Dear Ross,
As a fellow citizen of the Nutmeg State, I found your
conversation with our Senator Chris Murphy both enlightening and
provocative. Great journalism!
At the heart of the case you were prosecuting against the
Senator is the fact that he is agnostic. He can’t stand before voters anywhere and
proclaim that he believes in an awesome God, because he has doubts. And if he
can’t say that in a red state, he can’t expect church-going voters in those
states to identify with him. And if they can’t identify with him, how can he
persuade them to vote for him?
However, as is often the case with prosecutors, I don’t believe
your avenue of attack was altogether fair. When the Senator said this:
“Church was the place where I
learned selflessness. I learned to care about my neighbors, that moment in
church every Sunday morning when you turn to the strangers next to you and
introduce yourself was an important reminder to me that even if I didn't know
somebody I still should care about them and they were part of my community.”
and this:
“I struggle with my own personal
thoughts about God and the afterlife but I find that even if your beliefs lean
towards secularism or deism or agnosticism you can still find a lot of value in
church.”
you said this:
“The language you just gave me is
very Connecticut. I hear that language all the time. I would like to go to
church because I get a lot from it socially.”
That’s a fair characterization of most members of the
congregation at Christ Church, Greenwich where I was baptized , but it’s an
unfair characterization of what the Senator said to you about what church-going
means to him.
The Senator’s views on the existence of God and the value of
church in society place him somewhere between the worshippers at Christ Church,
Greenwich on the one side and the worshippers of an awesome God in Missouri,
etc. on the other. But if the Senator can’t honestly say in a church or at a town
meeting in Hannibal, MO that he believes in an awesome God, here is what he can
say:
“What separates you from me is not my views about humanity,
but my views about divinity. I can’t ask you to identify with my views about
divinity. Jesus preached that the greatest commandment is to love God with all your
heart and soul and mind. But my soul and mind have doubts about the nature of God,
the afterlife, the miracles and resurrection of Jesus, and many other things the
Bible tells me are true.
“However, I can and do ask you to identify with my views
about humanity. Jesus preached that the second great commandment, like unto the
first, was to love thy neighbor as thyself. Some may say that you can’t be a Christian
if you can’t bring yourself to obey the first great commandments. But I would
say that neither can you be a Christian if you can’t bring yourself to obey the
second.
“The idea that we should love ourselves and our family more than
we love our neighbors, that we should love our neighbors more than we love people
in the next town, and that we should love them more than people in the next
country – the so-called “order of love”--
dates back to the Christian theologians St. Augustine in the 4th
century AD and Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century.
“These days, the “order of love” is being promoted from the
White House as “common sense.” But I say it’s nonsense. It preaches disobedience
to Jesus’s second great commandment. This idea may somehow be compatible with the
Christianity of Augustine, Aquinas and the White House, but it is not the Christianity
of Jesus Christ, who simply said Love Thy Neighbor As Thyself. Period. [Matthew
22:37-39, Mark 12:30-31 and Luke 10:27].
“And by the way, if you try to get your head around the
tortured logic by which Augustine and Aquinas attempt to reconcile the plain meaning
of Jesus’s second commandment with ordo amoris, you will be very much reminded of Antonin Scalia’s
contorted attempts to reconcile the plain meaning of the Second
Amendment to the Constitution with his idea that the Framers intended to grant
all citizens the right to bear arms, whether or not they are members of a well-regulated
militia.”
[Of course, it might be impolitic for Senator Murphy to make
this point in Hannibal MO. But it’s true.]
Finally, Ross, I wish Senator Murphy had concluded your conversation
with him by saying this to you:
“It’s true, as you say, that many red state voters have trouble
identifying with someone who can’t tell them he believes in an awesome God. But
it’s also true that a large majority of those voters happily gave Donald Trump a
pass on the awesome God question, even though the man plainly believed not in
an awesome God, but in his own awesome self.
“How can both of these things be true? The answer, I believe,
is that these Trump voters care less about a candidate’s views on divinity than
about his views on humanity. In Trump, they see a man who proudly wears on his
sleeve a brand of humanity towards people who don’t support him marinated in
grievance, resentment, intimidation, humiliation and retribution. That’s a brand
of humanity these voters identify with. But is it Christian?”
Daniel
Badger
West
Hartford CT
May 12, 2025
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