I’m not sure how offended to be by Democratic frontrunner Howard Dean’s recent comments on his favorite “New Testament” book-the Epistle of Job to the Franco-Prussians (or something like that). After all, Dean broaches the question of religious faith with all the awkwardness of a dad asked by his four year old to explain what “sex” is. This is arguably better than the slick appropriation of religious themes seen, for instance, in Bill Clinton’s use of the “new covenant” to describe his policy platform in 1992. More than offensive, Dean’s move might be better categorized as just dumb.
First of all, why announce that one plans to include more references to Jesus as part of a “strategy” to reach the South? Yes, George Bush the First sought to reach out to southern voters in 1988 by talking about his love for pork rinds and country music. But he didn’t announce it ahead of time as a strategy. As several conservatives and evangelicals are pointing out, the great Jesus disaster of the Dean campaign only serves to demonstrate what is wrong with the candidate’s home to bridge the gap between Starbucks America and Wal-Mart America.
Jared Bridges, a young evangelical whose “True Pravda” web log is always an informative and entertaining read, notes correctly that Dean has actually hurt himself by his nebulous talk of the “different endings” of Job.
“What’s ironic that ‘religious talk’ of this kind (which is obviously a political move to win Southern voters) will actually end up further alienating any evangelical voters that he had hoped to woo,” Bridges writes. “Evangelicals do like to talk about things like the OLD Testament book of Job. Unlike Dean, however, we actually believe it.”
The awkwardness of Dr. Dean is seen in his self-admission that his “Jesus talk” is part of his project of “learning” about the South. Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler points out just how condescending this is to all southern voters-not just evangelical Christians.
“Next thing you know, Dr. Dean will be talking about Kudzu and chomping chewing tobacco at the NASCAR track,” Mohler notes. “Southerners are not likely to appreciate Dean’s patronizing approach to both their region and religion.”
But no one has been more derisive of Brother Dean’s political conversion than Democratic U.S. Senator
Zell Miller of Georgia. Senator Miller sees a theme in Dean’s religion talk, his personal biography which includes leaving the Episcopal Church over a dispute about a Burlington bicycle path, and Democratic candidates like John Kerry and Wesley Clark trying to appear tough for southern voters by using profanity. Miller says Dean and his rivals are confusing Democratic primary voters in selected states with the real southern vote-the vote that Democrats like George McGovern, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, and Al Gore never could reach.
“As this Park Avenue-born Vermont governor makes his maiden voyage South, with Southern strategist Al Gore beside him, I don’t think he has to worry about pickup trucks or ‘God, guns and glory,’ as he puts it,” Miller writes in a biting commentary for the Wall Street Journal. “Not in the primary, not this trip. But he should be forewarned. These folks are called ‘Value Voters.’ They go to church to seek salvation, not argue about bike paths. And they are just waiting to be heard from later. And they will be, loud and clear. And that’s when you might hear certain folks really start cussin’.”
Something tells me Senator Miller is on to something here. And, unless Dr. Dean stops seeing religion as an electoral strategy, something tells me this November he might find time to read part of the real ending of Job: “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know” (Job 42:3 ESV).
