Liberal Intolerance Of Intolerance

by digby

Pastordan defends himself quite well from a typically obtuse criticism from Amy Sullivan in The New Republic and I’ll let him speak for himself. But I have to wonder where she gets the idea that liberals are so blinded by their belief that Bush and Rove have been building a theocracy that they can’t see that Kuo’s book presents an opportunity to drive a wedge between the evangelicals and the GOP? I never thought that Bush was a serious theologian, only that he was willing to do whatever he could get away with to keep the evangelicals happy. Nothing in Kuo’s book undermines that theory. In fact, it validates it.

Rove is a cynical political operative and Bush is an idiot whose only religious commitment is to the idea that he was anointed by God to follow his “instincts” (which amounts to running the country by coin flipping.) I honestly don’t know anyone who thinks the big money boys of the Republican Party give a damn about religion except to the extent it brings them votes.

What we did believe is that the religious right wants to build a theocracy and that seems indisputable to me. Of course they do. And because they are an enormously valuable consituency they are managing to incrementally blur the lines between church and state and pass laws of a theocratic nature or that conflict with progressive values. (Like this one, where employees of religious groups have far fewer rights in the workplace than others.) I’m not sure what is controversial about that.

As far as the idea of taking advantage of the developing schism between the Christian right and the GOP, I’m all for it. I think we should point out Republican hypocrisy on these issues every chance we get and as far as I can tell, the liberal bloggers and op-ed writers and progressive radio she ctiticizes have been scathing on this topic.

(It’s true that we are a little more than two weeks away from a seminal election so there is quite naturally a rather diffuse critique of the Republicans going on right now. It’s a little unfair to compare it to the earlier revelations by Paul O’neil or even the Woodward book, which is about the biggest issue in the campaign and it’s written by the official court hagiographer.)

Sullivan is convinced that liberals are so hostile to religion that we refuse to see that religious people are in the process of rejecting the Republican party. I welcome that if it happens and I’m delighted to see that some conservative religious leaders are looking at issues other than abortion and gay marriage,like Darfur and poverty and global warming, which are areas upon which we can agree and work together:

Bishop Harry R. Jackson Jr., pastor of Hope Christian Church, a 3,000-member congregation in Lanham, was among the signers of the Darfur appeal. He said he knows that some evangelicals are concerned that their clout will diminish if they take on too many issues. But, like Combs, he pointed to the need to address subjects that matter to young Christians.

“I think you could call this a PR problem, because young people who are very involved in their churches understand the passion for these two issues,” he said, referring to abortion and same-sex marriage, “but in the culture at large we can come across as wild-eyed bigots to some because we have only emphasized these things.”

Broadening the agenda, “not to 99 things but to five or six core things,” such as fighting poverty and providing aid to Africa, “helps improve our image and more accurately reflects the full panoply of our beliefs,” Jackson said. “It’s hard to say that those two things — abortion and gay marriage — are the only things God had in mind in the Bible.”

I am not sanguine, however, that we will crack the Republican hold on the conservative evangelicals and make them want to vote for us. They are after all,conservatives.

To some evangelicals, however, the new issues are less clear than the old ones, which have led evangelicals to vote overwhelmingly Republican in recent elections.

“I definitely don’t like the widening of the agenda, because it muddies the water,” said the Rev. Michael Haseltine, pastor of the 2,000-member Maranatha Assembly of God Church in Forest Lake, Minn.

“Be good stewards of the environment? Sure, but how? These tree-huggers and anti-hunters think it’s terrible to kill animals. Oppose poverty? Sure, but what’s the best way to do it? We can’t solve everybody’s problems for them,” he said. “Family and life issues — abortion, sexuality — they’re much more clear from the biblical standpoint.”

I am happy to allow evangelical Christians to fight this out. And I’ll be happy to make common cause with them on poverty and global warming and the death penalty. (I gratefully welcome them to that thankless cause as a matter of fact.) But we aren’t going to agree on abortion or gay marriage and I can live with that. The question is if they can. If they look at the panoply of issues as followers of Jesus Christ, I feel quite confident they will find that they can easily vote for the Democratic party. If they decide that “abortion and sexuality” trump everything else then so be it. It’s up to them.

That won’t be enough for Sullivan of course:

Lawrence O’Donnell–former Democratic Senate aide and the resident liberal commentator at msnbc–dropped the ball. “I think the good news here is that people working in the White House think that Pat Robertson is nuts,” he said. “They should. Pat Robertson is nuts.” It seemed a little off-message–after all, this was a politically embarrassing book for the Bushies, and here O’Donnell was praising them. True, Robertson does regularly spout off truly nutty and dangerous statements (his call for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez; his prayer for the death of liberal Supreme Court justices; his belief that UPC symbols are the Mark of the Beast as foretold in Revelation). But what rankled O’Donnell the most was Robertson’s “insane” belief that Jews are going to burn in hell. “

While most of them would put it more delicately than Robertson, it is an article of faith for millions and millions of evangelicals that the only way into heaven is through belief in Jesus Christ. (The good reverend has also said he believes Methodists will burn in hell, but that’s not really the point.) By condemning and mocking that doctrine, O’Donnell managed an impressive feat. He took Robertson, a figure widely disliked and discredited throughout the evangelical community, and found a way to criticize him that would also insult and alienate evangelicals. Congratulations, Lawrence O’Donnell–you’re the new poster-boy for secular liberal intolerance.

I can’t help but wonder if Sullivan would find O’Donnell so “intolerant” if he were Jewish? (And yes, the fact that Robertson thinks Methodists are also going to burn in hell is exactly the point.) Sullivan believes that in order to appeal to evangelicals we must not only study their theology in detail so as to understand why they follow some lunatic like Pat Robertson but we are supposed to be tolerant of what would be called racist or religiously intolerant statements from anyone else because they believe it derives from the Bible. Oy.

This is why strictly secular government is the only way to go. When it becomes a sign of religious intolerance to object publicly to a political and religious leader’s statement that “Jews are going to burn in hell,” we are in real trouble.

But then, we are in trouble on this subject in so many different ways:

The top US general defended the leadership of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, saying it is inspired by God.

“He leads in a way that the good Lord tells him is best for our country,” said Marine General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

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