My beef with Rick Santorum’s 2008 speech before Ave Maria University is not that it was too Christian, but that it was not Christian enough.
I love my country, served happily in the military for eight years (full disclosure: in the National Guard), and the hair on my neck still stands up during the kick strain of the “Stars and Stripes Forever.” But as a Christian, I find statements like this one Santorum made in his 2008 speech at Ave Maria University sort of creepy:
This is not a political war at all. This is not a cultural war at all. This is a spiritual war. And the father of lies has his sights on what you would think the father of lies, Satan, would have his sights on. A good, decent, powerful, influential country, the United States of America. If you were Satan, who would you attack in this day and age? There is no one else to go after, other than the United States.
There is really “no one else to go after” other than the United States? This is America’s leading Roman Catholic politician before what I would expect was about as thoroughly orthodox a Roman Catholic crowd as you’d get outside of a Mass (and perhaps including a fair number of typical Mass-attendees, as well), and there is “no one else” for Satan to go after other than the United States?
The church doesn’t even rank as a competitor here for Satan’s ire compared to the ire Satan has for the good ole U.S.A.?
Santorum adds that there being no one else other than the U.S. for Satan to go after has been “the case for now almost 200 years, once America’s preeminence was sown by our great founding fathers.”
To be sure, Santorum discusses the Church (and the churches) later in his speech – but only as a part of the story of the decline of the United States.
My friend – or at least my friendly acquaintance – Peter J. Leithart ended last Friday’s “On the Square” column with the conclusions that Christians “can’t talk politics without sounding like Rick Santorum, and we shouldn’t try to.” Well maybe. But I certainly hope we can do a lot better.
February 27th, 2012 | 10:16 am
I’ve heard the same kind of thing said about the scandals in the Catholic Church — that the devil attacks most fiercely those institutions that at least claim to fight him.
So as nations go (which the quote clearly seems to reference) it’s fair to have the opinion that the United States is the only country that stands up for the right these days, no? Which other country would you suggest the devil would be more likely to go after?
It’s a paradox, because the United States is also the nation that has killed 50 million of its children. But its stated ideals are, indeed, ideals. And a case could be made certainly that those ideals are under attack.
This statement is not creepy. It’s direct. It’s the kind of talk I hear all the time in the circles I run in. I suspect if it sounds creepy, it’s due to the filter it’s heard through, rather than the text itself. When you don’t hear people talking this way often, you tend to look for a message behind the message because the text itself seems like such an unlikely thing for someone to say and mean.
February 27th, 2012 | 11:45 am
Well, there certainly are others to “go after.” So what?
Christians need to unashamedly speak out and let the vast minority of militant atheists know that they might as well get used to it. Let them howl and rage. Let them raise the “Theocracy!!” alarm. Anybody with intelligence beyond that of a turnip knows that any group working for the establishment of a theocracy will not be taken seriously. The problem is the reigning atheocracy that has been imposed upon on theists, who make up the vast majority of Americans.
Yeah, the atheocrats will leverage their control of the mass media to make it sound like their position is the norm and to marginalize those who disagree with them. But people remember how the media deified Obama. They now know what an incompetent, silly (but still dangerous) little god he turned out to be. I don’t think they will be fooled again. We should demand they vet Santorum the way they vetted Obama, which would be to give Santorum a free pass on everything, not even so much as asking him to produce a long form birth certificate.
February 27th, 2012 | 11:50 am
Marie,
It is creepy because as great as the United States has been, there is this upsurge in “patriotism” that supersedes everything, including one’s faith because we no longer know how to talk to one another.
The inside is rotting out. The United States has never stood for the right because the United States never had a “right” or counterrevolutionary party. (Our “conservatives” would be considered liberal in France.)
And none of this is going to get better if we keep resorting to creepy rhetoric that apotheosizes the nation, no matter how great it is or has been. It’s us, the people, who are harming the nation. “Justice exalteth a nation: but sin maketh nations miserable.” (Proverbs 14:34)
February 27th, 2012 | 12:43 pm
Well, there certainly are others to “go after.” So what?
harry,
But Santorum said, “There is no one else to go after, other than the United States.” What is that supposed to mean?
February 27th, 2012 | 1:22 pm
Hi, David Nickol,
It means Santorum was emphasizing the importance of the great American experiment in government based upon theism and natural law, the purpose of which is to protect the inalienable, God-given rights of humanity, as a force for good in the world.
Thomas Jefferson remarked, in consideration of the abuse of human dignity inherent in slavery, that, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever.” One could nitpick that, too. Does God’s justice really sleep? How can justice sleep? Was Jefferson really trembling? Didn’t Jefferson own slaves? Doing so misses the point of his remark as completely as does asking, regarding Santorum’s comment, whether there is really no one else go after.
Fifty million children being violently dismembered by surgical abortion causes thinking Americans to tremble over the fact that God’s justice does not sleep forever.
February 27th, 2012 | 3:40 pm
MPB,
I also am wary of a nationalism that is often a religion in itself. I think Chesterton warned of it, and I think it’s something to be on the lookout for.
But I grew up a military brat, and this kind of gung-ho talk was normal in my youth. As I left that culture and moved into the world at large, there was no talk of love of country, even in terms of loving it enough to save it. Now I’m in an Evangelical community, and I hear a bit of this again. It sounds jingoistic at first, but only because it’s so alien today.
What I hear when I hear “there’s no one else” is this — recently I got very discouraged and asked my sister if she wanted to pack up her family and I’ll pack up mine and we’ll run away to some other country. Where would we go? she asked. Yes, America is falling. And it’s been a long fall. But everyone else fell long ago.
A bit overdrawn. But if we wanted to find a nation with intact protection of liberties and a minimally intrusive government arm, where would we go but America? It’s the last left to attack.
February 27th, 2012 | 7:53 pm
Let me offer a Mormon perspective on the role of the United States in the conflict between God and Satan.
While the Book of Momron is emphatic that “this land” (actually, the Americas in general, both North and South) is a “promised land” because those righteous people who live on it will be especially blessed, but those who rebel against God will be especially penalized. To whom much is given, much is expected. The Mormon view is not that the US (or other American nations) will always be on the side of right, but that they must be especially wary of not being corrupted and forgetting God. It is the opposite of a jingoistic blessing, or of a ceremonial pronouncement that the US armed forces are the Sons of Light and the enemies of the US are the Sons of Darkness. The Mormon view of America calls for personal and institutional repentance and dedication to righteous principles and the laws of God. It is a view that is reluctant to go to war, and does so only in defense, not out of animosity to US armed forces, but rather out of love for even our enemies. My guess is that a Mormon president would have been more reluctant to invade Iraq than President Bush was. I think a Mormon president would be more likely to station American troops as “hostages” in Israel against an Iranian nuclear attack, and make clear that forces in the Persian Gulf would retaliate against an attack on Israel, but not undertake a preemptive attack on Iran’s nuclear factories, essentially what has been done with the defense of Japan against North Korea.
February 27th, 2012 | 10:09 pm
If the United States falls, by which I mean replaces its values with those of, say, Europe, FirstThings and other defenders of the faith will be marginalized and even more impotent than they are now.
The devil rightly knows how to gut the Church. Simply defeat its defenders. Santorum couldn’t be more right. Keep it up, Rick.
Blessings,
Michael
February 28th, 2012 | 8:01 am
Re the final paragraph of the post: we MUST continue to speak, as Christians, and we CAN do better than this passage from a speech 4 years ago.
For an example of how we can do better, I commend to your viewing the book “Render Unto Caesar” by Archbishop Chaput, or for a shorter read, his speech at Houston Baptist Univ approx 3 years back. Or most anything else he has said or written on faith intersecting public policy.
As for the passage from Santorum–he went overboard in a flourish of rhetorical hyperbole. Not the first time an orator has used that technique. He and we all know that in fact the sources of temptation Fr Klos used to remind us of when I was a kid–the world, the flesh and the devil–are clearly active throughout the world, yesterday, today, and tomorrow. I hope I have a chance to vote for Santorum in spite of rhetorical flourishes.
February 28th, 2012 | 4:32 pm
I don’t think it makes sense to speak of particular states/nations and God in the same breath. In the past it has been all to easy for people to equate their national interest with the will of God, with disastrous consequences. Idolatry is dangerous.
February 28th, 2012 | 5:10 pm
Peter,
If it’s not the will of God, it’s not in our national interest.
The danger comes not of talking about America and God in the same sentence. It comes of the sentence being the wrong one.
“America needs to discern God’s will and follow it” is a far different statement from “What America wills, God wills also.”
I personally prefer a world where all action is individual, but the truth is that nations act, so separating the idea of the nation from the idea of God means the nation will act without reference to anything outside itself and it’s own desires. That leads to idolatry — in fact, it nearly defines it.
I agree caution is in order, but caution in both what we say and in what we refrain from saying.
February 28th, 2012 | 6:40 pm
Marie,
The danger comes not of talking about America and God in the same sentence. It comes of the sentence being the wrong one.
“America needs to discern God’s will and follow it” is a far different statement from “What America wills, God wills also.”
I agree with you here.
Personally I would go further: it’s one thing to believe America (or some other country) ought to choose to implement the Kingdom of Heaven in the world, it’s another entirely to believe that it’s already been chosen, by God, for that purpose. Not that that’s not possible, just that the converse is also possible.
I realise that this probably goes against the grain of some varieties of American exceptionalism but people have been wrong about this sort of thing before.
Talk that sounds like election, or semi-election, sounds ominous.
I think that if it were possible to draw a map of the Kingdom of God on earth, some parts of the outline might be vaguely recognizable but it would not match the borders of any temporal political entity.
February 28th, 2012 | 10:35 pm
Peter,
I’m with you.
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