To Kos: if Operation Hilarity was ever something that we were taking seriously, it's over now, in my mind. Because of this diary by Fred Clarkson(also see this diary by BrooklynBadBoy) and some others, and the coverage of this by Right Wing Watch and Think Progress, and, I'm sure, some other fine progressive organizations. Operation Hilarity is over because Rick Santorum decided that somebody died and made him God, Judge, Jury and executioner of 45 million Americans of faith. I happen to be one of those 45 million Americans of faith whose church he pronounces as being "infiltrated by Satan", and therefore, no longer Christian. Now I know how it feels to be singled out, to be attacked for who one is, by a public figure. And I think it's a grave mistake to give such a little man credibility by voting for him in an election.
Rick Santorum, let me introduce myself.
I am a member of a church affiliated with the United Church of Christ. I've been a member of this congregation for 13 years, and it has been an integral part of my spiritual journey over that period of time. But it doesn't describe my whole spiritual journey. Because, you see, I was born into a family where we did not have a church home. I was born into a family that had lapsed from its Methodist and Baptist roots, I was born into a marriage that perhaps neither of my parents wanted because I, their son, came indecently early. And, having been born into a white working class family in the mid-1960's, we were not exactly the most open-minded people in the world. My grandfather was a racist. My mother was a racist. My father and relatives on both sides of our family were racists. My family had tinges of Anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism too, as well as homophobia, even though one of my uncles married a Catholic woman and my grandfather on my Dad's side was Catholic (his children were raised as American Baptists).
I bring this up to underline the fact that as a straight white Protestant male-- the supposedly "most privileged group" in this country-- I have had a lot of baggage to overcome where it comes to bigotry. I think I try to relate to people of other races and accept them. I think I am accepting of people of other faith traditions and try to find common ground with them, whether in understanding the Divine or in working together in the wider world to achieve common goals. I think I try to relate to people who are LGBT and can accept them for the beautiful individuals they are. I used to fear or resent or despise people who were different from me, but I think I have grown a lot over the years. In the workplace, I have had a boss who was black, another boss who was gay, and my direct supervisor currently is a man from India. I have learned a lot from all of them, and it doesn't make me any less of a person from working with people who are different from me. The church congregation I belong to has gay people, lesbian people, transgendered people, black people, Asians and Latinos. I am now married to a wonderful lady from the Philippines, and we have two beautiful little daughters. In addition to attending our UCC church, my wife occaisionally attends Catholic mass. Is this a threat to me, even though it is not my religious faith? Not a bit. You might think it all has to do with my education and being the "prideful smart person" you talk about that is so common in mainline Protestant denominations. I disagree. I think it has to do with what is written in my heart.
I believe that prejudice is a phenomenon that works on humans on a mental and spiritual level. You cannot really overcome prejudice unless you do work on a spiritual level as well as changing your thinking. There needs to be a change in your heart as well. I think that change of heart became complete when I joined our congregation, when I owned the covenant to follow Jesus. To follow Jesus, for me, means following his ways of dealing with people, handling life circumstances, and believing that God is with us every step of the way. To follow Jesus means to give up our preconceived notions of other people, even those who are our opponents, and seeing that they are on a spiritual journey too. We are just wearing different lenses, often shaped by our life experiences. Nonetheless, the spiritual journey does not call on us to abandon reality-- it calls on us to become reality-based, and to focus on following Jesus in the context of our present circumstances.
The mainline Protestant denominations that you described as "attacked by Satan" are committed to social justice. Social justice is an undertaking that involves the wider world, and it necessarily involves a change in the wider society. Those familiar with the UCC know that there is a strain in our Congregational history called the Social Gospel. Washington Gladden was a key figure, and he was the pastor of a Congregational church right here in Columbus, Ohio. The Social Gospel called for dealing with the great economic and social inequalities in the America of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with a Christian focus. So yes, Sen. Santorum, we are people committed by and large to social change, because we take seriously Jesus' admonition to promote social justice.
The conservative Christians you are appealing to are those who are caught in the reaction to this phenomenon that arose in the late nineteenth century and which achieved its final result in the Progressive movement of the 1900s, suffrage for women and, regrettably, Prohibition. The reaction of conservatives to the Social Gospel arose in fundamentalism and the focus on biblicism, bibliolatry and patriarchal cultural structures. The fundamentalists attempted to divide the mainline Protestant churches from the 1920s onward. Unfortunately, they largely succeeded. What we have is a Protestantism that is largely conservative, so-called "evangelical" denominations that account for the largest number of Protestants.
So, Sen. Santorum, you accuse mainline Protestant churches of being "attacked by Satan" because they work for social justice? Because they dared to challenge the status quo? Now we understand that you are willing to take this culture war thing to a whole new level! Today you came to town and questioned President Obama's Christian values. You stated that Obama's agenda is based on “some phony theology. Not a theology based on the Bible. A different theology.” Yes, not a theology based on biblicism and bibliolatry, but based on the Gospel where Jesus asks us to be just people and do justice. It's in there. I am not going to quote verses to you. Where you might interpret Jesus driving the money changers out of the temple as attempting to keep the temple pure, I might see it as opposition to usury and financial oppression of the poor. Does Wall Street ring a bell?
In the UCC we are big on this thing called "freedom of conscience". It means that we come to the Gospel of Jesus with our own understanding. We do not rely on a priest, bishop, pastor, or conference to form our profession of faith or our understanding of scripture. The authors of the Bill of Rights were of a similar mind when they wrote the First Amendment that kept the government from creating a state church. Your dog whistles to the faithful about "where the foundations of this country are still strong" point right to the white, patriarchal fundamentalist culture that seeks to divide and conquer America over the usual wedge issues. Now birth control has become one of those wedge issues, and the true agenda of the right wing is clear for all to see: power and control over everyone to enforce their "morality" on everyone else.
And so, folks, those of you who belong to mainline churches, and espeically in Ohio, I would like to propose that we have our pastor contact the Santorum campaign and ask him to come to our church. I would like to have a dialog with Sen. Santorum about what it means to be a Christian in America today, about accepting other Americans who are different from us, and what that means for a presidential candidate. And, I would like for him to meet some of the mainline Christians whose congregations he believes to be "infiltrated by Satan". I plan to start by asking my own church if we would be willing to host such a forum. My guess is that he will be here a lot over the next couple of weeks; it would be a good opportunity to have a dialog about faith and cultural issues and to help Sen. Santorum understand that we are Christians too and that denigrating people who don't agree with you makes it seem like you cannot be President of all the peole.