-Caveat Lector-
Sunday, January 28, 2001
<http://www.latimes.com/print/opinion/20010127/t000008151.html>
The Conscience of a Pentecostal
By MARTIN E. MARTY
CHICAGO--Some defenders of former Missouri Sen. John
Ashcroft, President George W. Bush's nominee to be attorney
general, say he is attacked because he is a person of religious
faith. That is not accurate. Most citizens are religious, and
most public officials profess a faith. What critics have
questioned is whether the specific content of Ashcroft's faith,
and his manner of expressing it, might compli- cate his work as
attorney general.
During his confirmation hearings, he told the Senate
Judiciary Committee that "as a man of faith, I take my word and
my integrity seriously." That stance, Ashcroft said, means that
he will enforce the laws "as they are written" and not enforce
his "personal preferences." Also, it "means advancing the
national interest, not advocating my personal interest."
The words "preferences" and "interest" are terribly weak. A
man of faith like Ashcroft is guided by convictions grounded in
profound belief, not preferences. His commitments go far beyond
"personal interest." By choosing softer words, Ashcroft hoped to
make himself more salable to skeptical senators and the American
public.
But Ashcroft's "preferences" are not what led Bush to
nominate him to be attorney general. The new administration
needed someone unassailably acceptable to the far-right
Republican constituency, notably conservative evangelical
Christians. That constituency does not regard Ashcroft's
positions on abortion, gun possession, homosexuality, and the
size and scope of the federal government as mere preferences.
They represent God's will and way.
Ashcroft's posture represents an extreme version of a
familiar American dilemma. For example, if, on religious grounds,
he thinks that abortion is murder, can he with integrity enforce
laws that permit such murder?
Public officials, including Cabinet members, have often
faced such a dilemma. In 1915, Woodrow Wilson's secretary of
state, William Jennings Bryan, then an avowed pacifist, followed
his conscience and resigned when he saw the president drawing the
nation into World War I.
Resigning is not the only way some officials face issues
where private faith and public duty clash. In 1984, former New
York Gov. Mario Cuomo delivered a classic speech at Notre Dame
that disturbed anti-abortion foes. He drew on a version of
Catholic teaching that made it possible for him to claim that a
Catholic could oppose abortion in private life but be called in
public to support laws that permit it.
C. Everett Koop, a physician with deep evangelical
convictions, had to remind the Christian right, whenever it
disapproved of his policies and administration, that he was
"called"--good Calvinist language--to be the nation's surgeon
general, not chaplain general.
Now comes Ashcroft, a firm and proud member of the
Assemblies of God, the largest Pentecostal denomination in the
world. Pentecostals are new to high government posts. According
to historian Edith L. Blumhofer and sociologist Margaret M.
Poloma, Pentecostals tend to be "apolitical." Yet, many have
recently been drawn into politics because of their opposition to
abortion.
The American public, according to polls, consistently favor
public servants who have "integrity" and promote morality. They
go on to say that, ordinarily, such morality is grounded in
religion. Ashcroft, in speeches to Christian conservative groups,
has suggested that the grounding must be in religion, an
affirmation appealing to fewer, but still not widely disfavored.
The public, however, is uneasy when personal faith is too
closely applied to specific legislation and policies. Ashcroft
may ground his views in his reading of the Bible, his grasp of
Pentecostal faith, his loyalty to his Assemblies of God roots.
But the public knows that other people of faith and integrity
have come to opposite views on the basis of the same Bible and
similar religious traditions.
How will Ashcroft reconcile his conviction that abortion is
"murder" with his duty to enforce laws that permit such "murder"?
Public officials as "persons of faith" approach such
conflicts in a variety of ways. Ashcroft's religious tradition is
"literalist" about the Bible, ready to refer to "absolutes" and
intent on using biblical teaching to fashion civil law.
Literalists and absolutists--and staunch Assemblies of God
members say they are both--cite biblical passages against
homosexual acts and find passages to support their "abortion is
murder" claim. Senators who pressed Ashcroft on his views did not
learn how, they only learned that he had worked all this out and
that his oath of office would dictate his responses.
Conscience has come into play in a different way for
Ashcroft the lawmaker. Lawmaking is easier on the conscience: One
fights for what is congruent with one's outlook, including faith.
One loses? Conscience is intact. Enforcing laws that are
incongruent with that outlook? That is another matter.
Another option is to take the Bryan road and not serve when
demands on conscience are too conflicting. Many citizens, often
Christians for whom Jesus is king and who take his "turn the
other cheek" admonitions literally and absolutely, have refused
military service and paid the price for their refusal. For people
like Ashcroft, refusing appointment would have been an expression
of integrity. Indeed, some of his co-religionists may feel he
gave away too much to appease his Democratic critics, and that he
cannot work his way back satisfyingly.
Also, public officials of faith and integrity are not always
literalists or absolutists. The Roman Catholic bishops' letters
on nuclear war and the economy, as well as Protestant councils
and thinkers, show another approach, what Reinhold Niebuhr, the
20th century's top theologian, called "Christian realism." They
need such resources when they deal with the "impossible
possibilities" that face those who would respond to Jesus'
radical words. Non-Christians, like Jewish Sen. Joseph I.
Lieberman, find parallel ways in their traditions to deal with
conflicts of conscience in public life. To enter politics is to
enter a world of compromise and conflicting interests and faiths.
Finally, other people of faith and integrity find occasions
when a "higher law" compels them to disobey civil law. Lutheran
theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer became a traitor when he plotted
against Adolf Hitler's life. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. appealed
to higher law when he violated civil law. But they were not
public officials sworn to enforce laws that they think permit
murder or gross sin.
Not all clashes are as profound as those convoked by
pro-life, pro-choice issues. Catholic judges have accepted church
teaching against divorce but granted divorces, following civil
law. But on the life-and-death issues, and to people of
Ashcroft's faith, "killing babies" through abortion or flaunting
divine law through permissiveness in respect to homosexuals are
profound transgressions.
As so often is the case, two integrities are at stake in the
soul of a public figure. How Ashcroft, if confirmed, will relate
the two will provide a drama that will be much on view in the
seasons ahead.
- - -
Martin E. Marty Is Emeritus Professor of Religious History at the
University of Chicago and Author of "Politics, Religion and the
Common Good."
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