God and Hillary Clinton

In its current issue, Christianity Today has an interview with Paul Kengor, the author of God and Hillary Clinton: A Spiritual Life (read the article here). In it, Kengor says that, beginning in the mid-1960s, Clinton "began following a left-leaning Methodism, and now Hillary Clinton walks step by step with the Methodist leadership into a very liberal Christianity."

I am always curious whenever I read a comment like that. I know that traditional evangelicals consider the mainline United Methodist Church to be quite liberal. But on the other hand, other mainline denominations like the Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church (USA), and Lutheran Church (ELCA) see us as more conservative than themselves. I have personally studied and worshiped in settings with Methodists who are to the left of the left fringe of the mainline (think United Church of Christ or Christian Church/Disciples of Christ) and Methodists who are as conservative as any Southern Baptist in Texas. And while there is some truth to the generalization about theological and political leanings of Methodists depending on area of the country (think the conservative Southeastern and South Central Jurisdictions or the liberal Western, North Central, and Northeastern Jurisdictions), it is by no means true across the board.

All that is just a way of saying that I don't think statements like the one Kengor makes are very helpful. But Kengor's, like others of the type, are at least predictable. Because when you get on down a little bit in the interview, you see the two big issues he raises to back up the 'liberal' label: abortion and universal healthcare. Of the two, abortion is clearly the litmus test for self-described conservative evangelicals. Support legalized abortion and you're liberal; oppose it and you're one of us.

Let me say first that I am pro-life on the issues of both abortion and the death penalty, as I have explained on this blog in the past. I think we have a good statement on capital punishment in the Book of Discipline, while I think our statement on abortion is morally weak, self-contradictory, and practically useless. That said, any person or group that uses a single issue to define a label, and then uses that label as a litmus test for religious orthodoxy, is advocating for a fairly thin, one-dimensional Christianity. If you wanted to test the UMC's orthodoxy by its actual doctrinal statements, you could go to our Articles of Religion and Confession of Faith in the Book of Discipline and find that we are - at least in Protestant terms - orthodox all the way down.

But of course, religion in the popular discourse is not about theological orthodoxy. It's about social policy orthodoxy. And while one's views on social policy can be derived out of theological propositions, it is also often influenced by philosophical convictions regarding secular politics that has very little to do with one's view of God and God's work in the world. For instance, the other issue Kengor pins on Hillary - that of universal healthcare - would seem on the surface to be a very conservative tenet. After all, what Christian who believes in the sanctity of life would not want every American to have access to healthcare? Heck, I know I do! But for evangelicals influenced more by their political ideology than the Bible, this is not about God's valuation of life. It is about the size of government, its influence in our lives, and taxation. Thus, anyone who wants universal healthcare is a liberal.

Now I get real nervous about government influence and taxation myself. But I also want poor, sick kids to have access to a physician. And that comes directly out of my faith convictions. If we don't want nationalized medicine, fine. But we still need to talk about how every citizen of this country is going to be able to get affordable healthcare, 'cause right now our system is a mess. I don't consider my view on healthcare to be conventionally conservative or liberal. But I do view it as arising out of an orthodox understanding of God and God's valuation of human life.

Going back to the issue of abortion, I am curious as to how folks like Kengor would respond to the idea that outlawing abortion would necessitate a more expansive governmental role in healthcare and foster care. For instance, doesn't forcing mothers to carry babies to term - babies who would otherwise be aborted - morally obligate the government to provide a much greater degree of medical care, foster care, and adoption services than it currently does? I think it does, and I would be willing to support some type of legislation that would work toward outlawing abortion while providing the resources necessary to care for both the mothers and children who would be most directly affected by the change. But then, that is also the kind of move that Kengor and others view as liberal - an expanding of government services that interferes with individual choice, enlarges the federal bureaucracy, and requires greater taxation.

So all this is just a way of saying that it is dangerous to start throwing religious labels around that are dependent on a one or two issue litmus test - especially when those issues can be as much dependent on secular political views as they are on theological convictions. In fact, I think it is dangerous to throw the 'conservative' and 'liberal' labels around in general when it comes to the church. There's just too much of a tendency to view faith through the lens of secular politics to make the labels themselves very meaningful.

My questions for Kengor are these: What do you mean by Methodism as a "very liberal Christianity"? Who are the "Methodist leadership" to which you are referring? How does your view of the proper role of the federal government influence your view of an issue as either religiously liberal or religiously conservative? Is there a problem in assigning such labels to people based on their views of social policy, when social policy is so often tied to political interests that have little to do with theological doctrine?