A succinct analysis of the Vermont background of Dean's approach to religion and how it will likely play in the South.
God and Green Mountains
The taciturn spirituality of Howard Dean's home state.
BY GEOFFREY NORMAN
Wall Street Journal
Friday, January 9, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST
"He fought against self-righteousness of people who had everything. . . . He was a person who set an extraordinary example that has lasted 2,000 years, which is pretty inspiring when you think about it."
--Howard Dean on Jesus Christ
This is a fair example of the way people in New England talk--and think--about Jesus, and you will hear a variation on that theme from the pulpit of any Congregational church in Vermont this Sunday.
It is religion as a form of social work, with Jesus serving as an inspiration to activists. It certainly lacks the passion of Kierkegaard or Dostoevsky or Flannery O'Connor, who famously remarked that if the Eucharist were merely a symbol, "Then I say the hell with it."
To many, the Christianity of the "Congo" church is pretty watery stuff, giving the Sermon on the Mount its due but paying less attention to Christ's agony and death as the price of salvation. When I was teaching Sunday school a Congregational church a few years ago, in southwest Vermont, one of the Volvo Moms asked me if I really should be using Job for my text. She thought it was "too depressing" for the children. Oddly, Mr. Dean recently told reporters that Job was his favorite book in, yes, the New Testament.
No fallen sinner has the credentials to question the depth of another's faith, and Mr. Dean deserves to be taken at his word when he says that Jesus has been an "an important influence" in his life. People of faith are likely to see Mr. Dean as an improvement over Vermont's first angry man, Ethan Allen, an adamant atheist who made sure everyone knew it.
But one suspects that, these days, Mr. Dean's pronouncements on theology and belief have something to do with the temporal realm--for example, the politics of Dixie. When his campaign moves south, he told a Boston Globe reporter, he will be talking more and more about religion. He had said earlier that he wasn't going to concede the Bubba vote (those old boys with the Confederate flag decals on their pickup trucks). Now, evidently, he is going after the Bible-thumpers. You have to give him points for audacity.
When it comes to talking about Jesus while stumping for votes, Mr. Dean does not have much practice. These things were never discussed when he campaigned for governor of Vermont for the simple reason that talking publicly about these matters is considered . . . oh, vulgar. There is a church in every town--usually an austere white clapboard building with a simple, unadorned steeple--and this is where you go when you want to commit religion. You do it on Sunday morning. A tent revival seems unthinkable here.
To refer to a Jesus who "fought against self-righteousness" and "set an example" is to wander pretty far from the way church people in, say, South Carolina speak. To them, Jesus is not an inspiration. Football coaches and NASCAR drivers are an inspiration. Jesus is the Redeemer. He actually bled to atone for their sins. He brought them the salvation that no amount of good works with the homeless could ever earn.
In Vermont, you would hesitate even to invite a neighbor to join you at church on Sunday. This would be intruding in some particularly egregious way. Spreading the good word is a breach of decorum. In the South, if you believe, then you have a duty to share. One suspects that Mr. Dean will not be able to articulate his beliefs no matter how deeply he feels them.
There are some things in this world that do not travel. Northerners do not know how to fry chicken or preach. In his Burlington Congo church, Mr. Dean certainly will not have learned--or even heard--the sweet, sad gospel music, and the come-to-Jesus pleadings of a preacher on fire, that are central to thousands of little churches across the South on any Sunday morning.
That is one reason that, in the South, Mr. Dean may sound a bit phony when he talks about religion, even when he is being sincere. Southerners will tolerate a politician improvising about most things--and even expect it--but religion is . . . well, sacred. Mr. Dean might be better advised to keep his religious feelings and beliefs to himself. The way they do in Vermont.
Mr. Norman is a writer in Dorset, Vt. |
