Now this has to be the strange lede of the day.
The story focuses on all of the faith talk that is going around at the moment, much of it stirred up by Barack Obama’s “bitter” remarks and Hillary Clinton’s related attempts to spin herself as a pew-sittin’, gun-lovin’ friend of the everypeople who live in that state located between Philly and Pittsburgh.
That’s the context for this story by Andrea Billups of the Washington Times, which serves as a kind of flashback and update on the faith journey of Sen. John McCain from the Episcopal pews of his youth to the Southern Baptist megachurch that he favors today.
All well and good.
But what in the world is this lede about? This is one of those cases where I wonder if this is what the reporter wrote, or did this wording result from a train wreck at an overworked copy desk. Here we go:
Don’t expect any public testimonies of faith from presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, who is not demonstrative about his religion but who embraces a Baptist faith that is based on salvation.
The religious intentions of Democratic candidate Sen. Barack Obama were dissected after he publicly explained his decadeslong relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., but the senator from Arizona likely will talk little about the details of his own spiritual path other than to acknowledge that he is on one.
“The most important thing is I’m a Christian,” Mr. McCain told reporters in September on the campaign trail when asked about his religious affiliation.
Say what? He has adopted “a Baptist faith that is based on salvation”? As opposed to what, an Anglican faith that is not based on salvation? A Catholic faith that is not based on salvation? What kind of mainstream Christian body is not, to one degree or another, “based on salvation”?
I have literally no idea what dropped out of this sentence. Was it supposed to be a lede about a born-again concept of salvation? Is it code for the fact that his church preaches that some people are saved and others are not? In other words, is the controversy that he now attends a non-Universalist church (thus opening the door to a controversy about item No. 2 in the infamous tmatt trio)?
I am very, very confused. I await enlightenment, especially from you Godbeat veterans out there. What was this lede trying to say? Is the key that he once was not an evangelical, but now he is — maybe?
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Comments (9) |
April 14, 2008, at 9:41 am
I agree, that was a bizarre lede about a Baptistfaith “based on salvation,” especially since the word salvation is not used by McCain himself in the article.
Not to change the subject, but I found Prof. McClay’s comment on page two of that same article very insightful: that McCain doesn’t talk about religion openly because of his generational identity — that is, he was brought up in a time when it wasn’t seemly to talk about your beliefs in the higher reaches of public life.
I was thinking about that generational gap last night as I watched the Compassion Forum. Clinton was defending that same idea: that not talking about religion publicly is really what she’s most comfortable with….yes, she’s learned she has to do it, but it still doesn’t flow. And she acknowledged that many folks out there are still not comfortable with faith talk.
Obama, being of a different generation, doesn’t seem to have the same issues to overcome.
So, question: Can McCain hold onto the "Silent Generation" ethos of faith-is-a-private-thing and still appeal to younger voters?
April 14, 2008, at 9:44 am
“Train wreck” is a good way to describe that lead.
My guess is that the writer is attempting to distinguish between the type of Christianity that emphasizes a personal conversion (with the emphasis on “personal”) rather than one that takes more of a social-gospel approach.
The difference that the writer may be alluding to is the difference between a church that urges its members to “get right with Jesus” and one that urges its members to “do right by Jesus.” In other words, all the writer may be saying that McCain attends a church that is evangelical in outlook rather than a mainline church.
Maybe both the writer and the editors who handled this story don’t realize that mainliners believe in salvation too. Who knows?
All I can say is, that lead would have never sneaked by this copy editor.
April 14, 2008, at 12:29 pm
gfe wrote:”“get right with Jesus†and one that urges its members to “do right by Jesus.†” Hmmm well just as mainliners also believe in salvation non-mainliners also believe in doing right by Jesus. The debate is in how one gets right with Jesus and what consititutes doing right by Jesus. The use of the term mainline for me is confusing. For instance is my denomination the LCMS a mainline church? Much of what is written about mainliners does not seem to apply to us. Perhaps conciliar versus non-conciliar might be more accurate. That is differentiating churches that participate in the NCC/WCC and those which do not.
April 14, 2008, at 12:34 pm
Agree that “salvation” is probably a (yes, awful) stand-in for “personal conversion”—though I’d say the “as opposed to” has less to do w/ the social gospel than with the communal/collective idea of faith reflected in the theology (especially baptismal theology) of the Episcopal, Lutheran, + Presbyterian churches, social gospel-oriented or otherwise. I wonder if the lede holds a ghost of the OMG-McCain-used-to-be-an-Episcopalian-and-now-he’s-a-quasi-Baptist story—which, whether or not it was a political decision, had little to do with a change in his political BELIEFS.
The biggest problem (of many!) w/ the evangelical-mainline binary as a framing device is that the salvation theology, the -doxy/-praxis debate, and the specific politics are all very different questions.
April 14, 2008, at 2:27 pm
Listen in to “Trish Reels in a Big One - Evangelicals try to evangelize a Catholic priest and have a learning experience”
http://blog.ancient-future.net/2008/04/07/trish-reels-in-a-big-one/
to get a handle on how Cristians can talk past each other with the “Are you saved” hook, line and sinker approach…
(H/T Mark Shea “Catholic and Enjoying it” blog)
But really we ought challenge this
kind of duplicity. If your faith is true you will act according to it, surely? That’s why Obama stands by his activism credentials in TUCC - he’s an authentic practicing Christian (not maybe the devoutest you’ll ever meet, since he blocked the born-alive incremental limits on the travesty partial-birth abortion) not an inauthentic cultural Christian that the political culture accomodates with a nod of their hat to the “conservative family values” movement.
April 14, 2008, at 3:52 pm
And here’s a Jewish take on the differences observed under “faith based on salvation” from today’s NY Times:
http://thepope.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/pope-will-meet-two-kinds-of-jews/#more-15
April 14, 2008, at 4:11 pm
Does this mean that there are “impersonal conversions”?
April 14, 2008, at 10:14 pm
It could be the lede focuses on McCain’s church focuses on eternal salvation and not prosperity theology or black/liberation theology. I’m guessing. I doubt any church announces they *don’t* preach salvation—it’s in what form that salvation takes that differs, i.e., salvation from debt, from addiction, from social injustice, from sin-death-Satan, etc.
As far as silence bout faith being a generational thing, would this be akin to the racial gap in America? Until JFK was elected being Catholic was an albatross for national candidates. Al Smith allegedly lost presidential elections because of his Catholicity; John Kerry’s Catholicism only came up because a bishop though he should be excommunicated for his pro-choice stance. In some ways religion is still a barrier. Exhibit “A” is Mitt Romney and his Mormom faith. I would assume the same would be true of any Muslim running for office.
April 15, 2008, at 1:29 pm
Clare is putting her finger on an important idea when she mentions cultural Christians who get a nod from the press by a mention of family values.
Only 7 percent of self-identified evangelicals walk the walk and talk the talk of evangelical faith as it’s understood in the public square. They are a cohesive voting bloc of 15-20 million people. That gives them clout. They can turn a close election. But it isn’t enough to get their agenda passed — as they frequently complain — once their candidates are in office.
If they were 25 percent of America and they voted together, as we are often told they do, evangelicals would most definitely control the country. Abortion would have long ago been banned. Gay marriage would never make it to the ballot.
I’m a longtime religion reporter. I suspected, as most reporters do, that the evangelical numbers were mostly puffery. In my soon-to-be-published book, “The Fall of the Evangelical Nation,” I have the stats to prove. Most of those numbers come from the denominations themselves.
Because those in my profession, myself among them, haven’t adequately questioned religious right assertions, fundamentalist Christian ideas have far more influence in society than they deserve and skew the moral debate in a way that doesn’t serve any of us.
That’s what the Washington Times’ story illustrates most dramatically. Saying McCain’s faith is now based on salvation is a shorthand that most readers, awash in the divisive nature of religion coverage, will understand without any trouble at all. It’s also an unintended slur on mainline faith.
But most readers won’t notice, much less protest. They’ve become completely accustomed to the idea that mainline Christianity is somehow inferior.