January 11, 2005
"Agape" pretty much sums it up.
Allow us to break away, for a moment, from the continuing battle to stop stealth theocrats from inflicting the internally oxymoronic theory of Intelligent Design on American schoolchildren to highlight a article posted by self-styled "Christian News Service" Agape Press on comments made by Indiana congressman Mark Souder at a recent prayer breakfast on Capitol Hill:
An Indiana congressman is warning that an Iraqi-style democracy may not make much of a change there. Why? Because the Judeo-Christian ethic is critical to the success of such a venture, he says.
Earlier this week, Republican Mark Souder was one of the speakers at a bipartisan prayer service before the opening of the 109th session of Congress. He told the audience that religious faith is the conscience of democracy.
"The United States was at its founding, and still is, not only a religious nation but largely a Christian nation," Souder said. "Through Judeo-Christian beliefs that anchor our legal, our economic, our military, and our political system, the balance of powers and constraints upon the state -- and thus upon the majority -- assume the sinful nature of man and one that is not perfectable."
Without a faith grounded in such beliefs, the congressman said, democracy as it is known in the United States cannot work -- and he believes that could well be the case in Iraq.
"John Adams said, 'Our Constitution is made for a moral and religious people,'" Souder noted. "Does democracy in Iraq mean the majority Shia, upon winning, can deny rights to women and to religious minorities, not to mention exact revenge upon the Sunni? Why not do these things if the only standard is democracy?"
He offered a recent demonstration of the nation's morality, whose "premises rest at least upon the echoes and remnants of Judeo-Christian teaching," he says.
"Over 75 percent of the American people profess to be Christian, and an even higher percentage believe that they were created by God -- not some randomly evolving blob of amoeba," Souder stated. "So when a tragedy hits Asia, we don't say 'Tough luck. It's social Darwinism. The fittest will survive.'"
He continued: "They are fellow souls, each one fearfully and wonderfully made by God. Our hearts ache; our hearts cry out at the pain and suffering we see; our hearts bleed."
Intrigued by what appeared to be an almost self-parodying display of a fundamental ignorance of the governments and citizens of many other countries around the world -- including one directly to the north of the United States -- that have somehow managed to cobble together democratic governments, and have, in recent days, offered up not only compassion, but cold hard cash to victims of the tsunami victims -- and all without being "not only a religious nation but largely a Christian nation," in the words of Souder, a quick Googling brought up the full text of Souder's remarks on his official webpage.
While we found the comments that made it to press via Agape, we were even more intrigued by the context, and the portion of his remarks that somehow ended up on the Christian press cutting room floor:
If we don’t understand who we are as a people, if we don’t understand why our legal and economic system works, why are we surprised that we have problems when we try to export it?
Capitalism without morality equals greed. Adam Smith made that clear, as do modern examples of nations where the elite used unfettered capitalism only to enrich themselves at the expense of others.
Why, we wonder, didn't the Agape article note that Souder -- whose remarks, we hasten to add, we are not in any way defending, and stand on their own as a demonstration of faith-based obliviousness -- was, in his own way, expressing caution over unfettered capitalism in a post-war Iraq, rather than over the failure of those stubborn Muslims to convert to Christianity post-haste, as initially proposed by Ann Coulter?
Could it be because, perhaps, the editors at Agape don't want to raise the ire of its hyperconservative Christian readership, who are more interested in punishing 'sinners' than showing truly "Christian" charity?
By no means should our scepticism over this article be interpreted as any sort of support for Souder or, indeed, his politics, which are clearly lodged deep in the heart of the new Christian right.
At the same time, however, we can't help but wonder whether even a bona fide conservative such as Souder could find his words manipulated by the Jebus Noise Machine if he should veer even slightly off script.
posted by sangwyn at January 11, 2005 02:27 PM
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