Joe (the other Joe, the original Joe) already linked to Ross Douthat’s little essay on why Chrisitian conservatives should think twice before hitching their wagons to the primary season’s current rising star.
Conservative Christianity in America, both evangelical and Catholic, faces a looming demographic challenge: A rising generation that is more unchurched than any before it, more liberal on issues like gay marriage, and allergic to the apocalyptic rhetoric of the Pat Robertson-Jerry Falwell era. To many younger Americans, religious conservatism as they know it often seems to stand for a kind of institutionalized hypocrisy — a right-wing Tartufferie that’s incensed by the idea of gay wedlock but tolerant of straight divorce, forgiving of Republican sins but judgmental about Democratic indiscretions, and eager to apply moral litmus tests only on issues that benefit the political right.
Rallying around Newt Gingrich, effectively making him the face of Christian conservatism in this Republican primary season, would ratify all of these impressions. It isn’t just that he’s a master of selective moral outrage whose newfound piety has been turned to consistently partisan ends. It’s that his personal history — not only the two divorces, but also the repeated affairs and the way he behaved during the dissolution of his marriages — makes him the most compromised champion imaginable for a movement that’s laboring to keep lifelong heterosexual monogamy on a legal and cultural pedestal.
This article, cited by Douthat, offers some insight into the way evangelicals in Iowa are approaching Gingrich. If the issue is his checkered personal past, then we are called to consider seriously the possibility that he has become a new man. Don’t get me wrong: character is an issue, but if it were the only issue, then it seems to me that—at least from evidence regarding their personal lives–both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama have more than a small edge on the former Speaker.
To be sure, Gingrich seems to have been quite strategic in picking his battles and his soap-boxes over the past few years. He has fought fights and very vocally taken positions that appeal to conservative Christians. But I’m at the moment inclined to share some of Douthat’s concerns about the receptivity of “today’s [Un-Christian] youth” to the strident cadences of a man like Gingrich.
I haven’t given up on them entirely: some of them will migrate toward religion as they accept some of life’s responsibilities and meet some of life’s challenges. But a religious witness that seems less politically calculated and calibrated, that is less tied to the exigencies of the moment, and that is not burdened by so much personal baggage may serve the interests of “the church” much better.
I’m half-tempted to say that I’d rather have a candidate and a president, less closely identified with conservative Christianity, whose feet I and my fellows can hold to the fire over issues that are close to our hearts rather than someone as mercurial as Gingrich who presumes to know what we want and speak for us. This doesn’t mean I want someone hostile to my concerns, but perhaps a sympathetic fellow traveler, rather than a self-appointed spokesman and leader.
In different circumstances, I might want something different (full disclosure: I voted for Mike Huckabee in the 2008 Georgia primary, and would likely have seriously considered voting for him again this year; he’s much more winsome than Gingrich). But I’m fairly confident that I don’t want Newt Gingrich as the principal public spokesman for conservative Christianity.
I know that it’s tempting to rally around the guy about whom so many prominent elite Eastern media conservatives have expressed doubts. But the guy about whom they’re expressing doubts is at least as close to them as Mitt Romney is. There are better and more effective standard bearers for the political concerns of conservative Christianity than Newt Gingrich. That none of them is currently the likely Republican nominee is most emphatically not the end of the world.
Joseph Knippenberg is Professor of Politics at Oglethorpe University.
December 8th, 2011 | 2:56 pm
“Rallying around Newt Gingrich, effectively making him the face of Christian conservatism in this Republican primary season, would ratify all of these impressions.”
Well then, would it also be the case that: Rallying around Mitt Romney, effectively making him the face of Christian conservatism in this Republican primary season, would ratify… that polytheism is tolerable to Christian conservatism?
What is it that Christian voters are to ask of candidates? To what degree does a candidate represent in the public mind the nature of his or her supporters?
Politics is a venereal date to a Christian suitor at best. When I vote for someone, I just want him to defend the rights of the Church to exist and do Her work, and to defend equally the rights of others. I’m not giving him any seal of approval, otherwise I could only vote for Jesus.
December 8th, 2011 | 6:57 pm
Newt seems to be a scoundrel but an honest scoundrel while Mitt became conveniently pro-life when his ambitions transcended liberal New England. I frankly trust the scoundrel more that the fine upstanding citizen in this case. It seems to me that is the crux of the issue for many of us.
December 8th, 2011 | 9:30 pm
Did you hear Mrs. Newt today, with her very authoritarian “we?” No, no more co-president-empresses.
December 9th, 2011 | 4:37 am
Could it possibly be that, the ostensible primary voters, many of whom are for Gingrich, are really Obama supporters in diguise? If so, what a great feat.
Jay Leno joked that santa gave Newt to Obama. I guess if the primary voters want Mr. Obama to be re-elected, they cwertainly couldn’t improve on the prefect choice of Newt Gingrich as his opponent.
Matthew: so how do you know that Mr. Romney is not genuine in his prolife beliefs? Since not being a Mormon would likely help him get the votes of those Evangelicals and fundamentalists who are against Mormonism, how do you coherently explain why he didn’t give up his Mormonism?
December 9th, 2011 | 4:41 am
Pastor Spooner: I’m sure that the moderator of this blog does not want to turn this into a debate on the legitimacy of mormonism, but I thinkn that your characterization of it as “polytheism” is misleading, at best. It’s important to paint those with opposing views in the most charitable way we can, don’t you?
December 9th, 2011 | 7:50 pm
Bret,
I didn’t intend to be uncharitable. I would hope that an LDS member would embrace monotheism. As well as the basic beliefs that all Christians share.
Sometimes, when I have brought up the topic of polytheism a Mormon will come to its defense, and argue that God was once a man and then became a god. I think it would be good if an element in the LDS church would reappraise the church’s relationship with the Nicene Creed. Perhaps that has happened.
God bless.
December 10th, 2011 | 2:54 pm
*I would hope that an LDS member would embrace monotheism.”
Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints embrace the concept of God as defined in the New Testament, not in uninspired councils that took place hundreds of years after the Atonement and Resurrection of Christ. Maybe your hope would be better placed if you took up the subject with Jesus and His apostles. LDS doctrine is in precise harmony with their teachings.
The LDS Church has not reappraised its “relationship” with the Nicene Creed. The Church still considers the Nicene Creed to be a mass of confusion and contradiction and, ultimately, false.
December 10th, 2011 | 7:11 pm
Pastor Spomer,
Thank you, for your comments, and I know that you have the best intentions, and I’m grateful for that. Most of my family, who I love more than anything, are devout LDS, so perhaps I’m a little defensive.
But, although Mormonism does affirm the existence of other Gods, it doesn’t speculate as to what they’re like, except to say that they’re in agreement with the Gods of this realm. There’s certainly no similarity between the Gods of Mormonism, and any other type of belief in polytheism.
Mormonism fully affirms the divinity of Christ, and that He’s a part of a “Tritheism” consisting of God the Father, God the Son (Jesus Christ), and Holy Ghost. They all are of one divine purpose, without any conflict.
Mormons totally accept the New Testament, and that Christ died for our sins, and that this enables us to be forgiven for our sins, when we ask for forgiveness.
So, there are remarkable, and considerable differences between Mormon Christianity, and Traditional Christianity. But both believe that Christ is divine, and essential for salvation. That is, both believe that Christ died and was literally resurrected, and that this enables us all, if we ask for forgiveness, to be forgiven. Considering the great differences that divide humanity, in so many areas, this is pretty good common ground!
God bless you, too.
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