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TechnoratiFor Hauerwas, "being there as a Christian" in politics requires ranting against the evils of AMERIKA and its fear of the nasty truth about itself. “Do we want to know that we’re the richest people in the world, raping the rest of the world [so] that we can remain rich?” he asked. “Do we want to know that Iraqi war really is about cheap oil? Do you really want to know that?” He added: ““Do you really want to be told that, ‘Look, America is a racist country, and the terms keep getting changed to hide that from ourselves?’
Speaking of racism, postmodernist emergent church guru Brian McLaren just wrote for Jim Wallis' Sojourners website about Hauerwasianism, and quoted a critique by "Postmodern Negro" blogger Anthony Smith. "That voting is seen as a means of violence can only come from Christians who don't know what it is like to be without the gift," Smith blogged. "This is why the loudest voices for political disengagement on Gospel grounds tend to be of lighter hue. It is another form of advantage to eschew voting.”
In other words, the Hauerwasian disdain for pedestrian American democracy is just another hobbyhorse for privileged white academic elites. Even Rev McLaren, a fellow Obama supporter, chimed in his affirmation of Smith's critique of Hauerwas. "When I hear folks in the U.S. dissing voting as dirtying ourselves with the business of the empire, I keep wondering, 'How would somebody in Zimbabwe respond to that kind of talk?'" Naturally, McLaren had to sully his pro-democracy point with left-wing gibberish: "Or considering how few votes in Florida it would have taken for George Bush not to have been elected in 2000, I wonder how bereaved and maimed Iraqis – and Americans – would respond to Floridians who decided to make a religious statement by not voting?" On that, McLaren and Hauerwas are no doubt agreed.
Hauerwas is at least brutally consistent. If America is indeed the Evil Empire, then why should virtuous Christians sully their hands in the dirty work of imperial politics? Most of the Religious Left is not ready to accept that point, not wanting to risk their own political disempowerment. Or, from a more positive perspective, perhaps even they intuit that some aspects of the "empire" are indeed a "gift."
Mark D. Tooley directs the United Methodist committee at the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C.
