Hilton Head Island, SC – May 20, 2012
The Chapel Without Walls
Isaiah 29:13-18; Mark 7:1-8
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with hands defiled?” – Mark 7:5 (RSV)
When it seemed like the Republican presidential primaries were going to continue on for the next six or eight years or so without let-up, it is hard to imagine now that there is only one candidate still campaigning. Mitt Romney has the GOP nomination all locked up. But if you will recall – and who can forget it? – Rick Santorum gave Gov. Romney a very serious challenge for the nomination. After Sen. Santorum’s three victories in Minnesota, Missouri, and Colorado on Feb. 7, it looked temporarily as though he might have a powerful wind in his sails. Within a couple of weeks, however, it became evident that the Santorum candidacy could not succeed.
This sermon is not about the political considerations which resulted in Rick Santorum garnering the second-highest number of delegates in the GOP presidential primary campaign. Rather it is an attempt to understand the religious and cultural impetus behind this quite astonishing phenomenon, that it happened at all.
It wasn’t Mr. Santorum’s views on the usual issues which arise in every campaign in either of our political parties which propelled him into such electoral prominence in early 2012. When he was a United States Senator from Pennsylvania, he was a typical conservative on defense spending, budget concerns, economics, states rights, and so on. However, he made headlines for his views on social issues and personal morality. Increasingly he became famous – or infamous, depending on your point of view -- on such matters as abortion, homosexuality, and public funding for religious schools via a voucher system. For example, in 2003 he openly proclaimed that homosexual relationships were like “man on child” sex, or “man on dog” sex. His stridency on these questions was a major factor to his losing his Senate seat to Bob Casey in 2006 after he had served for two terms. He lost the 2006 election by 18 percentage points.
Then how, you might wonder, did he manage to do so well in the Republican presidential primaries in 2012? There are several reasons for his remarkable showing. The Religious Right, which had been so strong during the eight years of the George W. Bush presidency, went into a short hiatus with the election by Democrats of Barack Obama and both houses of Congress in 2008. The USA quickly became more socially conservative because of a reaction to President Obama’s purported social liberalism. The fact that he is black may have prompted a new, visceral, extra-rational cultural conservatism. By 2010, evangelicals were back in force, and they helped win back the House for the GOP, although they did not manage to take over the Senate.
Nevertheless, the main reason for the Santorum Phenomenon probably is the emergence of the Tea Party. The Tea Party is many things. It is anti-government, especially anti-big government, it wants taxes cut, and it particularly wants what it would call a return to what it supposes are traditional American cultural and moral values. For certain the Tea Party did not rally around just one candidate during the seemingly endless primary season. To some degree they also supported Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul, Herman Cain, and even, though with less enthusiasm, Newt Gingrich. But when it became evident the others were falling behind, they swung their support to Rick Santorum. Mitt Romney never engendered their fervor, nor is he likely to do so now.
It is impossible fully to describe or understand the Tea Party. It has a libertarian element, an anti-federal element, a nativist element, and a strong opposition to centralized power of any sort. But it certainly also has many of the benchmarks of the Religious Right. And that is why it finally came out so forcefully for Rick Santorum.
Another way to say this is to say that the Rick Santorum Phenomenon is not only about Rick Santorum. In fact, it is not even primarily about Rick Santorum. It is about a deep-seated conviction that things are morally out of whack in this country, and that unless we get back into the proper groove, and soon, we are doomed.
So what is the proper groove? Here are some of the tenets which Santorum supporters believe. Marriage must be defined as the union of one man and one woman. (To be somewhat smarmy, it is up to you, I guess, to decide which one man and which one woman that shall be. Other men and women need not apply. ) Abortion must be rendered illegal everywhere in the nation. Sex outside marriage must be forbidden, either by law or by custom. Senator Santorum hinted that birth control should be also outlawed. Sexual morality, or more accurately, sexual moralism, is very large in the Rick Santorum Phenomenon, with or without Rick Santorum. The Religious Right are very intent on negating sexual rights which have been won in major struggles over a long period of time. It is a misguided delusion to suppose otherwise.
The strongest support of the Santorum candidacy, particularly in February and March, came from people who have usually been characterized as “true believers.” We might say that true believers, in anything, are fundamentally “fundamentalists.” That is, they believe ideologically in something, and they are unwilling to discuss their beliefs rationally or calmly. They know what is right and proper, and therefore there is no reason to discuss it.
True believers can be found across the spectrum of religion, politics, or economics. Those who are totally committed Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, fundamentalist Christians, ultra-liberal Christians, leftist Democrats, rightist Republicans, Austrian school economists, or Keynesian economists, are true believers. If you don’t know what some of those groups are, don’t worry. I’m trying to make a point for those who do know what they are.
In general, the history of religiously-oriented laws and customs in western democracies since the 16th century Protestant Reformation has been one of a slow and uneven liberalization. To cite some examples, John Calvin tried to establish a theocracy in Geneva, Switzerland, where the Calvinist Reformation began. But he couldn’t pull it off, nor could Oliver Cromwell succeed in a similar effort in mid-17th century England. People living in democracies will not put up with stringent moralistic laws or customs over an extended period of time. Sooner or later, they will rebel, demanding a relaxation of puritanical or Pharisaic notions of morality. Thus most European democracies of long duration and many other democracies throughout the world have become very liberal with respect especially to sexual and personal morality.
It seems to me that it is a fact, although some of you may disagree, that the USA is well behind the curve of moral liberalization. For whatever reasons (and I do not have time to enumerate them), many Americans have had a tendency to be more puritanical than most other westernized nationalities. Thus William Jennings Bryan and Woodrow Wilson and Pat Robertson – and Rick Santorum – made serious bids for the American presidency, and one of them, Wilson, won. Then, after a severe stroke, his wife became the de facto President for a year, acting on his behalf when he was incapable of acting on his own initiative.
Speaking of wives, part of the Rick Santorum Phenomenon that actually involves Rick Santorum is that before they were married, the future Mrs. Santorum lived for several years with an abortion doctor three decades her senior. Both she and Mr. Santorum had fallen away from their Roman Catholic upbringings. But when they met and fell in love, they returned to Roman Catholicism with a zeal which might make John Paul II look wishy-washy. I am not trying to be facetious here; I am simply trying to explain very complex issues in a very short time, because I have no other choice in order to keep this sermon viable within 28 minutes or so.
Here is a debatable psychological theory, with which you may disagree, but please don’t do it out loud now. Come to the forum following the coffee hour to express your disagreement. People who have been way over to one side of any issue – religious, moral, political, or economic – and subsequently have what loosely might be called “a conversion experience,” often swing way over to the other side on that particular issue. Moderates tend to change moderately, but extremists tend to change extremely. That is what may have happened with many of the people who have been so zealous in their support of Rick Santorum or Ron Paul or Newt Gingrich or Herman Cain --- or Barack Obama. In the slightly altered words of the famous hymn, they felt they “once were lost but now are found, were blind, but now they see.” That experience, incidentally, certainly happened to the writer of “Amazing grace,” the Rev. John Newton. He who once was a slave trader became an ultra-evangelical Anglican priest.
In his three years of public ministry, Jesus of Nazareth was constantly confronted by moral and religious extremists who sought to thwart him. They are variously identified in the Gospels as Pharisees, scribes, Sadducees, or priests. I am convinced Jesus considered himself something of a Pharisee, but the four men who wrote the Gospels chose to ignore that for their own theological and biographical reasons. Anyway, time and again these four groups purportedly attacked Jesus and his theology, considering him far, far, far too liberal in his understanding of morality, and especially in his interpretation of the biblical law, the Torah.
We see an example of that in our New Testament reading for this morning. It was both biblical law and social custom that when “orthodox” Jews ate any kind of food, or as we might say in 21st century terminology, “Bible-believing Jews,” they were required to do so with properly washed hands. Neither Jesus nor his disciples did that, and it drove Jesus’ theological adversaries to the ragged edge of moralistic distraction. In Mark, chapter 7, the scribes asked Jesus, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with hands defiled?” That matter probably doesn’t bend you out of shape, but try to put yourself into the mentality of people who think abortion is always wrong or that birth control is wrong or that homosexuality is wrong, and then perhaps you may understand the scribes’ concern somewhat better. To them, eating with unwashed hands was the equivalent of child molestation or spousal abuse. They believed that religious purity required that people wash their hands before eating.
To respond to the accusations against him, Jesus quoted the prophet Isaiah, whose writings presumably his adversaries would approve, however reluctantly. (Religious conservatives don’t much like prophets. They much prefer biblical laws instead.) I shall quote directly from Isaiah, rather than Jesus, who somewhat misquoted Isaiah, but he can be forgiven because he was quoting from memory rather than reading from his portable Hebrew Bible, which he most assuredly did not have. Anyway, Isaiah quoted God as saying, “Because this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment of men learned by rote; therefore, behold, I will again do marvelous things with this people, wonderful and marvelous; and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the discernment of their discerning men shall be hid.” Then Isaiah went on, perhaps speaking only for himself and not for God, “Woe to those who hide deep from the Lord their counsel, whose deeds are in the dark, and who say, ‘Who sees us? Who knows us?’ You turn things upside down!” (Isaiah 29:13-16).
Did you hear what Isaiah said God was saying? He was saying that much of what passes for God’s law is really the perverted laws of men, and the only way God can overturn that is that, over time, liberalization shall inevitably erode stringent and strident morality. To say that abortion is always wrong is wrong! Abortion is never good, but it may be less bad than never to have abortions. To say that the only acceptable view of marriage is that it must be between one man and one woman is wrong. After all, in ancient biblical times polygamy was practiced, and at various times since then same-sex relationships have often been covertly if not overtly allowed. It is mainly certain Americans who become so steamed about this matter. To forbid same-sex marriage is in reality to engage in social and legal cruelty. But it has taken most nations and cultures many centuries to perceive that, and most of us have taken most of our lifetime to see it, if indeed we see it at all. As another hymn says, “New occasions teach new duties; times makes ancient good uncouth.”
There was a Republican Senator from Arizona who, in 1964, warned that “you cannot legislate morality.” Barry Goldwater had that right, although many liberals at the time thought morality could and should be legislated. But it was their kind of morality they wanted to be written into the statute books.
What does God think about the culture wars now raging in the USA and elsewhere, particularly in reactionary Islamist countries? It is impossible to know with objective certainty. Even to discuss it is to engage inevitably in very spirited rhetoric on all sides, which is currently going on in this country. Sadly, there is a great deal of heat, but not much light. Yet surely God is not pleased with the raucous rancor that characterizes our present political discourse.
The United States of America is at a crucial crossroads. We shall survive no matter how the culture wars are resolved. But we will emerge far more healthy from all this if we lower the political and moral cant and raise the level of rationality and respect for one another.
The Democratic Party, especially among its Members of Congress, has become too much aligned with the political left. But to be objective and frank, it is the Republican Party currently constituted which currently represents the greatest threat to our democracy. There is almost no center remaining in the GOP. The Republican presidential primaries have verified that. Only now can Mitt Romney afford to sound less like an extremist-rightist-zealot and more like a merely-quite-conservative-somewhat-centrist. It does not speak well for the Grand Old Party that only extremist-sounding candidates can receive a hearing, let alone a fair hearing, among the Republican ranks. The party members who have determined the nature of the debate since 1980 have done their cause no favors by the kind of extra-rational rancor of their gatherings. And make no mistake; now they are very serious about taking away some hard-won human rights.
This is not, however, essentially a partisan issue. It is a political issue, and distinctly an American issue. Our tendency toward extremism is particularly extreme in 2012. No Mitt Romney Phenomenon shall determine the 2012 election, regardless of who wins the election. But if it is the Rick Santorum Phenomenon which ultimately triumphs, the United States of America shall be in for some extremely difficult extremist years. For our own well-being, may all of us seriously ponder that likelihood as we draw ever closer to November 6. We have already spent far too much political energy for our own partisan sake.