More on yesterday’s People of Faith lunch
One of Democratic bigwigs who was at the lunch yesterday, but did not
speak or have a high-profile role, was Mike McCurry, the former Clinton
press secretary. McCurry’s a United Methodist, a Sunday School
Superintendent in his church, and was a delegate to this year’s UM
General Conference, which is the denomination’s national
gathering.
He was one of the most high profile people at the caucus lunch (along,
perhaps, with Jean Carnahan, former senator from Missouri), and so I
spoke with him for about 15 minutes. Here’s something of a
transcription of the interview, with my comments to follow.
Like many of the speakers, McCurry echoed a dismay that the Democratic
party has not embraced the religious communities of America.
Partly, he says, this is because there is something of a discomfort
among the party’s secularists, and this discomfort arises for a number
of reasons. For many of the party secular activists, it’s because
of the way that the religious right has co-opted the part that religion
can play in the civic life of our country. For others, it’s
because they have an experience of life in the American religious
right, and they have been burned or hurt pretty hard.
McCurry noted that when he was in the White House, he and George
Stephanopoulos were not really “out” (my term, not his) to each other
about their faith and the role it played in their public life.
(Stephanopoulos, while a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, studied theology,
and his father is a Greek Orthodox priest.) McCurry said that he
spoke about that faith with Stephanopoulos after his book came out, and
they found that they had had some of the same struggles living out
their faith life as public servants.
McCurry noted that part of this occurs because the intersection of
religion and politics in America has become fairly nasty in recent
times. “There are unfortunately some place in the [Democratic]
party where religion equals red state equals Republican.”
McCurry thinks that religions can offer a powerful force to help our
civic life. “Our institutions of the political system are badly
broken. But the Church [and by this he seems to mean the
‘universal’ church of all Christians and all religious believers, in
some way. -Ed.] is the place of sanctuary, where we can acknowledge our
differences but also acknowledge our common belief in God.”
“If you want to solve conflicts, the Church has a great historical legacy of bringing people together.”
Ecto blogging software
25 August 2004 at 11:04 am.
Over at one of the RNC blogs (you can find it here, as it’s the second trackback to this entry), the following appeared, citing this article in my blog.
As the guy who interviewed McCurry, I don’t think it was for fear of speaking out about religious belief that he acted the way that he did. In his discussion with me (and certainly in his job as press secretary), he understood that the real world is full of nuance, divergence of viewpoint, and the need in a republic like ours to recognize those. Only in politics do we seem to think that the above don’t hold. Not wearing your religion on your sleeve may not be a form of cowardice or lack of pride; instead, it may be a display of respect for the person you don’t yet know.
I know this will probably get me flamed over at that blog, but as I said, only in politics right now do we think nuance is a sin.