I've been staying away from the presidential campaign lately on this blog, just because...well, when I think about it I can't stop yawning!!!!! I can't decide who thinks I'm more stupid the talking head analysts on TV or the candidates themselves. Yet, I have been stirred from my malaise by the invocation of the divine by the Rev. Mike Huckabee.If you take a look at the God-o-Meter (see left)--the really cool collection of articles on all the candidates and religion maintained by Time Magazine and Beliefnet--Huckabee just about breaks the needle off the "theocrat" end of the machine.
Once upon a time, I think I may have been first in making the "I Heart Huckabee" joke here on this blog. I believe it was for an interview he did on NPR where he came across as a common-sense sort of guy who actually cared about poor people. He certainly didn't win me over then, but I was interested. I remained wary, however, because before his political career, Huckabee was the president of the Arkansas Baptist Convention--not exactly known for an open-minded celebration of pluralism in a free democracy. Then Huckabee flew into the Bermuda Triangle of media coverage that was any Republican besides Romney or Giuliani, until all the Religious Right voters in Iowa realized they might have to pick between a Mormon and a pro-choice, twice-divorced Catholic. Then, with Huckabee's rise in the polls and marketing of himself as a "true Christian leader" as opposed to say, Romney, suddenly people are paying attention to him again--including me.
I have to say that a kinder, gentler Republican is appealing to me, but I've come to believe that Huckabee is peddling the same type of "Compassionate Conservatism" that W. handed out in 2000. Groups like the Family Research Council are lining up behind him--always scary when religio-fascists count themselves as your supporters. When Huckabee refused to recant his 1992 statement that people with HIV/AIDS should be isolated from the rest of society, he pretty much tipped his hand regarding pandering to the Religious Right with a barely-veiled judgment of homosexuals. (The Washington Post had a really good editorial on this point.) Huckabee stated recently that in 1992 we didn't know much about AIDS is ridiculous. I can recall debating the issue of allowing students with AIDS in schools back in the Ryan White days of the mid-1980's in my middle school debate class. I was 13 and I new more about how AIDs is spread seven years earlier than Huckabee did.
Huckabee came out with the usual type of blasphemy that candidates who hang out with too many Falwell/Dobson/Robertson/Land types always seem to do. He has begun to claim that God wants him to be president. When asked by a Liberty University student for an explanation for his surge in the Iowa polls, he replied, "It is the same power that helped a little boy with two fishes and five loaves feed a crowd of 5,000 people. And that's the only way our campaign could be doing what it is doing." UGH!!!!!
Diana Butler-Bass offers a well thought out rebuke of such thinking on the God's Politics Blog. She writes:
If God is the power behind a candidate, then, if that candidate wins, he or she is both beyond reproach and immune to criticism—because, of course, that person is seen as divinely appointed or anointed. The politician's actions are synonymous with God's will. This opens the door for political silliness (God desires tax cuts) or hubris (God favors our political party)—as well as making God responsible for a host of reprehensible or potentially evil acts in the forms of injustice, oppression, or war.
So, what's the alternative to this kind of thinking? Is God removed from politics? Hardly. Again, Diana Butler-Bass:
It is possible to recognize providence in politics, while leaving room for nuance, humility, and mystery. Instead of seeing God as causing specific actions, it seems preferable to understand providence as the unfolding of God's story through time—a tale of sin, reconciliation, justice, and peace from creation to the end of history, of which God shares with us the narrative trajectories, not the specific twists of plot.
In this story, God does not control human actions as a divine puppet master. Rather, as human beings encounter the story, we change and our actions begin to conform to God's narrative of shalom. In this way, God's intentions unfold as we practice faith in humble gratitude that God has invited us into the story. Providence is not divine Mapquest or supernatural tom-tom. Rather, providence is a pilgrimage of God's people in time as they seek to live in mercy, kindness, and grace—and that is where God's will is made known. Not God's finger, providence is the breath of God, the spirit enlivening human beings to do justice.
I never fully "Hearted" Huckabee anyway, but with this kind of "divine right of kings" claims, the governor and Baptist minister ensures that I never will.
Grace and Peace,
Chase
P.S. Andy Borowitz has a great column that reports Huckabee has chosen Jesus as his runningmate in 2008. Here's a taste: The Reverend Pat Robertson, a supporter of former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, said he was "blindsided" by the news of Huckabee's decision: "I talked to Jesus last night, and He didn't mention anything about it."
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