During the last presidential debate, moderator Bob Schieffer asked President Bush about the role that faith plays in his decision-making process as president.  In the exchange, both candidates were prepared and gave crisp answers.  They are both serious believers—Kerry is a Catholic and Bush is a Protestant.  Without question, President Bush seemed more at ease discussing his faith, because it has had such a profound effect on his life.  So, let’s think about this in this perspective.  I want to also weave in some thoughts about several ethical issues that inform the campaign as well.

• First a few comments about each man’s faith.  For President Bush, his faith in Jesus Christ is significant.  You might remember that in a 2000 primary debate, he famously declared that Jesus Christ is his favorite political thinker because he “changed my heart.”  In last Wednesday’s debate, he declared, “I love the fact that people pray for me and my family all around the country.  Somebody asked me one time, how do you know?  I said, I just feel it.”  Bush was not always a man of faith.  His first 40 years were hardly successful:  he drank too much and failed in business.  His transformation into a successful politician dates from his conversion, largely resulting from an impassioned series of conversations with Billy Graham in his parents’ compound at Kennebunkport, Maine.  He experienced God’s saving grace.  He now starts every cabinet meeting with prayer.  He has woven religious themes into his presidency.  He is surrounded by people such as Condoleezza Rice and Andrew Card who are also religious devotees.  He has correctly interpreted 9/11/01 as an “evil.”  When responding to Schieffer’s question about his faith, Bush responded, “Prayer and religion sustain me.  I receive calmness in the storms of the presidency.”  Declining to answer whether “God directly ordered him to invade Iraq,” Bush instead affirmed that “he prays a lot.”  There is no question that Bush has turned to his faith in his darkest moments and discovered a wellspring of power and confidence.  John Kerry is a Roman Catholic who attends Mass on most Sundays but has largely avoided discussions on faith throughout the campaign.  There is no question that he is far more uncomfortable in talking about his faith than is President Bush.  Too, secular liberals, who make up a major part of the Democratic Party often recoil at the blending of religion and politics.  Kerry does however wear a small crucifix around his neck and carries a rosary and Bible as he travels.  Kerry has made so little of his faith that a survey in July by the Pew Research Center found that only 43% of Catholics even knew he was Catholic.  Further, Kerry’s stand on key issues such as abortion and stem cell research earned him the wrath of the conservative Catholic prelates who said he should be denied Communion.  Despite frequent invocations on the term “values,” Kerry has not connected his agenda to a deeper moral conviction.  He often states that his faith got him through Viet Nam and this “his faith is strong and sure.”  Perhaps the best contrast between Bush and Kerry in terms of their faith and their policies is stem cell research.  President Bush in 2001 framed the issue of stem cell research as an ethical issue.  He summoned members of the clergy and ethicists, as well as scientists, to counsel him.  He prayed over it.  He concluded that imposing strict limits on medical research using stem cells derived from human embryos was the correct path.  He did so because he concluded that human life “is a sacred gift from our creator.”  In contrast, John Kerry framed stem cell research as a matter of clinical science, and surrounded himself with university researchers and doctors in white laboratory coats and disease sufferers.  He portrayed himself as the champion of human reason and scientific progress versus what he claimed is Bush’s stubborn devotion to an “extreme right-wing ideology.”  In early October at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire where he discussed stem cell research, he never uttered the words of faith, ethics or morality, religion, conscience, or God.  Instead, he conjured up images of Galileo and other scientists who drew the wrath of established religion.  There is no greater contrast between these two men on matters of faith than stem cell research. 

See Jodi Wilgorne and Bill Keller, “Kerry and Religion,” New York Times (7 October 2004), The Economist (9 October 2004), p. 8, and Fred Barnes, Wall Street Journal (15 October 2004).

• Second, matters of faith and ethics in the campaign came up over the issue of same sex marriage.  During both the vice presidential debate and the last presidential debate, both John Edwards and John Kerry brought up the fact that VP Dick Cheney’s daughter is gay.  Both of their comments were not only unjustified, but that Mary Cheney came up twice suggests that it was part of a deliberate political strategy.  That impression was reinforced by Kerry campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill, who told Fox News in a post-debate interview that Mary Cheney was “fair game.”  VP and Mrs. Cheney have not kept their daughter’s lesbianism a secret but neither have they shouted it from the rooftops.  For example, before the GOP convention the VP mentioning it briefly at a campaign rally in Davenport, Iowa.  By “outing” Mary Cheney before millions of viewers on prime-time TV, Kerry and Edwards probably hope to score with their base of gay activists.  Human Rights Campaign, for example, the nation’s largest gay and lesbian political organization, was quick to praise Kerry’s words after last Wednesday evening.  Perhaps another motive for this “outing” is that Kerry and Edwards want to remind voters that the VP has a gay daughter and thereby undercut the Bush conservative base.  To add to this political insult, John Edwards’s wife, Elizabeth, suggested earlier that Lynne Cheney might be ashamed of her daughter:  “She’s overreacted to this and treated it as if it’s shameful to have this discussion.  I think that it indicates a certain amount of shame with respect to her daughter’s sexual preferences.”  It is difficult to believe in a hotly contested election, that both Kerry and Edwards did not state what they stated without thinking through the political implications of their statements.  It was highly political and for this they should be ashamed of themselves.  Had the discussion been on obesity and the cause of it, what if President Bush had used Mrs. Edwards, who struggles with obesity, as an example of this struggle.  Few in the media or in the electorate would have viewed this as innocent.  Kerry and Edwards were not being innocent; for both it was a deliberate political calculation. 

• Third, there are other ethical issues where faith is a part of the discussion.  (1)  In that same exchange on same sex marriage, Bob Schieffer asked President Bush whether he believes homosexuality is a choice.  His response was “I don’t know.  I just don’t know.”  Kerry defended in strong terms that it is not a choice but is innate—gays are born that way.  However, the evidence is not that clear.  Quality, reliable research is very sparse on this subject.  Most scientists agree that sexual orientation is most likely the result of an interaction of environmental, cognitive and biological factors.  Psychologist J. Michael Bailey of Northwestern University in Illinois, argues, “The evidence is not entirely persuasive for either side.”  It is intellectually dishonest for John Kerry to state so categorically that being gay is genetic, or innate.  The evidence does not support that.  President Bush was far more honest and far more scientific in saying “I don’t know.”  (2)  On the issue of abortion, the exchange in the second presidential debate was telling.  Near the end of the second debate, a young woman asked John Kerry about abortion and what he would say to a woman who wants to have an abortion.  Kerry offered a labyrinth answer.  He was against abortion (as a Catholic) before he was for it (as a public servant).  He tried to show respect for her question and her concern for the horror of abortion and the political realities of Roe v. Wade.  President Bush responded, “Trying to decipher that, we’re not going to spend federal taxpayers’ money on abortion.”  He added that he was against partial-birth abortions and for parental notification.  No issue more clearly reflects the difference between Kerry and Bush on so many issues, especially ethical ones:  Kerry is muddy, while Bush is simple and clear. 

See Joe Klein, Time (18 October 2004), p. 25, Tom Vanden Brook, USA Today (15 October 2004), Wall Street Journal editorial (15 October 2004).

• Finally, a comment about Christopher Reeve and John Edwards.  Last week, Christopher Reeve died.  His life as a quadriplegic was both a tragedy and a triumph.  His condition resulted from a tragic horse riding accident, which paralyzed him.  But he championed courage, perseverance and forcefulness in the midst of tragedy.  He also championed the cause of stem cell research as a potential cure for his quadriplegic condition.  (Parenthetically, the contrast with Joni Eareckson-Tada is telling on this question.)  What is offensive is John Edwards’s comment on Christopher Reeve at a rally in Newton, Iowa:  “If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again.”  This is pure demagoguery!  There is no medical evidence for Edwards’s statement and his blatant politicking is creating a false hope.  To argue as Edwards did that Christopher Reeve was prevented from getting out of his wheelchair by the Bush stem cell policies is a travesty and a blatant lie.  President Bush is the first president to approve federal funding for stem cell research.  But both Edwards and Kerry talk of a Bush “ban” on stem cell research.  This is false, for there is no ban.  Kerry has remarked that the stem cell ban is standing in the way of an Alzheimer’s cure.  This too is an outright lie.  Ronald D. G. McKay, a stem cell researcher at the National Institutes for Health, has admitted publicly that stem cells as an Alzheimer’s cure are a fiction.  Kerry and Edwards are shamelessly exploiting an issue for pure political gain.  It is absolutely unethical and wrong to argue that stem cells research would bring a cure quickly for Alzheimer’s or for quadriplegic conditions like those of Christopher Reeve.  As Charles Krauthammer has argued, “to exploit the desperate hopes of desperate people with the promise of Christ-like cures is beyond the pale.” 

See his editorial in the Washington Post (15 October 2004).

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JACQUES DERRIDA: R.I.P.

One of the greatest theorists of Postmodernism died recently—Jacques Derrida.  As a proponent of Deconstructionism, Derrida argued that no piece of writing is exactly what it seems, but is rather laden with ambiguities and contradictions.  Words are power, he argued, and the reader is really sovereign in the process of interpretation.  Authorial intent, what the author meant by his choice of words, is actually almost irrelevant.  Only what the reader gets out of the exchange matters.  His emphasis on Deconstructionism produced an entire litany of writings that reduced the literary canon to a listing of political and social wrongs, “a cesspool of racism, poverty, sexism, homophobia, and imperialism.”  For Derrida, language is not a transparent medium for representing reality but rather a cultural system that shapes our values and beliefs.  That insight is with us today and has powerfully shaped the way Postmodernists have focused on language and words.  It has also shaped the way critics look at sacred texts, especially the Bible.  The intent of the author is not that important.  What is far more important is the impact the words make on the reader.  To believe that is to reduce the importance of the Bible as God’s word. 

Derrida shaped the Postmodern worldview.  Its hermeneutic is one that is highly relativistic and pluralistic.  Words can mean anything you want them to mean.  There is no absolute standard and there is no agreed upon definition.  Words are power, not means of communicating truth, for there is no absolute truth.  Deconstructionism is no longer popular in much of the academic world.  But its pervasive influence in the common culture is everywhere.  Most people have never heard of Jacques Derrida, but they can see his influence everywhere.  The truth is that Derrida now knows that his whole construct called Deconstructionism was wrong.  How sad—we wasted his entire life on an error of immense proportion.

See Emily Eakin’s essay in the New York Times (17 October 2004).

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