The Culture Beat

Balancing democratic values with religious conviction is tricky business, which the delightfully persistent presidential candidate Mike Huckabee knows better than most people.

Critics harrumphed, for example, when the former Arkansas governor and ordained Southern Baptist minister (above) salted his “Super Tuesday” primary victory speech with biblical allusions (which likely didn’t register with most Americans).

His speech, they said, was yet more evidence that a President Huckabee would transform the U.S. into a bigoted theocracy.

Overreaction? Scare talk? Certainly. On the other hand, Huckabee himself can pour fuel on such fires.

“I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution,” he told a crowd before last month’s Michigan primary. “But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And that’s what we need to do – to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family.”

While the Constitution guarantees the right for Americans to practice, teach and encourage what they believe to be “God’s standards,” it was not written to enforce those beliefs. I’m not sure what Huckabee meant; maybe he was simply stating a benign personal preference. But I imagine his words could sound ominous to an atheist or agnostic, a Jew, a Muslim, a Buddhist or even another type of Christian.

Incidentally, empowering the government with religious oversight seems odd for a candidate who pledges to “put the IRS out of business.” Does he trust the government more with citizens’ spiritual lives than with their money?

Making room for personal faith in the public square isn’t only an American dilemma. England got a fresh taste of the difficulty this week.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams (pictured here), the leading cleric in the Church of England and in the worldwide Anglican Communion, found himself under fire after remarks he made about the Muslim legal code, Sharia, and its place in British society.

“It seems unavoidable and indeed as a matter of fact certain provisions of Sharia are already recognized in our society and under our law,” he told a BBC interviewer. “So it’s not as if we’re bringing in an alien and rival system.”

Alarmed reports interpreted Williams’ words as an endorsement of – or surrender to – Islamic law, or as accepting a system that would allow Britain’s Muslims to live under a separate code. Not incidentally, the European Court of Human Rights has deemed Sharia as incompatible with modern democratic values, largely because of reports of extreme interpretations and atrocities from Middle Eastern nations, such as the execution of rape victims on charges of fornication.

It’s small wonder that the archbishop’s words stunned Britain. But reading the entire interview reveals a more sensible message. Naming the atrocities as the horrors they are, Williams said other aspects of Sharia would be acceptable.

“We already have in this country a number of situations in which the law – the internal law of religious communities – is recognized by the law of the land as justifying conscientious objections in certain circumstances,” Williams told the interviewer. “It’s not something that’s absolutely peculiar to Islam. We have orthodox Jewish courts operating in this country … not to mention the questions about how the consciences of Catholics, Anglicans and others who have difficulty about issues like abortion are accommodated within the law. So the whole idea that there are perfectly proper ways in which the law of the land pays respect to custom and community – that’s already there.”

For citizens to live under one law is “an important pillar of our social identity as a Western liberal democracy,” Williams said, but people also have “other loyalties which shape and dictate how they behave in society, and the law needs to take some account of that.”

In short, Williams thinks British law gives Muslims the same latitude to practice as other faiths, including Christianity – a notion not far from the First Amendment in the U.S. Constitution.

Considering early American history – how many people fled to the New World in search of religious freedom, often from the Church of England – it’s paradoxical that the archbishop of Canterbury may have a better grasp of what that freedom means than a presidential candidate does.

First published in the Johnson City (Tenn.) Press, 16 Feb 08.

Above: “No, you’re the man!” Former presidents Jimmy Carter (left) and Bill Clinton share a podium in Atlanta.

Remember the old saying: If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it’s probably a duck.

By that measure, the New Baptist Covenant Celebration waddled into Atlanta earlier in February looking very much like a political rally, maybe even a Democratic one, and not just because it convened five days before Super Tuesday.

One of the event’s organizers was former President Jimmy Carter, and it featured other leading Democrats, notably former President Bill Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore. The program included sessions with titles such as “Engaging the Criminal Justice System,” “Breaking Cycles of Poverty” and “Sexual Exploitation.”

Besides that, the gathering came on the heels of a convention of the four largest black Baptist denominations, which are typically politically active and had heard speeches from Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

That’s a major reason Ron Murray, pastor of Johnson City’s Central Baptist Church, did not attend, even though he generally supports cooperation among Christians.

“It seemed on the surface too political,” the Southern Baptist minister explained. “I think it needed not to have politicians as keynote speakers. That shapes it as a political gathering. I’d rather see other kinds of folks on the platform.”

But, organizers insist, this conclave was not a political duck.

“There were a couple of unfortunate coincidences, with it being an election year,” said spokesman Lance Wallace, whose usual job is director of communications for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a group formed in the wake of divisions among Southern Baptists. “For some people, there was enough evidence to call it a liberal event. But there were strong and sincere efforts to make this an all-inclusive, nonpartisan event.”

For example, the program also included Republican senators Charles Grassley of Iowa and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina (although Graham bowed out at the last minute), and had invited GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee to speak. (He declined.) The only explicitly political message during the plenary sessions, Wallace said, came when one former Arkansas governor, Bill Clinton, praised another, Huckabee, for his faith.

Last week’s “celebration” was designed to launch the New Baptist Covenant, an “informal alliance” of people from across the Baptist spectrum of theological, racial, cultural and political differences, “to fulfill the biblical mandate to promote peace with justice, to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, care for the sick and the marginalized, and promote religious liberty and respect for religious diversity,” according to its Web site.

The goal is to create “a cooperating environment to do ministry,” Wallace explained. “How can we get in the same room and work together? Basically it was a ‘Y’all come’ kind of meeting.”

Apparently it took the persuasive power of a former president to make it fly, but more than 30 groups, claiming a combined membership of 20 million, signed on.

“Black and white and Hispanic Baptists were talking about the points of mutual interest in ministry for the first time,” Wallace said. “It’s not that we’re going to mend a schism or launch a new hierarchy. We’re going to bring together Baptists who have never met.”

The Southern Baptist Convention – the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, with 16 million members – isn’t there yet.

Skeptics believe the effort is a liberal Trojan horse, but a behind-the-scenes campaign to woo Southern Baptist leaders seems to be paying dividends. At a press conference last week, Carter said he and SBC president Frank Page had exchanged “very positive” letters. So while the SBC did not officially participate and many members remain wary, Southern Baptists were among the 10,000 to 20,000 people attending last week’s gathering.

Murray, the Johnson City pastor, supports the idea of all Baptists “joining hearts and hand” in ministry. Reduce the political stage presence, and he’s cautiously hopeful about the new covenant.

“If this common cause is indeed advancing the cause of Christ and not contrary to biblical truth or principles, I’d participate,” he said. “We need to do as much of that as we can. There are limits, but I don’t feel like the limits are very narrow. We can find a lot of common ground if we just look for it.”

First published in the Johnson City (Tenn.) Press, 9 Feb 2008.