automatically
becomes lured and overcome by the sirenic song of a rigid, though subjective
morality. As a result, the hyper-emphasis on such a morality is frequently
maintained by what logicians would consider unabashedly absurd, if not
misleading arguments. What lies ahead for the
Republican Party will depend on whether its members are willing to give heed
to the warnings of stalwart, Goldwaterite conservatives, such as Danforth, or
whether they choose instead to cede their former values to those whose
cancerous social and religious agenda would so transform the party as to make
it unrecognizable by its founders.
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lewleadbeater.com Copyright 2002 All Rights Reserved
email: LWL@lewleadbeater.com |
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