The worm turns for evangelical Christians and what of John McCain?

In the FT article that is directly adjacent to that which concerns whether George W. Bush will convert to Catholicism is an article about John McCain and his strained efforts to connect with evangelical Christians - 'A struggle to energise evangelicals'. It concerns a Southern Baptist convention in Indianapolis and the views of its' attendees about McCain. Not only does this throw George W. Bush into a sharper relief but it also indirectly addresses part of his legacy upon the Republican party when compared to the neighbouring article about George W. Bush possibly converting to Catholicism.


"Four years after helping deliver a second term for George W. Bush, evangelical voters are struggling to summon enthusiasm for the 2008 race. "We feel like we're in trouble", said Raymond James, paster of a Baptist church in Tampa, Florida. "There isn't a candidate that represents our values." A quarter of US voters consider themselves evangelicals, or 'born-again', Christians, and in 2004 nearly 80% supported Mr Bush. [John MaCain] is viewed with deep suspicion by many evangelicals because of his mixed record on social issues, including support for stem cell research. When running against Mr Bush in the 2000 primaries, he famously described evangelical leaders, such as Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell, as "agents of intolerance". "right or wrongly, we viewed Bush as one of our own", said Micheal Griffith, a Baptist paster from Arkansas. "We don't feel the same way about McCain."

If I may interrupt the news article for a moment. When evangelical Christians have reached the point that they say "rightly or wrongly, we viewed Bush as one of our own" and George W. Bush is looking into the eyes of the Pope and believing himself to be looking at God we have what looks like a bit of a situation. The article is meant to be highlighting how John McCain is not an easy choice for evangelicals to support, what with his "agents of intolerance" style remarks, but it also seems to be saying that evangelical Christians and George W. Bush have also fallen out of love with each other and they were meant to be a hand-in-glove fit, if the 2004 election campaign was anything to go by. George W. Bush has been a very unpopular president around the world but why would the president turn away from the support base that delivered his 2004 (real) victory? It only exposes how politically motivated the marriage between the Republican party and evangelical Christians was, i.e. they needed a 'real' victory to set the 2000 election campaign straight and evangelical Christians gave that to them. Indeed the evangelicals must feel not only like they are "in trouble" as the politics behind the religion comes unstuck but they might even feel downright cheated as Bush turns away from them; Bush is on his way out and he doesn't need to prove anything to anybody anymore for any future election campaign. That is for the next poor sod to sort out and while Bush thinks of his next step after he has finished with the oval office he (just like Tony Blair) looks towards the Vatican. Interestingly the article continues...

"Many younger evangelicals have grown frustrated by the [Republican] movement's narrow focus on abortion and gay marriage and are pushing to broaden the agenda to include more left-leaning issues such as poverty and climate change. "Young evangelicals are recognising that Jesus would care more about the 30,000 children who die every day because of hunger and disease than about gay marriage", says Jim Wallis, a prominent moderate evengelical leader."

This must be quite a bombshell for the Republican Party I can imagine. The notion of a left-leaning evangelical Christian is not one I can easily get my head around, and here I was thinking that it was the Christian element that was narrowing the focus down to abortion and gay marriage for the Republican Party, not the other way around. If this focus upon a strict view regarding gay marriage and abortion is partially political motivated instead of just purely theologically motivated them there is some hope that their relative importance compared with world poverty and climate change may allow the American politco-religious culture to development beyond being held on a single issue leash. A more mature politcal perspective from evangelical Christians is long over due and since they seem to be realising this now to a greater degree, if this article is anything to go by, it will presumably make the battle for the political centre ground that much more interesting to watch in the future. The issue is whether John McCain can take the evangelical votes with him after criticising them in the past and relying on a platform that is very similar to Bush's, which evangelicals may also be quite tired of? And as a final question, just how much politics is getting done through the conduit of Catholicism outside of national political parties?

Will President George W. Bush convert to Catholicism?

Continuing in the vein of combining religion and politics, it is worth taking another look at George W. Bush and comparing him with politicians like Tony Blair. When Tony Blair left behind him the world of New Labour national politics to embrace a more international role, he wanted a spiritual vision that was more universal in its tone as well, more catholic with a small 'c' as well as with a capital 'C'. If I am being cynical, something to complient his new political ambitions. He is banking, I think, on being able to use his new found membership of the Catholic church to be able to position himself as an active participant of interfaith/multi-cultural debates that are present in many parts of the world today; his teaching position on globalisation and religion at Yale is one case in point, as is the interfaith foundation that he has set and which bears his name. He has been accused of fluffy thinking, though, so that we never know if his gestures are simply just that, gestures filled with soundbite thinking. A charge leveled against him for much of the New Labour project, the consequences of which Gordon Brown is trying to iron out today.

And so to George W. Bush. Does he yearn for a post-oval office international role similar to that of his friend in faith, Tony Blair? According to reports in the broadsheets, it would seem that GWB is on the verge of plunging towards a new conversion. The Independent 14.6.08 reads 'Bush "may convert to Catholicism". The Pope has broken with official protocol in his recent meeting with Mr Bush, being the first head of state to be greeted outside the Pope's private study. The born-again Christian president has also had more papal audiences than any other US president.

According to the FT 14.6.08

"Asked then by a Catholic interviewer what he saw when he looked into the pope's eyes, Mr Bush, a Methodist, answered simply: "God".

"Marcello Pera, an Italian philosopher and senator who co-wrote a book with the German pope when he was still a cardinal, says the two men have a deep and special relationship founded primarily, on a shared belief that religion must play a central role in politics and in shaping public opinion - more than their conservative views on issues such as abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research (which do not extend to agreement on captial punishment). Although the US separates church and state, there is no such wall between religion and politics, Mr Pera said. "This is a part of US history. The US has a sense of [Christian] mission. Europe is more secularised...Pope Benedict likes the American model more. What is clear is that their relationship is not personal, it is conceptual."

"Italian Catholic commentators yesterday confidently predicted Mr Bushes conversion at the end of his term in office - following in the footsteps of his brother Jeb, whose Mexican wife is Catholic, and Tony Blair, the former UK prime minister also married to a Catholic. But sources close to the Vatican saw few tell-tale signs, noting that the two men did not pray together on this occasion."

As regards a secularised Europe and a religious political culture in the US, it is also worth noting that Pope John Paul II reacted quite strongly, as I understand it, to the spread of Liberation Theology in South America, perceiving it to be under too much influence from Marxist thought. It may, however, be that this "option for the poor" approach to Catholicism in South America still has some wind in its sail given that the continued popularity of more left of centre politics holds sway. The Vatican's focus upon the US would be an interesting development because, as far as I know, the post WWII reconstruction of Europe had previously been perceived as of greater importance. What would a more Catholic America mean for global politics? Would it be used as a bridge to connect with Europe or even as a mechanism to leverage Europe out of its secularised frame of thinking? And of course what would it mean for the rest of the world, a world where many outside of the US have had the thought 'what if Al Gore had been sworn in'? Fundamental to the difference between the US and Europe, though, I believe, is that Europe has experienced two world wars on its' own soil between its' own citizens. This experience, adding to the experience of the Reformation in Europe's battle between Protestants and Catholics, will mean that secularism not only has firm European roots but that it has something to teach us. North America's civil war did not create so much destruction as to undermine religious ideology as a force for the social good but then maybe it was lucky enough to happen when weaponry was still sufficiently primative. What would a more idealistic politico-religious North American culture make of Catholic universalism? Will George W. Bush follow in the footsteps of Tony Blair? Is it no longer such an obstacle for organised religion if Church and State are kept separate?

Religion, Economy and Politics

A fresh new morning, a fresh new blog. My interest in things religious and my interest in things historical/political converge in my interest in things related to the country of Burma/Myanmar, especially as Buddhist monks are at the forefront of efforts to support the impoverished and devastated Burmese population, and this is a good a place as any to begin my blog. However, Burma has not been in the news of late. This. I think, does not mean it has been been forgotten though. The current focus on the dire situation in Zimbabwe will hopefully force the UN security council to review their policy on what to do with a country's government that is determined to put their own population in harms way in order to maintain power. It is not all that dissimilar to the conumdrum surrounding suicide bombers; how do you stop someone that is willing to kill themselves or their own people to get what they want. Now obviously Burma and Zimbadwe are countries in very different circumstances but since the newspapers have noted that behind Mugabe there is essentially a military junta in control of the country both countries can be placed in a similar line of sight; how does a globalised world structure of foreign relations between nation-states deal with military juntas? Whatever conclusions are reached in regard to Zimbadwe, may well apply to Burma in the future and for this reason I think Burma has not been forgotten. One does not necessarily need to hear the name Burma in the news to see that something is being done about countries like Burma. Also Burma has had huge coverage lately. If it can be said that the 1988 massecre of the pro-democracy movement, killing c.3,000 people, brought Burma back on to the international affairs radar, readying the international community to act when they heard of the next outbreak of state violence, then the 100,000 strong Buddhist monk-led demonstrations of Sept 2007 and the morally reprehensible response of the Burmese military junta to the disaster of Cyclone Nargis prime the international community even further. This is brought into sharp relief because of the twofold relevance of 8.08.08. This is of course both the opening of the Beijing Olympics and the 2oth anniversary of the Burmese military's surpression of the pro-deomcracy movement in 1988. This day will simultanously symbolise the triumph of economic globalisation and the failure of a more globalised political structure to address problem states like Zimbadwe and Burma. The 2008 olympics will represent one of the worlds' biggest coming out parties, the emergence and intergration of the Beijing government into the new world order of our now globalised world. However, this economic triumph should not be seen, I believe, as a predetermined conclusion of past events. It was arranged due to political agreement between the superpowers of the world and potentially can be undone too. This is why it is important that this new economic structure can be seen to address thorny political situations such as Zimbadwe and Burma because it is a successful economic structure (whatever type that may be) that we all need to be in place to survive and this is ultimately a political event. And as a political event it needs to have a sound foundation and countries like Zimbadwe and Burma expose its weaknesses too much. I am not saying that a country should not be able to express dissent to a globalised economy, healthy protest is by its nature healthy for all, but since we are all now pretty much interdependent upon each other and our world population is growing so fast etc countries like Burma and Zimbadwe are a drain on everyone and it is in our best interests to stongly encourage a more healthy political/economic structure in these countries. And at the forfront of this action in Burma.....Buddhist monks. The history of ideas that national cultures source their ideological expression from has changed with the collapse of the USSR and Russia no longer as a world focus of international Communism. Religion is increasingly filling the idealogical gap, I think, and hopefully this does not lead to a religious nationalism like that which caused Europe so much trouble in the past. Socially active religious culture, a religious culture that has learned from modern political sensibilities and humanistic developments in the social sciences. The world is a more fluid, unfixed place and this resurgent religious culture needs to reflect this, hence the demand to surpress religious fundamentalism of all kinds, if that is possible. As dangerous as it is to mix religion, economy and politics, I can not resist but see some important links.