A dubious manifestation of "civility" on Michelle Bachmann's religio-political beliefs

I have to wonder if some liberals aren't so wedded to the idea that religion shouldn't matter in politics that they fell compelled to pretend that it doesn't matter. Even in the face of a political movement that dominates today's Republican Party and has clear theocratic goals. But the democratic tradition of separation of church and state didn't evolve over centuries by advocates of democracy pretending that actual clerical grabs at secular power just weren't taking place.

What made me think of this was this surprising Huffington Post piece by Jason Linkins, Michele Bachmann Asked If She Is A 'Submissive Wife' At Iowa GOP Debate 08/11/2011. Bachmann has publicly stated her position on the submission of wives to their husbands. As recently as 2006, she told a church congregation, "The Lord says: Be submissive, wives. You are to be submissive to your husbands." She has specifically said that as a young woman, she decided to become a tax attorney because her husband directed her to do so and she believed that a Christian woman should be an obedient wife.

It's a perfectly legitimate question whether she would allow her husband's preferences to determine her official actions as President. Fundamentalist fears in 1960 that John Kennedy would be taking political order from the Pope may have been founded on polemical misunderstandings of the Catholic Christian faith. But given the role that the Church had played in relation to the Italian Fascist and German Nazi regimes, and then its intense conservatism in the postwar period, together with the Vatican's position that the Catholic Church should be state church, had also produced considerable criticism and valid skepticism among liberals in the period between the end of the Second World War and 1960 as to the Catholic Church's role in politics.

Kennedy addressed the question about Church control of the American government during the Presidency for which he was campaigning in an address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on 09/12/1960:

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute; where no Catholic prelate would tell the President -- should he be Catholic -- how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference, and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him, or the people who might elect him.

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accept instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials, and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all. [my emphasis]

It's difficult to imagine even an Democratic Presidential candidate today making such straightforward assertions of his belief in secular government. They would feel obliged to couch it in praise for "people of faith" and the good works of "faith-based organizations."

I believe in a President whose views on religion are his own private affair, neither imposed upon him by the nation, nor imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.

I would not look with favor upon a President working to subvert the first amendment's guarantees of religious liberty; nor would our system of checks and balances permit him to do so. And neither do I look with favor upon those who would work to subvert Article VI of the Constitution by requiring a religious test, even by indirection. For if they disagree with that safeguard, they should be openly working to repeal it.

I want a Chief Executive whose public acts are responsible to all and obligated to none, who can attend any ceremony, service, or dinner his office may appropriately require of him to fulfill; and whose fulfillment of his Presidential office is not limited or conditioned by any religious oath, ritual, or obligation.

... I do not speak for my church on public matters; and the church does not speak for me. Whatever issue may come before me as President, if I should be elected, on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject, I will make my decision in accordance with these views -- in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be in the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressure or dictates. And no power or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise.

But if the time should ever come -- and I do not concede any conflict to be remotely possible -- when my office would require me to either violate my conscience or violate the national interest, then I would resign the office; and I hope any conscientious public servant would do likewise. [my emphasis]

Can Michelle Bachmann make such a straightforward statement of her religious independence? Can she tell us directly how her statement that her religious conscience demands that wives must "be submissive to your husbands" affects her willingness to act as the elected President sworn to defend the secular Constitution of the United States?

When conservative Byron York posed a version of the question to her in the Iowa debates last night, she gave the anodyne response that to her and her husband Marcus, "submission" means respect:

I respect my husband. He's a wonderful godly man and a great father. And he respects me as his wife. That's how we operate our marriage. We respect each other. We love each other. And I've been so grateful that we've been able to build a home together. We have five wonderful children and 23 foster children. We built a business together and a life together, and I'm very proud of him.

Which is the kind of sugary description of family life one would expect to hear at some Christian fundamentalist counseling retreat from a nice Christian lady giving her "testimony" of her marriage. With of course a few obligatory references to ups and downs and the occasional argument.

But in plain English, "submission" doesn't mean "respect." It means subservience and obedience. And Bachmann's response doesn't address the relevant and legitimate question: would Bachmann follow orders from her husband if he directed her how to exercise her responsibilities as President of the United States? We're talking about the most powerful political office in the world, whose occupant can launch a nuclear war on command based on her own authority. She stated publicly and clearly that she made her first major career choice based on her husbands direction in accord with her understanding that she was Biblically commanded to be "submissive" to husband Marcus. She should be willing and able to say exactly how she understands that Biblical command affecting her decision-making as President of the United States. Repeating for the thousandth time that she's had five kids and 23 foster children doesn't answer that question.

And how does Jason Linkins at the supposedly progressive Huffington Post react? He scolded that naughty conservative Byron York for even asking the question!

As I said at the time of the Post profile, "Bachmann's really comfortable being her own woman. She gets by in the House's "boy's club" just fine. When she wanted to issue a response to the State Of The Union address that would steal away from her party's official response, she asked for neither permission nor forgiveness. If Bachmann's been spending her career doing her husband's bidding rather than her own, it's not remarkably apparent." I'm honestly surprised this even came up as a question.

Of course, in the case of the first part of her career as a tax attorney, she has said explicitly and publicly that she undertook it against her inclinations at the direction of her husband in accordance with her understanding of a Biblical obligation of wives to be submissive to their husbands. And this is the religious ideology of the conservative Protestant groups with whom Bachmann so closely and so publicly associates herself.

But Jason Linkins doesn't find it "apparent" that anyone should ask a candidate for President of the United States about such a thing!

This is not a question about her denominational affiliation, much less about her acceptance of the Christian faith. It is a question about her own publicly-expressed view that wives are required by God to be "submissive" to their husbands even in their career decisions.

Tags: jason linkins, michelle bachmann

Bless us, Father President, for we have sinned

Since one of our two major parties now thinks we are living in a Christian Republic - a Christian Republic that proudly practices torture and believes that Our Christian Leader is not required to obey the law or the Constitution, not even to think about international law - we're going to be plagued with judging candidates on their religious beliefs for a long time. People used to say that in a Presidential race, we're electing the national head of government, not the national pastor. But the reality is that the Republicans now do think we're electing the national pastor.

The following exchange this week at the Huffington Post is an example of what our democratic politics have descended to. Jason Linkins bitches about actor Lawrence O'Donnell's rant against Mormonism on the McLaughlin Group shout-fest program in Lawrence O'Donnell Loses His Ever-Loving Mind on McLaughlin 12/09/07. Video of the O'Donnell's rant included.

Ryan Davis responds with a defense of O'Donnell in Lawrence O'Donnell was Right About Mormonism Huffington Post 12/12/07.

It's enough to make me want to go out and join some weird heathen California religious group. Or, better yet, start my own. At least that way I could make sure there was nekkid pagan dancing involved. And that Britney Spears would be appropriately idolized.

But until I hear directly from the Archangel Gabriel or one of his kinfolks, I'll just stick with regular old Catholic Christianity (Vatican II version).

It's certainly a legitimate concern that the Mormon Church officially held black people to be inferior to whites until 1978, supposedly not even allowing them to be members. But then, I've never met a Catholic who claimed to support each and every teaching of the Church. In fact, I've always understood it to be part of the definition of a Catholic that you never agreed with the hierarchy on everything.

The Catholic Church and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops are opposed to capital punishment and to legalization of abortion. But rank-and-file Catholics in pretty much every survey I've ever seen have no significant differences with the rest of the American public on those issues.

So, if someone were to say, "Sen. X is a Catholic so he must believe [insert Catholic teaching here]", I would assume that the person speaking knew little about religion and had probably never met a real live Catholic. So bitching about Mitt Romney over something Joseph Smith said or did in the early 19th century doesn't strike me as very meaningful. I would be much more interested in their actual performance in office on the relevant policy issues.

On the other hand, if Romney had been particularly outspoken in defense of some controversial doctrine like the official teachings on black people up until 1978, that would be a relevant consideration.

There are no hard-and-fast, timeless rules over what's appropriate in this area. Until the Second Vatican Council, aka, Vatican II, in the early 1960s, it was still the official position of the Catholic Church that Catholic Christianity should be the state religion of, well, wherever.

As Adele Stan discussed in The American Prospect Online earlier this year, State of the Church 04/20/07, there are still concerns about the political bent of the Catholic Church in Europe, where the Church presents a more conservative face than in the US and where state religion (clericalism) was a reality in a way that it has never been in the US.

The attention recently to John Kennedy's 1960 stance on church and state has tended to focus attention on conservative Protestant concerns about the Catholic Church. But concern about the role of the Catholic Church in American politics hasn't been restricted to conservative Protestants. As Alan Wolfe discusses in Liberalism and Catholicism The American Prospect 11/30/02, in the immediate post-Second World War period, American liberals were significantly divided over the right approach to the world conflict with the Soviet Union and Communism. He writes:

For all the differences they demonstrated over communism, however, postwar liberals, as the Notre Dame historian John McGreevy has pointed out, were more unified in their hostility toward the Catholic Church. Three of the countries that had been fascist--Spain, Italy, and Vichy France--were Catholic. Pius XII, recently described as "Hitler's Pope" in Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII by John Cornwell, failed to help the Jews. Father Coughlin was a notorious anti-Semite and demagogue. Catholic colleges and universities were viewed as hostile to academic freedom and as hopelessly dogmatic and sectarian. Joe McCarthy was Catholic. So was Cardinal Spellman, who loved nothing more than supporting his co-religionists in the New York City Police Department. Film moguls in Hollywood were forced to submit their products to Catholic censors. No one talked about abortion back then, but that was the point: The Catholic Church was a crucial component of the consensus that made abortion illegal. In Texas and Connecticut, a Catholic oilman named Buckley was raising his children, many of whom would go on to revive American conservatism. John Dewey spoke for many liberals when he dismissed the Catholic Church as a reactionary world organization.

So it makes sense, now and then, to take notice if candidates have explicitly identified themselves with negative policies of their church.

And the issue of separation of church and state is always an important one in a democracy.

In the two posts referenced at the start of this post, I don't think that Lawrence O'Donnell's anti-Mormon spiel was as loony as Jason Linkins believes. I do think O'Donnell went overboard, though, as did Ryan Davis in defending him.

The Mormon version of Christianity has things about it that sound oddball to those outside the church? Wow, how could any religion ever have something like that! Mormons prior to the Civil War were pro-slavery and had white supremacist ideas about African-Americans? Gosh, I'll bet they were the only Americans who thought that way. Except, you know, the southern branches of every Protestant denomination. And the Catholic Church. And the only other people who had white supremacist notions were all the whites who supported slavery, and darn near every white person that opposed slavery. So, besides the Mormons, only about 98% of the white population held white supremacist ideas.

This is a village atheist kind of an argument. However it may connect with the spiritual realm, religion is a very human institution. So to condemn religion in general or a particular branch of religion because 150 years ago they had some dumbass ideas is just silly. Like I said, village atheist kind of stuff.

The Penguin Lives series includes a biography of Mormon founder Joseph Smith, titled simply Joseph Smith (2002), by Andrew Jackson biographer Robert Remini. He does a good job of placing Smith and his religious ideas in the context of the utopian movements in the early half of the 19th century. Ryan Davis sneers at the thought of "wading through all the revelations and counter-revelations, angels, gold tablets, and the true origin of Native Americans according to Mormonism" that are part of the story of Mormonism.

But comparison, Remini gives this account of a set of visions which Joseph Smith's Congregationalist father, Joseph Smith Sr., experienced, which began during the period just prior to the War of 1812:

Joseph and Lucy Smith [the parents of the Mormon founder Joseph Smith Jr.] also suffered during this turbulent period as they kept up a frantic search for a better life. The arrival of several more children - Samuel (1808), Ephraim (1810), William (1811), and Catherine (1813)- only intensified their poverty. But immersed as they were in the revivalist tumult of the age, they had faith that the Lord would assist them in their search. Not surprisingly, it was at this time that Joseph Smith Sr. had a religious experience of profound importance. Lucy said that her husband's mind had recently become "much excited upon the subject of religion." He went to bed one night while "contemplating the situation of the Christian religion, or the confusion and discord that were extant," and had an extraordinary dream. It seems he was walking in a wide, open, and barren field and saw nothing but dead and fallen trees. Silence prevailed in this gloomy desert. "An attendant spirit" accompanying Joseph told him that the field was the world, which lay "inanimate and dumb, in regard to the true religion, or plan of salvation." The spirit then instructed him to walk on where he would find a box on a log, "the contents of which, if you eat thereof, will make you wise." Joseph found the box and when he opened it "all manner of beasts, horned cattle, and roaring animals, rose up on every side in the most threatening manner possible, tearing the earth, tossing their horns, and bellowing most terrifically" around him. Joseph dropped the box and ran for his life. Yet, strangely, in the midst of all this, "I was perfectly happy," he told Lucy, "though I awoke trembling."

This was the first of seven dreams or visions, as Lucy called them, that Joseph Smith Sr. experienced between 1811 and 1819. The appearance of a spirit messenger in dreams was not uncommon in folk magic at this time and the presence of a box that could make one wise would later play a significant role in his son's encounter with the supernatural. Revivalists at the time preached that dreams were inspired by God. But Joseph Sr.'s visions apparently confirmed his belief that all churches knew no more about the Kingdom of God than any layman. (my emphasis)

Though Mormon believers would probably prefer to frame it differently, Smith and his father were acquainted with rural folk magic and various occult ideas. During his youth was also the time of the Protestant Christian revival movement known as the Second Great Awakening. Young Joseph had the first vision of his own in 1820 at the age of 14.

Of course, neither the father's visions nor the son's can lay claim in secular history to being more than what the Catholic Church calls "personal revelations". But the point of quoting that passage about Smith's father is to illustrate that may sound kooky to us today wasn't necessarily so in the religious and social context in which Smith grew up. But you're not going to get that through the village-atheist version, which only aims to sneer at religion. Let's not be too harsh on the atheists, though. Christian fundamentalists generally sneer at Mormonism even more intensely.

So, yes, by all means, let look carefully at how political candidates may want to impose their religious beliefs on us or undermine freedom of religion and conscience. But we need to look at it in the real world in which we live, not in some vague, sophomoric ideological terms the way O'Donnell and Ryan approach it.

And if you're interested in a careful but relatively compact secular account of the founder of Mormonism, Remini's biography of Smith is worth reading.

Tags: adele stan, alan wolfe, jason linkins, joseph smith, lawrence o'donnell, mormonism, robert remini, ryan davis, separation of church and state