The New Jerusalem?
July 29, 2008, 2:45 pm
Posted by Cathleen Kaveny
The unwritten story, here, it seems to me, is the connection of religion to politics.
I wonder to what degree people like Monica Goodling and others saw themselves not merely as political, but as deeply religiously motivated — as rebuilding the City on a Hill-as doing God’s will. My strong hunch is that serving God, the Republican Party and George W. Bush became intertwined in a manner that is deeply troubling.
It’s troubling from a political perspective, for obvious reasons. But its even more worrisome from a theological perspective–It is a dangerous mistake to identify any political party with the “party of God.”
The unwritten reality is that Democratic administrations don’t have to do things like this because most of the people who apply for Justice jobs are probably already good liberal Democrats (THAT’s who goes into government law; Republicans generally go into corporations or private law firms to earn bigger salaries) … so Republicans either have to try to enact their policies with legal counsel from people who are ideologically opposed to those policies or else they need to find some way to find Republicans … this particualr approach was mishandled, but the key point is that Democrats don’t have to overcome any hurdles to find their ideological soul mates–it’s done with a wink and a nod (just as most mainstream media don’t have a hard time finding liberal-minded reporters)
Cathy,
I see nothing in the article that implies the religious disorder that your hunch is suggesting. Why not ascribe the interview tactics to the Republican party rather than religion?
The 146-page investigative report is linked in the WaPo article. It’s a fairly quick (and sad) read. If I remeber correctly, Ms. Goodling went to an evangelical college and law school. There is nothing wrong with that, of course, but after reading the whole report, I couldn’t help but be left with the impression that she was on a mission that inextricably linked politics, religion, and power. For someone with very little legal experience, she moved to a fairly high position within the DOJ. Perhaps the air at that level went to her head, but she wielded her political and religious beliefs quite freely and effectively. One of the most depressing things about reading the report was learning how unchallenged her clearly improper and unethical conduct was. She had positioned herself in a fiefdom, and there appear to have been many who were afraid to stand up to her.
The paradox of religion in government is that zealots will punish non-believers more severely than a secular person would because of the certainty (according to the religious fanatic) that God is sanctioning such violent “justice.”
The practicing religious person is the authentic believer as opposed to the doctrinal one who seeks to impose and dominate rather than help.
If we were more focused on the role of religion we would press the Vatican to drop its government status and focus more on the spiritual than diplomatic and global privileges. How can we pretend to be serious Christians when we support an institution which is more temporal than spiritual, more pageantry than crucifixion, more conscious of power than humility? Today’s paper reporting the clash between the Ukraine and Russia over the identity of its church shows religion as power rather than spirit.
Something we should try to change or at least object to, n’est-ce pas?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/30/world/europe/30ukraine.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Kathy, Goodling earned her law degree from regent University, Pat Robertson’s law school, and was openly committed, as is Robertson, to restoring a Christian identity to the United States. When one frames the world (and the nation) in such a context, such a high stakes spiritual war, then the ends tend to justify the means, which is what happened with Goodling and throughout the administration.
Here’s an article about Regent from the Boston Globe:
http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2007/04/08/scandal_puts_spotlight_on_christian_law_school/
I beleive that not only at Justice, but throughout the Bush Administration, many hires were made from Evangelical U. grads.
I”ve been depressed to a degree in recent weeks with continuing accounts of Bush Administration folks who operate only by idelogy, the whistle blower office being one, the EPA head (facing perjury charge?) for another.
In the days of Nixon, his young cohorts hired out of the USC conservative pack crowed about the “rat fucking” they had used on campus to attain power and do what they wanted and that dirty tricks were part of politics.
Today, we have ideological screwing, based in poliico/religious ideology, acting to subvert the common good.
I know, folks on the right will say such criticism is political pandering… so it goes.
Just noted the two articles today at NCR on the CatholicMigration Conference and its deep displeasure with the Bush Administration.
Just out of curiosity, I wonder what were the educational and professional quals of Julie Meyers, ast. secretary of Homeland Security, who replied for the Bush Administration?
It occurs to me that a good way of framing the question is Tom Berg’s review of recent books on law and religion in “Christian Politics, Old & New.” It’s in this issue.
He reviews Garry Wills’s Head and Heart: American Christianities; God in Public: Mark toulouse’s Four Ways American Christianity and Public Life Relate, and Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics after the Religious Right, by EJ Dione.
According to Berg, both Dionne and Toulouse find Reinhold Niebuhr’s christian realism helpful, especially its emphasis on humility. Here’s Berg:
“[Dionne] especially commends Niebuhr’s gifts ‘for searching for the truth in his adversary’s error’ and for recognizing how even virtuous projects can turn vicious if not corrected by self-criticism.”
So the problem with Goodling, from this perspective, would be hubris.
I know quite a lot about Regent, actually–enough to know that it’s not univocal. David, could you be clearer about Goodling’s “open commitments?” Were these stated? If not, how are these many, sweeping judgments of her intentions justified?
Did you read the read the report and the book review, Kathy? It seems that you’re just trying to pick a fight.
Sorry, not on this thread.
Let me be more explicit: I’m trying to look at the Goodling event more broadly, in light of Berg’s very interesting review about three important books about various ways of conceiving the appropriate relationship of Christianity and American culture.
If you don’t want to join that conversation, you’re free to sit it out.
I’ve often thought, reading book reviews in Commonweal and other publications, that it would be wonderful to belong to a book club, either the cyber or real-life variety, that would read an interesting book as a group and discuss. I wonder if folks here would be interested in tackling, say, Dionne’s book that way.
Jim, I think that’s a great idea. Count me in.
Cathy’s original comment was: “I wonder to what degree people like Monica Goodling and others saw themselves not merely as political, but as deeply religiously motivated — as rebuilding the City on a Hill-as doing God’s will.” I took that as a question yet to be answered, and to be answered, presumably, by a consideration of Goodling’s words. Was this done in the report? Does Cathy’s question find an answer there?
The “City on a Hill” trope, of course, has a long and not always unfortunate history in our country. I remember using it myself and hearing it echoed many times during religious celebrations of the U.S. Bicentennial. And reading Winthrop’s words in the context of the paragraph in which they appear, one could think that they are even prophetic of our present circumstance:
>> Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck, and to provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as His own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of His wisdom, power, goodness and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with. We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when He shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, “may the Lord make it like that of New England.” For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God, and all professors for God’s sake. We shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good land whither we are going.<<
Joe, I referred to the “unwritten story.” I was thinking more of an investigative article by a good religion reporter–David Gibson, perhaps. I think is the untold story, that bears further reflection. Is there reason to suspect a combination of conservatism, religion, politics, an idealizing of President Bush. I think so, and I think the spate of books on the topic, plus googling websites such as the Family Research Council gives reason for the suspicion.
This article, last year from Slate and the WPo also raised my concerns.
http://www.slate.com/id/2163601/pagenum/2
Finally, given my job, and my interests, I’ve heard more than a few people talk about “christianizing” the country in ways that I find theologically quite naive and politically quite dangerous. A former Notre Dame Law Student was also disgraced in the scandal. I can’t help wonder about what we conveyed to her about the relationship of law, religion, and politics. Obviously, not a nuanced enough message.
Does it matter? Well, it does if you believe that God’s law is the highest law, and that human law which does not further this law in a direct way does not deserve any respect. So you can say that a law which requires you to give equal treatment to people opposed to God’s will can’t be a just law. A bastardized Thomistic vision of law can give aid and comfort to this view–and you can see it around the internet on Catholic and Protestant sites.
Winthrop’s speech obviously appears early on in the saga of the Puritans –just as it was getting started (1630). It’s beautiful and pious. But I’m very concerned not only with beautiful, pious words in the abstract, but also with with the way they actually played out in history and politics in this country, what you obliquely refer to as “the long and unfortunate history.” If you want to know, as a scholar, not merely as a blogger, how Winthrop’s ideas played out in the history of ideas, Perry Miller has about 1500 pages that go on from there until 1730 –the Eve of the First Great Awakening.
The key thing you have to remember: the city on a hill wasn’t just a trope –they meant it. It’s part of a coherent vision in which the Puritans really did see their American experiment as the New Jerusalem, their project as particularly marked for success. Even the Jeremiad, as both Miller and Bercovitch point out, was actually an optimistic rather than a critical device–God chastised them because they loved him –and he loved them.
As I read Miller, the biggest flaw of the Puritans was a type of self-deception, rooted in pride. Quite strikingly, despite their Calvinist roots, and structured days of repentance, they could could not show epistemological humility–or moral humility. Their four covenants overlapped — the covenant of grace, the covenant of redemption, the church covenant, and by extension, the political covenants. The covenants articulated a regulated, and reliable, and close relationship with God –who bound Himself to them and their ne’r do well children) in a special way.
What we need now, I think, may not be another crackerjack religion reporter. What we may need now is another Nathaniel Hawthorne. I’d love to see an updated version of the Scarlett Letter or Young Goodman Brown –set in Washington in 2004.
I looked at the Regent website.
They see themselves as the center of Christian thought and action.
I”m sure the folks at Georgetown, BC, ND, etc. are glad to know that.
So their mission statemen tis to change the world according to (their) Christian principles.
Wonder if they hav ea class in ethics of civil service? Also wonder how much openness, accountability and transparency is emphasized there?
A lovely distinction that, between me as a scholar and me as a blogger. The Puritans meant it seriously, and so did many other generations of Americans. In the course of our history it became a trope of political discourse.
I apologize for thinking your original statement about Goodling and others was a real question.
Joe it is a question, raised but not decisively answered by the materials I provided. I think it’s one that needs input from some of the OTHER experts on blog -investigative journalists, not theologians. No need for pique. Surely the theologians get asked enough questions around here.
Here’s another article connecting her faith –and legal training– to the way she conducted herself.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007
Does it matter–well, if you think Goodling did the right thing, I suppose not. If you think her heart was in the right place, well, you might vaguely wonder where she went wrong. I think she went terribly wrong, on both legal and theological grounds. And I think there will be a backlash against religion on the basis of it, some of it deserved, and some of it overblown. So I do care.
Do I distinguish between blogging and scholarship–not just for you, but for me and everyone. Yes. I don’t confuse an article for TS with a blog post. I can’t summarize the research I did for an article or a book chapter in a blog post. Maybe you can. Good for you.
I’ve been reading intensively and extensively in American religious and political history. My point is simply this: if you reduce the city on a hill imagery to a mere trope, in my view, you greatly misunderstand both its power and its danger in American political thought. I could summarize the reasons–but here is the difference between scholarship and blogging. But here’s the shorthand: Read Miller. I couldn’t summarize it adequately here. The whole point of his scholarship is to situate and contextualize that 1630 speech–to point out its preconditions and its evolution. The starting point: The Puritans meant it as a reality–not as a mere trope. And so, in best estimation, do people like Goodling
I didn’t reduce the city on a hill imagery to a mere trope. I said it was a trope, not a mere trope, which is not to say that it was not used by some as more than a trope.
P.S. I have read Perry Miller.
If I might interject…Part of the answer to Cathy Kaveny’s question, I think, is the interpretation that the current generation of culture warriors from the Christian right have of American history and the eschatology of the American experiment–End Times harbinger or the New Jerusalem. Whatever we may think of Winthrop, these folks have their own civil religion which is, as many sharp critics on the Evangelical Right have said themselves, a form of idolatry, or at best a separate faith.
The answer we need, I think, is to the question of how the most religiously righteous batch of Christian conservatives in memory formed what by any yardstick is one of the most, if not the most, corrupt Administrations in U.S. history? What moral and theological calculus went into it?
Thanks David. Those are the questions that I think are worth asking. What books do you find most helpful that explore the religion vision animating the political views of conservative Christians?
What I find deeply troubling about conversations such as this is the strong sense I get–from Joe, for example, that we’re supposed to give these questions a “pass” because –because why? She’s religious? She’s one of us? She’s one of the good guys–in favor of God, not a secularist? Are we that tribalist?
It seems to me you want to defend her, Joe. Okay, defend her. On moral grounds? Legal grounds? Why? Do you think religion had nothing to do with all this? It was pure, secular politics? What’s your own substantive view on the matter?
My own view on this: if religious believers who are intellectuals don’t critique the excesses –and idolatry– of religious belief — we’re not doing our job. And in the long run, by not thinking through the hard questions that these concrete events raise about the proper role of religion in the public square, we’re making it easier for critics to say it doesn’t belong there. Monica Goodling does not help the case for robust participation by people of faith in a pluralistic society.
Cathy,
1) Have you convincingly made the argument that Monica Goodling acted as she did because of her religious beliefs? No.
2) Have you raised interesting questions about the role of religion in society? Yes. Will you write a fascinating article? I certainly hope I will have a chance to read it.
My question about your approach is whether it is ethical–not to mention epistemologically valid–to use a person’s name and situation in such a case study. How much do you actually know about Goodling’s particular inner life and motivations?
Cathy:
You seem to be in an indicting mood, at least when it comes to me. I have no interest whatever in defending Goodling or in giving her a pass, and if that’s the strong sense you got from anything I wrote, you need to work on your sensorium. What is the legal term? Let me stipulate: I think what was done in the Attorney General’s Office was terrible, a threat to the republic. Is that sufficient?
To repeat, I thought you had expressed a genuine question when you wrote, “I wonder”. It appears that it wasn’t; at least now you certainly seem to believe that her actions were motivated by her religious views. I just would like to know why you think that. Am I not allowed to ask?
“God, guns and gays.” Her words. About a candidate for a job. Fits in with a broader pattern–of Regent Law School’s vision of government –which they state themselves, and broader stories about the way evangelicals and conservative catholics operated under Bush.
The dots need to be connected. But they are there.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/29/washington/29justice.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1
Monica Goodling is a public figure. She has been thoroughly discredited as an unethical lawyer by a Justice Department still under Republican control. Furthermore, the report strongly raises the question whether she perjured herself. The information I cited is raising questions based on government reports, and reputable news sources. It’s not unfair to cite reliable sources, or to ask reasonable questions based on them.
Why did she do what she did? Well, I suppose someone will ask her–and her friends, and the people she fired. Sure it’s fair to ask, and I’m sure there will be books written by investigative journalists digging for her motivation, just like with any publicly disgraced person.
One can’t be part of a party that won the last election by telling religious conservatives that they were brining God back into the government and expect people not to ask what God had to with it when you go terribly, terribly wrong.
You can’t have it both ways, as much as you want to.
Joe, yes I used the word “wonder.” But I think I tipped my hand when I said — right up front — “My strong hunch is that serving God, the Republican Party and George W. Bush became intertwined in a manner that is deeply troubling.” So, by taking the word wonder out of context, you seemed to me to suggest I was hiding my view when I did no such thing.
I’m worried about a distorted and mean-spirited religious commitment driving political and legal decisions today; a spirit that some would call (not entirely accurately) “puritanical.” And in your first intervention on the post, you seemed quite nostalgic for that “original” Puritan Winthrop’s city on a hill, and to brush aside the harm that vision had actually brought to the country. You pointed out its good points. So forgive me if I drew from this the conclusion that you were indirectly commending some good points of what was a theocratic approach to government.
I said “strong hunch.” It’s based on the report, news stories, what I know of Regent, what I know of religiously motivated Republicans, and what I know of that strand of evangelical political theology. The evidence is cumulative, no one piece is decisive.
Is the evidence sufficient? Depends upon what for. To send her to jail? Absolutely not–not my interest or concern. To worry about vision of the relationship of church and state actually motivates her and people like her, who are still in power, yes.
What’s interesting to me is the idea that one can break the national law to serve God’s higher law. We Catholics have a version of this, but it’s a bit more nuanced in Aquinas than I’ve seen in some materials from Regent-including, sadly, a law review article justifying killing abortion doctors along those lines. (It was pulled after the doctor in FL was actually killed by Paul Hill).
I think any reasonable person, in the instant matter, and given the report and the kinds of criteria ms. Goodling used in hiring entry level lawyers, conflated religious values with public service as to prejudice questions of competence.
I think both Cahy and David are right.
As an NPR report noted last year, she came on as part of the Ashcroft attempt to “radically” change Justice.
She herself took the 5th on her role in the AG firings though her involvement was obviously deep, given the e-mails that came to light.)
Was shwe over her head? She had minimal experienc eas a Justice attorney (in Magistrate Court) in the eastern District of Virginia.
That raises questions about the selction of fast track folk in Justice(and beyond that) in the Bush Administration. It further raises the issue of how grave is the danger of bringing folks in from the 700 Club college to conflate their religious view with ideology in upholding the law.
I would ask Cathy if she’s read the work by the Dean of Regent Law on the interplay of faith and politics – migh tbe interesting to get some take on what leadership there says publicly.
As I’ve already mentioned, I’m intewrsted in their take on transparency and accountability.
Cathleen, thank you for calling our attention to the story, and for your passionate views.
What bothers me, I guess, is that underlying Goodling and friends’ systematic program of ideological screening is contempt for so many foundational bricks of our republic: faith in the law; faith in the electoral process; faith in the legislative process.
As to religious underpinnings for that world-view: I admit frankly that there are many ways of Christian Right conservativism that I simply don’t understand very well. I believe I’m a reasonably empathetic person, but there are streams of Christian conservativism that are too “other” for me to know where they’re coming from. I guess I don’t have enough in common with them, e.g. I don’t believe that much of humankind is irreparably wicked; that we need be in the midst of an apocalyptic culture war; that the existence or acknowledgement of gay people is some sort of threat to the sanctity of marriage; that science is to be viewed with suspicion; that Zionism and the modern state of Israel is some sort of Biblical fulfillment or harbinger; and any number of other lightning-rod issues.
I watched a good bit of Ms. Gooding’s testimony before the Congressional committee. She struck me as very young (though in her 30s? and exceedingly naive, as if she hadn’t realized before that morning that the law might not be what her boss, the Attorney Gener, said it was. Terribly sad. It was my impression that she had been used dreadfully.
Bob, can you point me to a a link to the article by the dean of Regent.
I’m afraid with what I’ve read about Ms. Goodling, I don’t think she’s naive. I think she knew what she was doing. She wasn’t a secretary typing letters that she didn’t understand. She was a very powerful lawyer. The idea that someone responsible for hiring in the Justice Department wouldn’t know the federal law for hiring is implausible to me.
Cathy, Brauch’s book was noted in an NPR interview last year in May on Fresh Air -think the dat ewas May 16,3007.
Onviously, would be interesting to see what’s in the whole book.
Cathy –
Yes, it does seem implausible that Ms. Gooding was naive, but that is how she struck me. Maybe such a mind-set can stem from the fundamentalist assumption that “we know what those words *really* mean, and *you* don’t”. This assumption, a result of an inability to think critically about one’s own most basic principles, leads otherwise intelligent people to advocate some astonishing views, e.g., that evolution never happened, and the Constitution does not forbid the President to do certain things.
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