Religious warriors should read
Before the religious wars of Washington become any more incendiary, I recommend that everyone involved — politicians, pundits and activists — pause to read last year’s beautiful Pulitzer Prize novel, “Gilead” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) a tale of forgiveness and redemption.
In fact, I’d love to see someone widely respected — maybe the Rev. Billy Graham or Washington Redskins Coach Joe Gibbs — convene a conference of religious combatants and assign Marilynne Robinson’s theologically rich book as the topic for discussion.
The participants could include, from the right, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins and Focus on the Family’s James Dobson. And, from the left, former Vice President Al Gore, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., representatives of the National Council of Churches and New York Times columnists Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd.
All these worthies have been battling back and forth about what true religious faith involves, especially in the political realm. Some on the right have been threatening the federal judiciary. Some on the left have been accusing those on the right of being “fanatics” or “zealots” who want to impose a “theocracy.”
There is a treasure of wisdom, obvious and subtle, in “Gilead,” but the starting point for discussion would be these paragraphs, part of the epistle that a dying 76-year-old Iowa clergyman has written to his young son:
“This is an important thing, which I have told many people, and which my father told me, and which his father told him. When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question were being put to you. So you must think, what is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation?
“If you confront insult or antagonism, your first impulse will be to respond in kind. But if you think, as it were, this is an emissary from the Lord, and some benefit is intended for me, first of all the occasion to demonstrate my faithfulness, the chance to show that I do in some small degree participate in the grace that saved me, you are free to act otherwise than as circumstances would seem to dictate.
“You are free to act by your own lights. You are freed at the same time of the impulse to hate or resent that person. He would probably laugh at the thought that the Lord sent him to you for your benefit (and his), but that is the perfection of the disguise, his own ignorance of it.”
In “Gilead,” the clergyman, John Ames, is challenged to accept and forgive his wayward godson, John Boughton, whom he has written off (aware though he is that he should not be judgmental) as “dishonorable” because he is “recalcitrant” and has not repented.
The main theme of this book — and a discussion that Washington disputants should have — revolves around the parable of the Prodigal Son. Jesus says that God will celebrate the return home of his wastrel son and forgive him, and that this likely will enrage his obedient, loyal, hard-working son.
Almost every rave-writing reviewer of “Gilead” declared, as the Washington Post’s Michael Dirda did, that Ames “is that rarity in fiction — a thoroughly good man.” But it would be a good question for our book club: is he really?
He does forgive and accept Boughton to a certain degree, and if Gore could reconcile as much with DeLay, and vice versa, we’d all be amazed.
But ultimately, Ames cannot do what God is certainly calling upon him to do. Boughton, it develops, is the loyal companion of a black woman and the father of her child.
What I’d hope, when Washington’s battling book club finishes its discussion, is that its members could do better than simply forgive each other. There is work for them to do together: heal the sick, educate the ignorant, create opportunities for the poor and stop the killing in Darfur.
Morton Kondracke is executive editor of Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill.