The American Spectator

Print Email

Text Size

Political Hay

(Page 2 of 2)

Of course, Kuo is now taking the role of a repentant political sinner, wishing that he hadn't perverted the noble goals of the faith-based initiative for mere political advantage: "I feel like it was...spiritually wrong," he told Lesley Stahl. "You're taking the sacred and you're making it profane. You're taking Jesus and reducing him to some precinct captain, to some get-out-the-vote guy." He goes even further: "I think that Christians, particularly evangelical Christians need to take a step back. To have a fast from politics."

Last I heard, the faith-based initiative was intended to mobilize the armies of compassion to achieve earthly goals. For the most part, grantees are supposed to refrain actually from proselytizing and attempting to save souls. They may be godly people and their motives may be godly, but their immediately fundable purposes are supposed to coincide with the earthly ends of government. If to enlist religious people for earthly ends, ends that could possibly be achieved by profane governmental means, is to "profane" religion, then Kuo's argument proves too much, for its implication is that religious folk should care about the salvation of souls and nothing else. They should stay out of social service, avoid any possible cooperation with government, and restrict themselves to worship and evangelism. That is, they should do what he blames religious conservatives for by and large doing -- tend their own gardens and largely ignore the human needs in the world around them.

But, again, I don't think he's serious. After all, he's striking his anti-political pose at a highly political moment, when a demobilization of evangelical voters could well be very costly for his erstwhile allies. Not a bad accomplishment for someone who once campaigned for and interned with the Kennedys.

OF COURSE, KUO SAYS that the timing of the book's release was his publisher's idea. As he told Newsweek's Richard Wolffe, "The timing of this book, and when it came out, was certainly not my choice. Why now is something to ask my publisher." He added: "I've written a very profoundly personal, political and spiritual memoir here. This was a very, very hard book to write. It required an enormous amount of very painful soul-searching and I don't think it has been well captured by...the...media.â€

Well, perhaps. But the message he is stressing in his interviews and in his blog -- a message over whose timing he does have control -- is that religious people ought to pull back from politics. For all of his professed awareness of how religion is perverted by its association with politics, he has to know this his current message also will be used and abused by those who can find some political advantage in it. His personal self-presentation would have been more plausible if he had waited until after the election to tell all as he promoted his book.

His final charge -- the one that has gotten the most attention -- is that the Bush White House secretly has contempt for its religious allies, merely using them for political purposes. The much-ballyhooed evidence for this is that "people in the White House political affairs office referred to Pat Robertson as 'insane,' Jerry Falwell as 'ridiculous,' and [said] that James Dobson 'had to be controlled.'" I don't know the context for any of these statements, though in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 (during Kuo's tenure in the White House) such sentiments regarding Robertson and Falwell might have crossed many people's minds. I don't doubt that some religious conservatives in politics aren't easy to deal with. (Just ask Dick Armey.) Of course, at that level of political life, most people aren't easy to deal with. And I don't doubt that, at times, tempers flared. We're talking, after all, about flawed human beings, who I'm sure Kuo would regard as sinners (as we all are). That they say things that they shouldn't, that they express frustration, ought not to surprise us.

So what are we left with? In the end, Kuo's complaint amounts to this: there's politics in Washington, D.C. Christians, he suggests, should stay away. But then they should stay away from every human institution that doesn't meet their (his) fastidious standards. I guess, then, they should also stay away from churches. And, indeed, they should avoid undertaking anything whatsoever with their fellows. No good works, no engagement with the culture.

All that would be left, pace Rod Dreher, is a kind of crunchy monasticism. About that Dreher may on some level be serious. Kuo, I think, is not.

topics:
Social Security, Religion, Law, Energy, Oil