Heavensgate

David Mason commits clarity on the relationship between the LDS and orthodox Christianity:

I want to be on record about this. I’m about as genuine a Mormon as you’ll find — a templegoer with a Utah pedigree and an administrative position in a congregation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I am also emphatically not a Christian.

For the curious, the dispute can be reduced to Jesus. Mormons assert that because they believe Jesus is divine, they are Christians by default. Christians respond that because Mormons don’t believe — in accordance with the Nicene Creed promulgated in the fourth century — that Jesus is also the Father and the Holy Spirit, the Jesus that Mormons have in mind is someone else altogether. The Mormon reaction is incredulity. The Christian retort is exasperation. Rinse and repeat.

Leaving aside Mason's sloppiness about the nature of the Holy Trinity (in my Trinity Sunday sermon, I doubt I did much better), his point is akin to the question of whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God. Look at the Quran, and you might say the answer is yes, since Allah is described as the God of Abraham and the great prophet Jesus. Ask an orthodox Christian, and she might say no, since the Islamic God isn't the father of a risen savior whose sacrifice of himself once offered is sufficient for all the world's salvation and liberation and who shares indissolubly in God's nature (they are consubstantial, as Benedict XVI now insists that Roman Catholics say in the Nicene Creed). Islam has long since proclaimed its own conception of the Godhead and its teachings, completely separate from Jewish or Christian worship and practice, and Mormons, in their bid to be the fourth Abrahamic faith, are heading in the same direction.

Insisting they were just another Christian denomination helped protect Mormons from suspicion and persecution. Let's hope that motive for theological obfuscation is now inoperative. Permission to speak freely? Christians have an issue with many, or most -- heck, all -- of the claims in the Book of Mormon. And yet the revelation to Joseph Smith, on whom all depends for the LDS, is no more unsettling for the modern mind than the revelation to Muhammad or Jesus's bodily resurrection and ascent into heaven where he sitteth on the right hand of God the father, judging the quick and the dead.

Saying my miracle is real and yours a fable or fraud pretty much sums up interfaith dialog unless we look beyond insuperable doctrinal debates and decide that all people of faith will be judged not by what they believe but how they behave. But that's a difficult step in itself for those who've been taught that their salvation is absolutely contingent on belief. I can do it either if my belief is leavened by profound humility and just a bit of common sense (why did God put all those people in western China without any Episcopal churches?) or if I actually don't take my orthodoxy seriously -- if I'm an OINO (you figure it out!). The interfaith dilemma amounts to the struggle for real community among serious believers who locate in their doctrines, and hear echoing in their hearts, God's eternal summons to the faithful to promote wholeness for all God's creatures, both individually (each created being's divine right to be healed and whole) and corporately.

Steeped in our founding, Enlightenment virtues, Americans are well-positioned to learn and practice religious tolerance in our civic life, though it hasn't always been easy. For centuries, there had been no more deadly quarrel than between Roman Catholics and Protestants. It persists in churches and seminaries, but Richard Nixon finally wrote it out of our politics in 1960.

The dynamics are more complicated this year. People have been called bigots for agreeing with David Mason that Mormons, including Mitt Romney, aren't really Christians. That's because Romney's supporters feared the charge would hurt him with evangelicals. Some of the same evangelicals think Barack Obama, who came up in the mainline UCC, isn't a Christian, either. St. Santorum added a whiff of that ugliness to the GOP primaries. His ilk would probably erase my little denomination from the book of life as well. Remember, the Reformation ain't over till it's over. Do a Google on "antichrist," and see how many pictures of Obama and Benedict you get. For some conservative people of faith, and not as few as you may think, this is the first election in U.S. history in which neither man who wants to spend the next four years in the White House has a snowball's chance of spending eternity in heaven.

Hat tip to Paul Matulic

Why Newt Gingrich Should Stay In The Race

His latest atrocity:

While campaigning ahead of Saturday's primary in Louisiana, Gingrich spoke with the American Family Association's Sandy Rios about the recent Washington Post story on Rick Santorum's association with Opus Dei, a devout Catholic group. Rios, who disapproved of the Post's story, asked Gingrich if he thought the media would similarly "hold their powder" on Mitt Romney for his Mormonism.

Gingrich said the media, which he believes is "in the tank for Obama," will "do anything that helps re-elect" the president.

"It is just astonishing to me how pro-Obama they are," Gingrich told Rios. "Do you think you are going to see two pages on Obama's Muslim friends?..."

Be sure to understand exactly what he said. The media had made an issue of the conservative Roman Catholic associates of Rick Santorum, a Roman Catholic. Gingrich's interlocutor asks if he thinks the media will do the same with the Mormon associates of Mitt Romney, a Mormon. In response, Gingrich predicts the media won't investigate the Muslim associates of Barack Obama, who is washed in the One Baptism as is Gingrich himself and is a member of the United Church of Christ but who many GOP voters in Louisiana still believe is Muslim. If you don't think Gingrich is purposely exploiting their confusion, here he is again today, resorting to the slimy ploy of taking Obama "at his word" that he's a Christian.

Yet I'm delighted he's still running. His sneering attacks on the frontrunner, combined with each new demonstration of his toxicity and near-irrelevance, reduce the likelihood that Romney, if elected, would feel any obligation to put him in the government.

Silliest Political Statement Since 1776

St. Santorum gets the win tonight:

And I’ve gone around this country over the past year now and said this is the most important election in our lifetimes. And, in fact, I think it’s the most important election since the election of 1860.

Plus He Can Sit In The Front Of The Plane

Newt Gingrich got 7.9% in Illinois, even less than Ron Paul. He's now lost 31 out of 33 states. His campaign is broke. He'll probably cost Rick Santorum votes in Louisiana, which could be St. Santorum's last stand against Mitt Romney. But Gingrich probably doesn't care, Michelle Cottle writes, now that taxpayers are handling his arrangements:

He clearly gave up running to win several states ago and only stays in the race because he’s drunk on a cocktail of spite, narcissism, and general mischief. Indeed, so long as a smattering of other spendthrift supporters keep the dough flowing, why should Newt’s subsidized road trip ever end? Especially now, when the former speaker has his very own Secret Service detail, thus confirming the big-cheese status he has so long possessed in his own mind.

Third-Place Mitt

Andrew Sullivan on Mitt Romney's three third-place finishes tonight:

[T]he odds of a brokered convention rise slightly; Romney remains unable to get any serious momentum; and Santorum keeps winning the vote of those earning under $50k. The evangelical vote against Romney remains solid, unchanging, resilient. The dynamic of the race has not altered; it has complicated marginally in Santorum's direction.

Ticket To Deride

Mitt and Rick?

Political Theater Of The Absurd

Neither Bishop Romney nor St. Santorum has the guts to speak truth to Rush.

Don't Scoot, Newt

Help Mitt lick Rick.

St. Santorum For President

Andrew Sullivan has an epiphany: The Republican Party should take its most logical and natural candidate, Rick Santorum, to its bosom and suffer and perhaps learn from the likely electoral consequences.

This goes against Sullivan's view that parties should always nominate their most responsible candidates, since we live in an unpredictable world where either could be elected despite what the polls say in February or October. A Santorum loss in November might lead to a GOP reformation. His winning would risk a reckless war with Iran that could kill a quarter-million people.

But back to Sullivan's epiphany:

[F]or the past decade, the Republican elites and base have... insisted on a politics that is mediated by theology.

They are the ones who have insisted that religious argument has an integral role in public discourse; that there is a "war on Christmas" and now all religion; they are the ones who have campaigned against gay marriage as un-Biblical or in violation of a "natural law" barely updated from the 13th century; they are the ones raging against a two-state solution in Israel-Palestine because God bequeathed it all to the Jewish people; they are those who directed the federal government to involve itself in an end-of-life decision already resolved by state law; they are those who have made criminalization of abortion a litmus test for Republican candidates for a generation, and who want to give women an invasive ultrasound before allowing them to exercise what has now been a constitutional right for decades.

And when an intelligent, sincere candidate emerges who has actually walked the walk on these issues, and refused to back down on them, and overcomes a massive financial and organizational disadvantage to become the national leader in the polls, he's suddenly far too extreme.

Is Santorum unelectable in a general election? Yep. The current polling says Rick loses to Obama by 6.3 percent. But Mitt loses to him by 5.1 percent. How big an argument do you want over 1.2 percent?

I despise what the GOP has become. But it is what it is. And Santorum is its logical leader. Let this party stand up and be counted.

St. Santorum Finds A Mainstream Champion

The Economist takes an objective view of Rick Santorum, describing him as the kind of Roman Catholic with working class, Midwestern appeal whom Pat Buchanan used to pine for when writing memos in the Nixon White House about how to build a new Republican majority:

This column has argued before that when the media look only at Mr Santorum’s thoughts on family morality they end up with a caricature. He is in fact a more rounded candidate, with some impressive skills. These include not only the perseverance that kept him tramping through the slough of despond when others might have given up, but also a nimble and well-stocked mind, an approachable manner on the stump and—the big prize that eludes Mr Romney—a palpable sincerity. In Michigan and Ohio, he may also prove that he has another advantage over Mr Romney: an appeal to blue-collar workers that is hard for a member of the 1% to match. Mr Santorum takes care to give the coalmining travails of his immigrant grandfather a big place in his narrative.

Only If They Use Coke And Aspirin

They Focus-Grouped That. Looks Too Weird.

Roman Catholic Andrew Sullivan on the Ash Wednesday GOP debate:

Neither of the Catholics has ash on their forehead.

Remind me to tell you about the time I imposed ashes on Sean Hannity.

Testify, St. Santorum

They're singin' the devil's music in the White House!

The Martyrdom Of St. Santorum

Ross Douthat weighs Rick Santorum's pros and cons as GOP nominee and concludes:

In the (still-unlikely) event that Santorum captured the nomination, then, his campaign would probably be to social conservatism what Barry Goldwater’s 1964 campaign was to small-government conservatism: A losing effort that would inspire countless observers to declare the loser’s worldview discredited, rejected, finished.

In the longer run, a Santorum candidacy might suggest a path that a more electable pro-life populist could follow, much as Reagan ultimately followed Goldwater.

But in the short run, it would almost certainly be a debacle – a sweeping defeat for the candidate himself, and a sweeping setback for the causes that he champions.

Casting Stones

Announcing that he's leaving the Republican Party to register as a Libertarian, veteran operative Roger Stone surveys the GOP field:

That the Republican Party can only produce Mitt Romney who was an independent during the Reagan-Bush years (and only converted to conservatism after serving one term as governor never intending to run for re-election while always planning to run for president), Newt Gingrich, a thrice married ego-maniac with delusions of grandeur and Rick Santorum, a religious fanatic, who would tell other people how to live, as presidential candidates proves the GOP may be going the way as the Whigs.

The Inquisition Of St. Santorum

According to the former one-term senator from Pennsylvania, Barack Obama isn't a real Christian nor, evidently, am I. Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. Name that verse, goofball.

The New Paternalism

Andrew Sullivan sticks up for Nixon speechwriter, presidential candidate, and pundit Pat Buchanan, fired this week by MSNBC:

Sixteen years ago, when I came out as HIV-positive and quit [The New Republic's] editorship, Buchanan, who had sparred relentlessly in public with me over gay equality, wrote me a personal hand-written note. He wrote he was saddened by what he heard - which was then regarded as an imminent death sentence - and wanted to say how he would pray that I would survive, if only so we could continue to argue and fight and debate for many more years. He was one of only two Washingtonians who did such a thing. I was moved beyond words. But he knew I loved a good argument as well. Over a gulf of ideological and philosophical difference, we could debate reasonably.

He's a complicated man and I will not defend for a second his views on many things. But he is also a compassionate and decent man in private and an honest intellectual in public. It says everything about the polarization of our discourse and the evolution of cable news into rival sources of propaganda that this ornery figure, still churning out ideas and books while others his age are well in retirement, is now banished.

For shame. Another step backward from real debate on cable "news".

Buchanan is indeed gracious in person, as I can attest from his and Shelley's periodic visits to the Nixon library when I was director. I haven't read the book that angered MSNBC, but I'm well aware of the broad outlines of his sometimes bizarre thinking -- diversity is hurting the United States, the U.S. shouldn't have have entered World War II, it would be better if we could return to the social and cultural conditions he remembers from his 1950s boyhood in Washington, D.C. He's also accused of antisemitism and excessively harsh criticism of Israel's allies in the U.S., although on this question his often-derided views about Jewish influence on our media and politics don't differ dramatically from those of Palestinians' advocates in progressive circles.

It's also important to remember his opposition to the Iraq war, a classic if lonely expression of conservative isolationism. Although in her memoirs Condi Rice makes a respectable case for the Bush administration's process in the run-up to war in 2003, I'm still not sure Buchanan was wrong.

I don't defend his more noxious views, which Howard Kurtz wrote had become too "radioactive" for a cable network that Kurtz says has moved sharply left, as it evidently grasps for Fox News' intellectual near-irrelevancy. It's funny Kurtz used that word. In the early 1980s I was part of a Nixon team reading through White House files to flag documents we felt should be kept secret on privacy and other grounds. The same adjective occurred to us as we read some of Buchanan's pugnacious prose on the antiwar movement and class politics, foundational expressions of what later became known as the culture wars. As I recall, I wrote a letter that Nixon signed and sent to Buchanan saying jokingly that he needn't worry, because we'd buried his memos in lead-lined drums under the National Archives. Of course Nixon also got memos from Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Ray Price, and other more moderate advisers and aides. He usually wanted to hear all perspectives on difficult questions before he made up his mind. On other occasions, such as when Buchanan was writing for Vice President Spiro Agnew, Nixon let Pat's right-wing freak flag fly. Here Buchanan seems to be quoting Agnew reading a script by Buchanan.

I also concur with Sullivan that one needn't agree with Buchanan to oppose his firing. Chris Matthews, who expressed regret about his bosses' move, isn't an apologist for racism, antisemitism, or homophobia. He's an advocate for vigorous debate as a hallmark of a healthy democracy. The man who fired Buchanan, Phil Griffin, exhibits more authoritarian impulses, believing that his views "should [not] be part of the national dialog." That reminds me of another example of the annoying new paternalism among our cultural and political elites: Rick Santorum saying that contraception is "not okay" and that as president he'd try to limit its availability. What happened to media tycoons and politicians who gave us credit for thinking for ourselves?

Not Okay

Responding to questions tonight from Fox News' Greta Van Susteren about his position on contraception, Rick Santorum blamed the media for the controversy and said he had voted in the Senate to provided contraceptive funding even to Planned Parenthood. And yet he made clear in an interview last October (perhaps Van Susteren didn't know about it) that as president he would reverse the effects of those earlier votes and get rid of government funding for contraception. He spoke about the "dangers of contraception in this country" and said it was "not okay."

As The GOP's Poison Pill Goes Down

Rep. Darrell Issa, defending his move against women's reproductive rights, compares the members of his all-male panel to Martin Luther King, Jr....Romney shows guts and stands up for women (the candidate's late mother, that is)...Dick Morris claimed on Monday that ABC's George Stephanopoulos, his fellow former Clintonite, was paid to float the contraception issue at a recent GOP debate. "They want to create the impression that the Republicans will ban contraception, which is totally insane," he said. This was right before we learned that Rick Santorum, possibly the GOP frontrunner, wants to ban contraception.

Under Santorum, Sell Pepsico. Buy Coke.

I may have exaggerated when I wrote that as president Rick Santorum would take the condition of women's equity back to 1920, when U.S. gender apartheid ended. From the mouth of his most generous supporter, Foster Friess, the correct date is 1950. The Episconixonian regrets the hyperbole.