Sin And Mike Pence

     The word is obscure, but no other will do the job. The dictionary says this:
     Ethnocentrism -- Evaluating other cultures according to preconceptions originating in the standards and customs of one's own culture.
     When this attitude shows in rural and small-town folks, it is said to be provincial. When it shows in big-city people, it is said to be cosmopolitan. Beneath the labels it is one thing only: An instinctive preference for familiar norms.
      And it nourishes stereotypes. In personal life they spare us the work of dealing forthrightly with people unlike ourselves. In the public forum they facilitate a shorthand of insinuation. When the first President Bush realized that Bill Clinton was about to unseat him, he began denigrating Clinton as the governor of a small, southern state. Translation: Rube. When Mike Pence first moved to the national stage as a vice-presidential ticket, he was tagged with  a twofold label. He was a Midwesterner. Translation: Dullard. And he was a fundamentalist Christian. Translation: Fool.
     The knee-jerk laziness of stereotyping has obscured the sharper point that he is a charlatan. Here is Pence in a commencement address at Liberty University:
     (Be prepared to be) "shunned or ridiculed for defending the teachings of the Bible. ... As you go about your daily life, just be ready because you're going to be asked not just to tolerate things that violate your faith, you're going to be asked to endorse them. ... You're going to be asked to bow down to the idols of popular culture."
         It is said that a certain kind of politician would cut down a redwood tree to stand on the stump and make a speech about protecting the environment.  Here we have a speech about Christian morality from an eager acolyte of a president whose personal and official corruption challenge the capacity of words to describe.
     Pence is a disgrace to his office, of course -- a full partner in the demagoguery ("they" are out to get you) and corruption of the administration. But he does another kind of wrong in demeaning faith for political gain with the techniques of a revival-tent bunco artist.
     When he throws red meat to his core audience, they are not the only ones listening. The listening is a hard thing for those of us who try to observe a Christian faith and find in it nothing like the shaming and fear-mongering that echoes in Pence's blather.
      Others are  listening, too. Organized religion walks a precarious line in the world it hopes to redeem. It functions at risk of putting words in the mouth of God, and of being guilty of the common charge that it doesn't practice the virtues it preaches. The difference between dogma and grace is a matter for constant search. Moral gnomes who use the megaphone of high office to deliberately confuse the two are rendering a disservice that reaches far beyond mere politics.

Pete Buttigieg

     The server is a fixture at our favorite restaurant, and we have established a friendly  acquaintance with him over the years.
     He is in his '60s; retired from a career in business; engaged in both the joys and the challenges of growing older; head-over-heels with a brand new granddaughter.
     On one visit, business was slow and he paused at our table to chat. Breaking a workplace rule, he broached politics: "What do you think of Pete Buttigieg?"
     He said it with warmth and a tone of hope. To my ear, the tone is common when people (of all sorts, apparently) speak of the young Hoosier mayor who has declared for the presidency. And many do speak of him.
     What has so quickly elevated him among the throng of Democrats in the race? In these early days, impressions are necessarily superficial.
     Nevertheless, these few:
     People see in Buttigieg intimations that our politics and our politicians need not make decent people recoil. Behind his wholesome demeanor, apparently, is a wholesome man: Bright. Well informed. Thoughtfully interested in public service, and aware that the term should connote service to all citizens, not merely to partisan supporters.
     If he survives the early skirmishes and still appears to be genuine, his campaign will bring the country to familiar crossroads from a new direction.
     His open homosexuality will energize single-issue voters, who were catalytic enablers of the serial travesty proceeding in Washington. They embraced incompetence and corruption for the promise of prevailing on pet social issues.
     But Buttigieg presents the question in the obverse: Should a qualified candidate be denied office solely because one aspect of his private life violates what some people consider to be a religious norm?
     Thus the corollary issue: Today's mixture of religion and politics.  Politicians bowing -- I would say pandering -- to the so-called  Christian right, have in effect offered to write selected religious precepts into civil law. This transaction is noxious to politics, to governance and to a decent respect for the varied spiritual lives of Americans. It amounts to a claim that one faction of one faith has a legally enforceable monopoly on access to God.
     Buttigieg is an observant Christian and an engaged churchman (the two not always being the same thing.) Taken at face value, his faith is loving and inclusive. This puts it a far cry from the hard-hearted caricature of Christianity perpetrated on the right -- what one writer has called judgement without mercy and legalism without grace.
     The error of imputing moral superiority to political opinions is not an exclusively conservative temptation. But the error is vividly demonstrated by public and private leaders of the moment. They have done an especially ugly job of making public policy a tool of division and faith an excuse for intolerance. They have turned our own institutions against us.
     Can Buttigieg really transcend the cut and slash of today's self-interested politics? It seems a hopeful notion to an interesting variety of people.  Win or lose,  he is offering  a therapeutic example -- a breath of fresh air. And fresh air matters.