Here is Dr. Barbara Kellerman, quoted over the weekend on Newsweek's website, holding forth on the anticipated effects of Governor Palin's daughter's pregnancy on her “religious conservative” (read: evangelical) base.
"A pregnant 17-year-old daughter definitely pushes the bounds of how a candidate's life as a parent becomes public," says Barbara Kellerman, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, who studies in women and politics. "I don't think it'll play very kindly with the constituency that would seem most obvious for her to appeal to, the relatively religious, conservative voters."
Only someone whose knowledge of evangelicals comes solely via leftist politicos and revisionist clerics could harbor such caricatured expectations.
Dr. Kellerman is not alone. Sally Quinn and a host of other secular pundits came to the same befuddled conclusion; Palin's daughter's pregnancy damages her standing among conservative evangelicals.
When Focus on the Family's Dr. James Dobson expressed his continuing support for Governor Palin in a statement released Monday, there was confusion mixed with anger on the left. “Hypocrisy!” was the cry. How can evangelicals overlook the fact that Palin's daughter has done what evangelicals tell other people not to do? Had it been Chelsae Clinton, they speculated, then the response would have been quick and judgmental. Dobson and other evangelicals, they said, demonstrate, once again, that political expediency trumps moral consistency.
Perhaps.
I am sure there are evangelical leaders who are more concerned with political advantage than with the nation's moral fibre just as there are liberal clerics who are more zealous for social revolution than social justice.
But understanding the general conservative evangelical non-response to Bristol Palin's pregnancy is really not that difficult and I say this as an evangelical who will not be voting for McCain-Palin.
Leftist pundits need only to think of their own experience with children.
No need to be cynical. Surely some leftist pundits have children and I have no doubt that those who do are good parents. They almost certainly teach their children not to lie. When they lie anyway, as children do, leftist pundit parents no doubt attempt some sort of corrective measure (not spanking of course) to reinforce the rule against lying.
And then they forgive. If there are consequences associated with the lie (say the child has lied to a teacher or some external authority) and if the leftist pundits are good parents, they permit the child to bear whatever consequences that result while offering, at the same time, love and support.
Does the act of forgiveness negate the offense? No. Does forgiveness imply that the rule against lying has changed? Of course not. Are our leftist pundit parents “hypocritical” for both expecting honesty and forgiving deceit? Absurd.
A moral good, in so far as it is a true one, is not contingent upon the action or inaction of those who seek to follow it. Honesty is “good” despite human dishonesty and it is not hypocritical to uphold honesty while forgiving those who are dishonest.
Let's think about this question of “hypocrisy” more deeply since this is the charge most frequently leveled by leftists not just at evangelicals but Christians in general.
Undeniably, those of us who are parents have lied in the past and sometimes lie in the present. Does our failure to uphold the “good” of honesty disqualify us from disciplining our children's dishonesty? Are we hypocrites for requiring our children to keep a rule we break?
No. Honesty, again, is good and right and true despite our own periodic dishonesty. Honesty is not “good” because we do it and its goodness is not negated if we fail. We do not say to our children, hopefully, “Be honest because I, your parent, am honest” (although, hopefully, we model what we require). We say “Be honest because honesty is good.”
As parents we are responsible for training our children to do “good” for their own benefit and the well-being of human civilization. If the definition of right and wrong hinged on “what we ourselves have done”, then little would remain to hinder our society’s descent into barbarism.
Parents uphold the “good” and enforce it in their homes because it is good
I have been reasoning on a fairly common level. Most parents, be they leftists, right-wingers, Christians, Buddhists, or atheists would agree with what I have written but, of course, for different reasons…and, no doubt, some of those reasons would be philosophically inconsistent. The atheist parents I know, for example, who embrace moral relativism in theory tend toward moral absolutism with regard to their children, inculcating overarching values like “honesty” despite their philosophical commitments.
Most everyone, irrespective of their religion or philosophy, maintains that certain character traits are “good”, honesty being one example, even though most arrive at that conclusion in different ways and support it with varied and often conflicting philosophies and/or faith commitments.
Christians believe that the standard for what is “good” is primarily a revealed one. It lies beyond us and above us, resting in and originating from the nature and character of God, made known to us in the bible.
And here, perhaps, is where our leftist pundit friends might begin to grasp how it is possible for evangelicals to support Governor Palin and her daughter despite her daughter’s moral failure. The Church is charged with proclaiming, maintaining, and obeying the “good” as God reveals it much like the parent must uphold “goods” like honesty. The Church is the parent, the “mother”, of those who come to faith in Jesus Christ and, beyond that, as Jesus says, the Church is supposed to be something of a “light” to the world pointing those who live in darkness toward the truth that Jesus came to announce and enact.
The truth is that God’s law is pure and good and perfect and that we, human beings, are not. We fail, we sin, we fall. And yet, despite our inability to do what God commands we cannot and do not pretend that he has not commanded it. The law is good despite our own inability to follow it.
Which leads to another truth, the foundational truth of the Christian faith: Jesus Christ came to save sinners. He lived a pure, good, and holy life in our stead and when he died on the cross, he bore in our place the eternal consequences of human sin in his body and in his soul. Three days later he rose bodily from the grave and for forty days taught and lived on earth before ascending into heaven where he now resides until he comes again.
Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension opened the door to forgiveness, mercy, and reconciliation with God. The scriptures promise that whoever repents, turns from sin, and surrenders his or her life to Jesus Christ will be forgiven, cleansed, and granted an eternal life with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
So Christians uphold and proclaim a standard that we believe rests in God’s own character. We cannot change it to make it conform to the culture of our day nor may we shape it to suit own desires. It cannot be compromised or hidden or watered down.
And yet we acknowledge that no one can follow it to perfection.
So forgiveness is an absolute necessity both for ourselves before God and as a habitual offering to others.
The Church can, then, on the one hand uphold the revealed truth that sexual intercourse outside of marriage is a sin and, on the other, offer compassion, support, and forgiveness through Jesus Christ to those, like Governor Palin’s daughter, who fail. Note, again, how consistent this is with the actions of a parent described above.
The evangelical response to Governor Palin’s daughter was not only unsurprising but entirely predictable to anyone who knows anything about what evangelicals believe.
It was also entirely predictable to anyone who knows anything about the secular press, that the most rigid and unforgiving response to this week’s revelation has not come from evangelical Christians but leftist pundits.
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Comments:
Some of the attacks on Palin test efforts to stay within the confines of polite language. A Democrat congressman (Wexler of Florida) has even tried to link her to Nazis!
Can you imagine the attacks Olbermann and the rest of the liberal news media would dish out if a Republican congressman made such outrageous statements?