Steve Benen takes Nicholas Kristof to task for his recent column on the mockery directed at Mike Huckabee, and quite rightly so: as Benen points out, people are not mocking Huckabee for his faith, as Kristof claims, but for his ideas:
He rejects modern biology. He thinks wives should “submit graciously” to their husbands. He’s equated homosexuality with bestiality. He’s publicly endorsed “quarantining” AIDS patients; he’s boasted that God is directly helping his presidential campaign; and he’s said that if a man and a woman live together outside of marriage, they’re engaging in a “demeaning … alternate lifestyle.”
Benen's quite correct on this -- as a matter of faith, these ideas are Huckabee's business as long as they remain private. As an agenda for a potential president of a modern, secular nation, they are quite definitely laughable and deserve all the ridicule anyone can heap on them. Kristof isn't completely off base, however: these ideas come from Huckabee's faith, through a somewhat bizarre interpretation of Christian scripture. I think, however, that Kristof is carrying liberal tolerance too far: just because someone cloaks their ignorant and hostile opinions in the guise of religious doctrine is no reason to accept them as valid. In the context respect for others' religious beliefs, Huckabee is home free; in any context outside of that, he's a loon and should be laughed at.
Kristof goes on in his column, however, to address the wider issue of evangelical Christians and their changing focus.
“Evangelicals are going to vote this year in part on climate change, on Darfur, on poverty,” said Jim Wallis, the author of a new book, “The Great Awakening,” which argues that the age of the religious right has passed and that issues of social justice are rising to the top of the agenda.
He cites Rev. Rick Warren, who has developed a reputation over the past few years as a relative "liberal" among evangelicals. However, Warren is still, in terms of pubic exposure, a minority voice, and I question his influence relative to such pustules as Pat Robertson and James Dobson. I think Kristof begs the question -- he notes that "many" evangelicals are working for social justice -- overseas.
Mr. Warren acknowledges that for most of his life he wasn’t much concerned with issues of poverty or disease. But on a visit to South Africa in 2003, he came across a tiny church operating from a dilapidated tent — yet sheltering 25 children orphaned by AIDS.
“I realized they were doing more for the poor than my entire megachurch,” Mr. Warren said, with cheerful exaggeration. “It was like a knife in the heart.” So Mr. Warren mobilized his vast Saddleback Church to fight AIDS, malaria and poverty in 68 countries. Since then, more than 7,500 members of his church have paid their own way to volunteer in poor countries — and once they see the poverty, they immediately want to do more.
“Almost all of my work is in the third world,” Mr. Warren said. “I couldn’t care less about politics, the culture wars. My only interest is to get people to care about Darfurs and Rwandas.”
And what are they doing here? I consider this a valid and significant question, and one that Kristof ignores. How many of Warren's flock are paying their own way to work in an AIDS hospice in New York or San Francisco? How many of them are working with poor children the slums of Chicago? How many are helping to rebuild New Orleans? (I won't even get into gay rights, even aside from marriage -- I know the answer to that.)
I would submit that it's very easy to have sympathy and compassion for the unfortunate somewhere else -- not only does that not point up your own moral failings, your own lack of compassion for your neighbors, but leaves a nice warm glow of moral superiority. Let's see some of this happening here at home -- then we can talk about evangelicals and social justice. When I see signs in a gay pride parade that read "Evangelicals for Equal Rights," I might start to believe it.
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