We are currently facing the most hotly contested American presidential election in a century. Moreover, it is an election in which the religious right has been motivated by the current Administration’s appeal to a largely anti-intellectual and culturally ignorant approach to the world beyond our borders. In the heated rhetoric, cynicism and polarization of such an environment, it is important to draw a distinction between apologetics and deception. Contrary to our modern usage, apologetics does not refer to apologizing for something we regret, but rather, engaging in a dialogue by which we use terms and thought constructs familiar to another culture, in order to explain our beliefs in a way that makes them compelling or persuasive to that other culture.

To engage in true apologetics has been the challenge of innovators and reformers of both religion and politics throughout history. It is a higher form of its ubiquitous modern descendant, “spin doctoring”, which is both more selective and more manipulative in its use of fact, and less tolerant of the opposition’s equally selective and manipulative response. Apologetics is fundamentally respectful of those who differ, and of their capacity to understand, if not accept, one’s point of view, if communicated to them in terms they can grasp. To do so effectively requires two primary qualities of fair mindedness which have traditionally been considered fundamental prerequisites of spiritual discipleship: discernment and dispassion.

To engage in deception requires neither, unless we mistake mere craftiness or political astuteness for discernment, and callousness, indifference or insensitivity for dispassion. Deception is fundamentally contemptuous of people, distrustful of their intelligence or understanding, and perhaps even suspicious that their resistance to one’s point of view indicates weaknesses in one’s argument that are easier to avoid than to correct. It reduces the message to simplistic and jargon-istic phrases, delivered to the public with clear but patronizing enunciation, as if to a crowd of children.

Each approach bears its own fruit, and American politics is in the midst of the Harvest Season of escalating violence, international mistrust, economic instability, and environmental degradation, as we go to the polls.

It is sadly ironic that the most overtly evangelical Administration in recent history proves its own ignorance of the valuable lessons Christianity has to teach us about the superiority of engaging in apologetics rather than in deception. In its first centuries the community of faithful followers of Jesus faced enormous hostility and misunderstanding in the gentile, pagan world of the Roman Empire. In the process of Christians discovering and defining their own religious identity in a pluralistic and often hostile world, their best thinkers had to engage in apologetics.

As early as the writings of St. Paul, a Pharisaic Jew, lawyer, and Greek-speaking Roman citizen turned Apostle of Christ, we see a hugely literate and intelligent example of Christian apologetics, whether we agree with Paul or not. While visiting Athens, St. Paul sees the altar to an “unknown god”, and he adroitly uses that image as a way to refer to the Judeo-Christian construct of divinity, and introduce the saving message of belief in Christ. Quoting from a Greek poet, St. Paul’s unitize and universal message survives in a beautiful prayer ascribed to him, “Almighty God, in whom we live and move and have our being, we humbly pray you so to guide and govern us by your Holy Spirit, that in all the cares and occupations of our life may not forget you, but may remember that we are ever walking in your sight”.

As passionately partisan as St. Paul was for his understanding of faith in Jesus Christ, he was no arrogant or illiterate demagogue, oblivious to the cultural and religious realities of the Mediterranean world in which he lived. He used his understanding, intellect and multicultural familiarity to make his case adeptly, and the evidence is clear that he was astonishingly successful, given that, for better or worse, the entire Empire embraced his version of the teaching of Christ within two and a half centuries of his preaching. That success is still visible two thousand years later in a Western world dominated by Judeo-Christian cultural values. In the evangelical triumphalism of conservative Christianity, it is often overlooked that the religious and political success of St. Paul’s message could never have been achieved without effective use of cultural intelligence, intellectual acuity, and multilingual skills, able to bridge cultural and social gaps effectively. In later centuries, when Christianity had become a state-endorsed religion, such intellectual sensitivity was replaced by fulminating ideologues simply ramming their agenda and demanding that the populace conform to it, on pain of ostracization, or on fear of death and eternal damnation. Such ideologues are adept at implying that to refuse compliance is to make an alliance with evil. Their rise and fall is a cyclical pattern.

There is a long and ugly history of demonizing one’s perceived enemies, rather than questioning whether it is they, or merely their behavior, that instill in us feelings of enmity. We often fail to examine the reasons why we respond the way we do to those who differ from us radically. Those who resort to such demonizing tactics both driven by fear themselves, and use fear as the primary weapon in their arsenal. To prey on peoples’ fears and insecurities, even deliberately feeding them, so that a particular person, party, or organization may be persuasively offered as a viable solution, has been a major factor in the modus operandi governing both nations and religious communities throughout history. Such an approach is anti apologetic. To suggest, for example, that voting for the opposition will make a terrorist attack or your own death more likely than if you vote for the incumbent, as if such attacks were simply triggered by the holder of an office, is cravenly pandering to the power of fear as a manipulation. Such pandering is a manifestation of psychological insecurity, if not paranoia, and an unhealthy emotional need for control that distrusts the ability of others to find or participate in a natural balance without being coerced to do so.

So what does this have to do with American presidential politics? Clearly the Bush Administration and campaign has fueled fear of the “terrorists” with rhetoric about immanent dangers, whether real or imagined, while presenting the president’s folksy “consistency” not as cultural belligerence or arrogance fueling those dangers, but as the reassuring, comforting solution. The president has identified what he calls “the axis of evil”. His Administration implies that anyone who is less than enthusiastic about ill-conceived plans to selectively destroy evildoers is either weak, stupid, or treacherous. For a blatantly “born-again” Administration, the fact that no distinction is made between death of the sin and death of the sinner, despite the biblical claim that God wants the former and not the latter, reveals either a lack of understanding or outright hypocrisy. The problem is never solved by attacking only the symptom and never the cause. Yet the presidency appears to hang in the balance of who can simply cry more convincingly, “Death to the Terrorists!”, as is clear from Senator Kerry’s politically necessary insistence that he will run them to ground better than President Bush has done so far.

Feeding the public’s fears by imputing fatal weakness to the opposition is to take advantage of the weaknesses of the electorate, while simultaneously recasting the opposition’s potential strengths as a defect. Both parties engage in this exercise, challenging us to discern what truth there may be in their charges. Some are legitimate. But an Administration or policy that uses fear as its primary tool and masks bravado as hopeful optimism, treats the public as stupid, and then tries to reward them for that stupidity. The Administration may thereby be engaging in polemics, but it is not engaging in the kind of apologetics that will win the hearts and minds of the skeptics, either in America or in the rest of the world. Nor will it win the war against terror, even if it wins votes in November. Moreover, from the standpoint of the unitize purpose of true religion, much less the liberating benefits of “freedom and democracy”, this is a policy as ineffective as trying to put out a fire with kerosene. In the long run, though it may appeal to those who look for simple solutions to complex problems, it is doomed to fail, both spiritually and politically. No candidate has all the answers, but the Bush Administration's campaign strategy to dumb down America is the equivalent of a fast-food approach to solving the health threat of obesity. It looks attractive, is temporarily satisfying, economically opportunistic, and insidiously dangerous to our health.


Robert H. Stucky is the Executive Director of Faith In Diversity Institute.

Copyright © 2004 by Faith In Diversity Institute