Divided by God

[rug]

By ROSS DOUTHAT
Published: April 7, 2012

IN American religious history, Nov. 8, 1960, is generally regarded as the date when the presidency ceased to be the exclusive property of Protestants. But for decades afterward, the election of the Catholic John F. Kennedy looked more like a temporary aberration.

Post-J.F.K., many of America’s established churches went into an unexpected decline, struggling to make their message resonate in a more diverse, affluent and sexually permissive America. The country as a whole became more religiously fluid, with more church-switching, more start-up sects, more do-it-yourself forms of faith. Yet a nation that was increasingly nondenominational and postdenominational kept electing Protestants from established denominations to the White House.

The six presidents elected before Kennedy’s famous breakthrough included two Baptists, an Episcopalian, a Congregationalist, a Presbyterian and a Quaker. The six presidents elected prior to Barack Obama’s 2008 victory included two Baptists, two Episcopalians, a Methodist and a Presbyterian. Jimmy Carter’s and George W. Bush’s self-identification as “born again” added a touch of theological diversity to the mix, as did losing candidates like the Greek Orthodox Michael S. Dukakis. But over all, presidential religious affiliation has been a throwback to the Eisenhower era — or even the McKinley era.

That is, until now. In 2012, we finally have a presidential field whose diversity mirrors the diversity of American Christianity as a whole.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/opinion/sunday/douthat-in-2012-no-religious-center-is-holding.html

[SamG]

1. "presidential field whose diversity mirrors the diversity of American Christianity"

A black, non-religious, born into poverty, loving, popular, bi-racial father of two young women, and a white, well-born, well-educated capitalist father of five young men.

The bi-racial father of two young women had to make some corrections, and admit to them honestly, about his beliefs, about his background, about his drug use as a young adult, about his sense of destiny and his mistakes in leadership.

The white guy, not so much, clinging to his religious justifications for not being eligible for the draft in the era of VietNam, he spent two years or so in France, not a party to the fully American futile war in the Far East. The bi-racial guy escaped the draft because he was only five or six and living in Indonesia when Johnson made that war a national priority for young men of the white guy's age to die in.

Then we have the white guy supporting birth control, Planned Parenthood, gay rights, and mandatory health insurance in his one term at elected office-holding, in Massachusetts. Now, he never mentions that time, just 6 to 10 years ago, as he navigates for votes from those Christians who are oh-so-willing to deny compensated birth control or other reproductive health services to all poor and middle class working women. The white guy running, denies and downplays his religion's beliefs in: magic underwear, sacred golden tablets, native Americans descended from the seven tribes.

As for the bi-racial guy, we have his more than four years ago honest admissions about the faults of his decisions to follow a less than ideal religious faith. The white guy, not so much.

If both of these guys are the leading candidates for the highest office in the nation, neither of them looks any too good, if you ask me, as a "model" of Christianity. They both look like they were taken for fools at an earlier age, and one of them admitted so much, the other, sadly, still hides behind his draft deferment and his lack of zealous defense of what he so boldly states is a reasonably Christian faith.

Nope, if these are the diversity of models of Christianity today, I would think Christianity would look for other models.

[darkstar3]

2. You put that better than I could at the moment. Thank you.