White House religion – words and deeds

The more Richard Nixon talked about his faith the more his enemies complained about it.

Critics of the troubled president accused him of hiding behind a smokescreen of "White House religion," which an Associate Press report described as "personalized piety detached from its social demands." Liberal church leaders said Nixon was using Christianity as a shield. Critics said he needed to get some new religious advisers, instead of surrounding himself with clergy who would only tell him what he wanted to hear.

Sound familiar? A quarter of a century later, it was the Religious Right's turn to complain while a president kept talking and talking and talking about forgiveness, sin and grace, rather than facing tough issues of repentance, justice and integrity.

That's the problem with White House religion. What you see is rarely what you get.

It's so much easier to offer positive talk about personal feelings and faith, rather than to answer divisive religious questions about the public square. That was true in Watergate, Fornigate and, now, the Y2K White House race.

"It's all very ironic," said Gabriel Fackre, a theologian in the highly progressive United Church of Christ. "One of the lessons we were supposed to have learned from the Clinton crisis was that a leader's private affairs are not supposed to be very relevant, when it comes to judging him as a public leader. We were not supposed to confuse the personal and the public."

But there's a problem and it's one that haunts Republicans and Democrats. In reality, it's impossible to separate these two spheres of life. "They are distinguishable, but inseparable," said Fackre, a Democrat who edited a controversial volume about the Clinton scandals entitled "Judgment Day at the White House" and recently wrote a sequel called "The Day After."

The "character issue" looms over America's political landscape, even if the candidates are afraid to discuss it with any degree of candor. Instead, the major players are offering variations on the classic "White House religion" formula – talking warmly about their private faith, while batting away pesky questions about religious issues in public life.

Thus, Gov. George W. Bush keeps giving his testimony, but seems gun-shy when asked to describe how his personal faith is linked to his public convictions. Sen. John McCain preaches about character and the faith of his fathers, but won't discuss his moral and cultural views. Vice President Al Gore keeps showing up in pulpits, talking about his lively faith, but loathes questions about his days as a Southern Baptist-friendly Tennessee politician. Former Fellowship of Christian Athletes leader Bill Bradley insists that his faith is strong, yet totally private.

Everyone would rather discuss or how they were born again, rather than discuss the details of partial-birth abortion. It's safer to talk about spirituality and renewal than to make a case for or against private-school vouchers in the tense age after Columbine High School.

Right now, American politicians keep saying that faith is good, but it's clear that talking about the details is deadly. The subject is just too hot. So candidates keep shouting their testimonies, rather than answering detailed questions about policies.

What goes around, comes around. Back in the 1970s, noted Fackre, progressives used to attack conservatives whenever they failed to link their evangelistic words with efforts to change society. Thus, they said conservatives like Nixon were guilty of separating "their words and their deeds." Then, during the Clinton crisis, the political and theological left turned around and chanted: "Why don't you take him at his word? He said he's sorry. What more do you want?"

At the moment, everyone seems to have a plan for talking about their religious convictions, but no one wants to discuss how their faith will affect their actions, said Fackre.

"The common theme in all of this is the need to link word and deed," he said. "It matters what our leaders say they believe. But it's even more important to see who will answer questions about what they want to do, as president. We have to be able to make a decision about whether they will walk the walk, not just talk the talk."

He was God's man, not God's coach

On Friday afternoons, Tom Landry and his secretary used to work their way through hundreds of letters from Dallas Cowboy fans around the world, answering every one of them.

A few years before owner Jerry Jones shoved him out the door, Landry received a letter that left him shaken and speechless. A mother was worried because her 10-year-old son was still depressed, even though it had been weeks since the Cowboys failed to make the playoffs. Could the coach help?

"I really didn't know what to say," Landry told me, back in 1987. "That breaks your heart. ... Sometimes, things can just get out of hand."

Nevertheless, the coach also knew there had been times when his relentless, methodical approach to his work crossed the same line. The public saw the stoic general pacing the sideline, nattily dressed in office clothes and his trademark fedora. But sometimes, he admitted, his composure cracked after bitter losses and he wrestled with anger and depression. Landry learned to call this problem by its proper name.

"I know that's a sin," he said. "I learned that I could go home, get down on my knees and confess that to God. I mean, what is football next to God?"

Last week, the Hall-of-Fame coach lost a one-year battle with acute myelogenous leukemia. He was 75. Landry was the Cowboy's first coach and, in nearly three decades, turned his tacky expansion team into "America's team," winning two Super Bowls, five NFC crowns, 13 divisional titles and 270 games.

Along the way, the Texas native also became a legend in a state in which it is an understatement to say that football is often confused with religion.

Anyone who grew up in Texas in the 1970s knows why the Cowboys' stadium was built with that big hole in the roof.

Why's that, you ask? So that God would have an unobstructed view of his team.

Some fans called Landry "God's coach." Landry didn't like that. It's true that he was a leader in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. But he was not the kind of gridiron evangelist who claimed that God gave him the power, when he was an all-pro defensive back, to make game-saving plays. As a coach, he never hinted that God whispered game-winning plays in his ear.

There have always been players who, when facing reporters after the big game, stick in a plug for Jesus as the ultimate coach and teammate.

That was not Landry's style. While he never publicly criticized this brand of muscular Christianity, he went out of his way to promote another approach. Landry was, after all, a mainline Methodist and not given to emotional displays. The athlete with whom he was most closely identified was quarterback Roger Staubach – a devout Roman Catholic.

Landry delivered a more sobering message.

Truth is, the bottom line for most people is the bottom line, said Landry, speaking in a Leighton Ford crusade in Charlotte in the early 1980s. Many people think that they worship God, but they really bow down to money, success and ego. This is true for all kinds of highly driven professionals – not just athletes.

"We have to learn to look for higher things in life," he said. "Now, God does want us to use all our talents to the best of our abilities and, if you're a football player or a coach, that means you're supposed to do your best to win. I want to be a winner and I want to seek excellence. ... But I have had to learn to keep my priorities straight."

It was about the time that he took the Dallas job, said Landry, that he realized "football had been my religion." His faith and his family were getting the short end of the stick. After that, he prayed for God to deliver him from his obsession with football, not to deliver him victories on the field.

"It probably doesn't hurt for people to pray for their team to win, but that doesn't mean they'll win," said the coach, laughing. "Besides, there are much better things to pray about."

Because Ideas Have Consequences

The powers that be at Hillsdale College applauded when Chuck Colson delivered his lecture that was, with a nod to Fyodor Dostoevsky, entitled "Can man be good without God?"

But there was one problem. When the Christian apologist reviewed a version of his text prepared for Hillsdale's "Imprimis" newsletter, he saw that all of his references to Jesus were missing. When Colson protested to Lissa Roche, the college president's daughter-in-law and strong right hand, she said it was campus policy not to "use the Lord's name in any of their publications." President George Roche III finally allowed two references to Jesus.

In hindsight, it was a highly symbolic dispute.

This was long before Lissa Roche shot herself in the head and before George Roche IV said his wife had confessed to a 19-year affair with his father. Then President Roche resigned. Then officials on the Michigan campus began hinting that Lissa Roche had been unstable and delusional. Then, as the media storm raged, insiders began trying to draw a line between "Christian education" and merely "conservative education."

"What Roche was trying to do at Hillsdale ... was to create a strong pro-family, pro-traditional values institution – but keep it secular," said Colson, in a radio commentary. "Many politicians try to do the same thing, giving us the impression that we can create a good and just society on our own, without reference to a transcendent moral authority. ... It just doesn't work."

The map of American academia is dotted with "Christian colleges" that have evolved into liberal carbon copies of their secular counterparts. Hillsdale offers a rare academic cautionary tale about a secular brand of conservatism.

The key is that "Christian colleges" must not cut the ties that bind them to their churches, according to Father James Tunstead Burtchaell, former provost of the University of Notre Dame. In his book "The Dying of the Light," he shows how colleges keep following the same path on issues affecting finances, faculty, morality, doctrine and student recruiting.

In America, most religious schools began as tiny, struggling communities led by clergy and other church leaders who mixed ministry and academics. They had modest goals and emphasized teaching. While they stressed personal piety, they also – because they needed tuition dollars – tried not to be too exclusive. "Chapel services" were religious, but they were not true church services.

The schools that survived eventually attracted wealthy donors and broader community support. These schools could then afford better faculty, which, by definition, meant ranking prestigious degrees and scholarship above church ties and spiritual leadership, said Burtchaell, during a Washington, D.C., conference on trends in Catholic higher education.

Campus religious life would remain vital, for a few decades, but led by chaplains and campus ministers. Faculty members vanished during services. Later, this faculty indifference on religious issues would turn into cynical sniping and then open hostility.

This kind of college, said Burtchaell, has a head and a heart, but they are not connected. The bank accounts and secular accreditation reports are solid, but the spirit is weak.

As Christian colleges gained "sophistication and financial stability, they naturally suffered church fools less gladly," he said. Besides, defending divisive doctrines was bad for fundraising. Eventually, "worship and moral behavior were easily set aside because no one could imagine they had anything to do with learning," he said.

"You know the battle is lost," said Burtchaell, "when a school has no meaningful ties to a church, no real sense of accountability or communion, yet its leaders keep talking about its religious heritage or some vague sense of cultural values. ... That cannot last. The church is the ground of the faith, not the college."

Meanwhile, Hillsdale has reassured supporters that its work will go on, unchanged.

The first post-scandal issue of "Imprimis" – with its motto, "Because Ideas Have Consequences" – ended by saying: "Hillsdale is not a church-affiliated college. We do not represent any denomination, but we are an institution that has never forgotten its Judeo-Christian roots. ... We at Hillsdale College consider the sons and daughters who have been entrusted to us for a short while as most worthy of the highest things."

The Third World Anglicans act

For the worldwide Anglican Communion, July 29, 1974, was a day when old ties were broken and new bonds were formed.

That was when four Episcopal bishops broke tradition by ordaining – without permission from their hierarchy – the "Philadelphia 11" as the first female Anglican priests. Liberals said they had to violate one tradition, to obey a higher tradition of equality and justice. Traditionalists said this radical action would only create more schisms.

Now, Anglican historians have to underline Jan. 29, 2000.

This was when an international circle of archbishops and bishops broke church tradition by consecrating – without permission from their hierarchy – two American priests to serve as "missionary bishops" to help rescue the splintered Episcopal Church. Traditionalists said they had to violate one tradition, to obey a higher tradition of scripture and creeds. Liberals said this radical action would only create more schisms.

The two men raised to the episcopate were the Very Rev. John Rodgers, the retired dean of the conservative Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pa., and the Rev. Chuck Murphy III, rector of the historic, but booming, All Saints Church in Pawleys Island, S.C. They were consecrated in St. Andrews Cathedral in Singapore.

"Our calling is to minister to those congregations who believe that the authority of scripture and the historic creeds are central to our faith, conduct and unity as Anglicans," said Murphy. "We are committed to lead the church, not leave it."

Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold was appalled by the news, seeing as how it screams that many believe his church is a heresy-haunted domain in need of missionaries.

"I have been profoundly disturbed by the caricature that has been presented of the Episcopal Church," he said, writing to the other Anglican primates. "To be sure there are divergent views on the question of human sexuality which are supported by different readings and interpretations of the biblical texts, but in no way is the biblical record treated as other than the word of God. ... I know of no active bishops who are other than completely orthodox in their understanding of the creeds."

This depends on what "active" means, as well as "orthodox."

Griswold himself once told the Philadelphia Inquirer: "Broadly speaking, the Episcopal Church is in conflict with scripture. ... (One) would have to say that the mind of Christ operative in the church over time ... has led the church to in effect contradict the words of the Gospel."

America's best-known bishop is the Rt. Rev. John Shelby Spong of Newark, who has publicly stated that "Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead" and that it's "nonsensical" to say Jesus is God Incarnate. Spong recently retired, but neither the present nor the previous presiding bishops has ever publicly criticized Spong's theological views.

Meanwhile, a church court has ruled that Episcopalians have no "core doctrines" on marriage and sex. Episcopal clerics have led rites that included the worship of other gods.

Old ties are being broken and new bonds are being formed. Whatever happens, the Anglican Communion will never be the same.

The bishops who took part in the consecrations included Third World and America critics of the Episcopal establishment. The consecrators were Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini of Rwanda; Archbishop Moses Tay of South East Asia and Bishop John Ruchyahana of the Diocese of Shyira in Rwanda. They were assisted by retired South Carolina Bishop C. FitzSimons Allison, retired Memphis Bishop Alex Dickson and Bishop David Pytches, the former Bishop of Chile, Bolivia and Peru.

Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey called the consecrations "irresponsible" and a "grave disappointment." But the global wave of reactions also included this reflection by Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan, whose diocese is home to the Rt. Rev. John Rodgers. In one discussion of this crisis, Duncan recalled that Archbishop Kolini bluntly described why he could not ignore the pleas of Americans who were urging him to act.

"We Rwandans have been refugees all our lives. We will always respond to the plight of refugees," said Kolini. The archbishop also said: "At the genocide in 1994, the whole world stood back and no one came to Rwanda's aid. We will never stand back, while others are similarly threatened – physically or spiritually."