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.