Thursday, 15 May 2025

To Ross Douthat: What Chris Murphy should say at a town meeting in Hannibal MO

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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