There’s another television evangelist running for President. But this time his name’s not Pat Robertson. And he’s not a Republican. He’s Howard Dean, and he’s laying a sawdust trail all the way the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.
Democratic frontrunner Howard Dean might at first glance appear to be the most secular presidential candidate ever-even eclipsing the nominally Orthodox Michael Dukakis in his self-conscious non-religiosity. Dean, after all, told ABC News commentator George Stephanopoulos that his faith had “nothing” to do with his political life. Moreover, this is a man who changed denominational affiliations from Episcopalian to Congregationalist over a controversy with the local Episcopal Church’s opposition to his proposed municipal bicycle path. Now that’s conviction.
So why is one of the nation’s most liberal magazines hailing Dean as an evangelist?
“He is something the country has not seen in a very long time,” The American Prospect notes of the former Vermont governor. “He is, essentially, a northern evangelist.”
The magazine notes Dean’s rare church attendance, and the utter absence of any mention of God or Scripture in his campaign speeches. But, nonetheless, the Prospect connects the almost religious fervor of Dean’s supporters with Dean’s connection to “the anti-authoritarian religious principles” of New England radical Protestantism. The magazine sketches out the historical background of a decidedly leftist brand of religious fervor that was unique to the northeast of the past century. “Where the South bred agrarian populists and Baptist revivals, the North churned out Unitarian and Congregationalist ministers.” It is from this tradition, the magazine argues, from which Dean draws his vision for America’s future.
There’s an unusual honesty here. Liberalism has always had a theological motivation-from John Brown’s call for armed revolution to George McGovern and Walter Mondale rooting their political philosophies in the Social Gospel theologies of their Methodist minister fathers. Dean may appear to be religiously neutral, but he holds to a theologically consistent worldview that penetrates almost every aspect of his platform.
Even Dean’s secularism is theological. This can be seen, for instance, in his consistently liberationist understanding of human sexuality. The man who signed into law civil unions in the state of Vermont now assures us, chillingly, that he would not “force” evangelical and Roman Catholic congregations to perform same-sex civil unions. Dean, right along with his primary opponents, bows the knee to every plank of the abortion rights agenda. Do not think this is simply a public policy decision. Dean contrasts his social liberalism explicitly with the religious convictions of conservative evangelicals, whose names he recounts with contempt on the campaign trail, usually culminating in the name of Pentecostal layman John Ashcroft.
In this sense, Dean is exactly like the twenty-first century incarnations of New England Protestantism. The Unitarian Universalist Association, for instance, now sees controversy fly through the ranks when it is discovered that their president is (gasp!) a theist. The UUA includes everything from Zen Buddhists to priests of Wicca. And yet with all that diversity, you will be hard-pressed to find a pro-life voice, or an advocate for traditional marriage. They have a social agenda desperately in search of a theology. And they are willing to construct a theology that fits. So is Dean-and his campaign is accelerating in its enthusiasm with every week that goes by. Indeed, his supporters are something more than supporters. In many cases, they might even be called “converts.”
If The American Prospect is right, and I think they are, then evangelicals and other traditionalist Christians should think through exactly what kind of agenda would be set by a President Dean. Dean is not just campaigning. He is preaching. And he is offering the first stanza of an invitation hymn. The question
is whether Americans are willing to walk the aisle.
Source: Garance Franke-Ruta, “Shock
of the Old,” American Prospect, November 2003, 30-32.
