Before reading the rest of this post, you have to keep this in mind: Folks lie more about sex and religion than anything else other than income taxes or fishing. Okay, now,David Brooks is writing about some foolishness he calls: The National Creed. Read a bit of this mish-mash, then we'll skip down to the money graphs which just might scare you into joining me in China!
George W. Bush was born into an Episcopal family and raised as a Presbyterian, but he is now a Methodist. Howard Dean was baptized Catholic, and raised as an Episcopalian. He left the church after it opposed a bike trail he was championing, and now he is a Congregationalist, though his kids consider themselves Jewish.
Wesley Clark's father was Jewish. As a boy he was Methodist, then decided to become a Baptist. In adulthood he converted to Catholicism, but he recently told Beliefnet .com, "I'm a Catholic, but I go to a Presbyterian church."
What other country on earth would have three national political figures with such peripatetic religious backgrounds? In most of the world, faith-hopping of this sort is simply unheard of. Yet in the United States, we simply take it for granted that people will move through different phases in the course of their personal spiritual journeys, and we always have. ...
We'll skip the middle, silly part that is all willy-nilly foolishness about all Americans being under one big sunny tent when it comes to beliefs about god: Where was Mr. Brooks when Waco went burning down?
The small groups movement, from which President Bush emerges, emphasizes intimate companionship and encouragement. Members of these groups study the Bible in search of guidance and help with personal challenges. They do not preach at one another, but partner with each other.
The third effect of our dominant religious style is that we have trouble sustaining culture wars. For some European intellectuals, and even some of our own commentators, the Scopes trial never ended. For them, the forces of enlightened progress are always battling against the rigid, Bible-thumping forces of religion, whether represented by William Jennings Bryan or Jerry Falwell.
But that's a cartoon version of reality. In fact, real-life belief, especially these days, is mobile, elusive and flexible. Falwell doesn't represent evangelicals today. The old culture war organizations like the Moral Majority or the Christian Coalition are either dead or husks of their former selves.
As the sociologist Alan Wolfe demonstrates in his book, "The Transformation of American Religion," evangelical churches are part of mainstream American culture, not dissenters from it.
So we have this paradox. These days political parties grow more orthodox, while religions grow more fluid. In the political sphere, there is conflict and rigid partisanship. In the religious sphere, there is mobility, ecumenical understanding and blurry boundaries.
If George Bush and Howard Dean met each other on a political platform, they would fight and feud. If they met in a Bible study group and talked about their eternal souls, they'd probably embrace.
That's it! Well, almost. There is this one lady out there...? But, it sure is looking like it's going to be Clark for this agnostic/shamanist/humanist/sun-worshiper--he's lying less dangerously than the other two.
