The Hypocrisy Hunter's Guide
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Sex, politics and religion have been bedfellows since 1804
The announcement this week that the Rev. Ted Haggard has embraced therapy and discovered his true heterosexuality rounds off a year of scandals that have plagued the powerful Religious Right-Republican Party alliance. It began with revelations about disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff's back-room dealings with Ralph Reed, former golden boy of the Christian Coalition; gained momentum with Mark Foley's emails; and peaked with Mr. Haggard's spectacular gay-sex scandal.
Among Republicans there has been much hand-wringing over the moral decline of the party's leadership, and--a continuing theme--our waning days as a Christian nation. In turn, Democrats and hypocrisy-hunters have offered gleeful "I told you so's" and redoubled their calls for a return to an era before the rise of the Moral Majority, before religion thrust itself into the political sphere.
Unfortunately, both sides are nostalgic for "good old days" that never existed. Sex, politics and religion have been regular, if cantankerous, bedfellows since 1804--when the Rev. Timothy Dwight, then head of Yale College, warned voters that if they didn't toss Thomas Jefferson out of office, the president "would make our wives and daughters the victims of legalized prostitution."
In fact, as the historian John H. Summers has observed, the 19th century suffered many more scandals than the 20th, when evolving standards of personal privacy, political professionalism and objective journalism brought a new decorum to public discourse. Ironically, a resurgence came in the 1980s, as the evangelical Christian movement began its political ascent, suggesting that mixing religious righteousness with politics may cause more imbroglios than it prevents.
---
The biggest of the 19th-century scandals, during the presidential election of 1884, offers a case in point. After a decade of government-corruption outrages--including the Whiskey Ring and Boss Tweed's Tammany Hall--the country had what we'd now call "scandal fatigue." Thus many Republicans were infuriated when their party's presidential nomination went to James G. Blaine, the former secretary of state who was dogged by rumors of graft and profiteering.
The Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, at the time America's most celebrated preacher and the Republican Party's most influential religious champion, was particularly incensed by Blaine's nomination. The minister had campaigned aggressively for every Republican presidential candidate since the party's founding in the 1850s. He promoted candidates from the pulpit of his 3,000-seat "mega-church" in Brooklyn, N.Y., and spoke at rallies nationwide, urging all good Christians to vote Republican.
For Beecher, Blaine's nomination was the final straw after years of growing disgust with both the ethical shenanigans in Washington and the GOP's shift from being the party of moral reform to the party of big business. This time, he declared, he was backing the Democratic candidate, Grover Cleveland. The former governor of New York had won a reputation for rare rectitude, earning the nickname "Grover the Good."
Just as Beecher announced his defection, a firestorm erupted: Newspapers reported that as a young bachelor in Buffalo, N.Y., Cleveland had fathered a child out of wedlock. Cleveland responded by confessing that he had indeed paid support to the child's mother for the past 14 years.
Most ministers would have abandoned the accused sinner, but Beecher was not like other men of the cloth. Only 10 years before he had faced down his own national sex scandal after being accused of seducing a married woman in his congregation. When the cuckolded husband sued Beecher in civil court, the story generated more press coverage than the entire Civil War. Unlike Cleveland, however, Beecher denied all, and the trial ended in a hung jury, allowing the minister to retain the mantle of innocence, however muddied.
When the Cleveland illegitimate-child story broke, Beecher's friends urged him to back off and save his own reputation. Instead, he threw all his weight behind the Democrat, who was continually taunted for his peccadillo during the unusually nasty campaign, including the famous ditty: "Ma! Ma! Where's my pa? Gone to the White House, Ha! Ha! Ha!"
Beecher seemed to take these slings personally; indeed, to be invigorated by them. As the campaign grew uglier, his rhetoric grew more reckless. "If every man in New York State tonight, who has broken the seventh commandment, voted for Cleveland, he would be elected by 200,000 majority!" he shouted at rallies, shocking even his most devoted followers and rekindling rumors of his own infidelity.
Beecher's instincts about the electorate were right, however. Cleveland won by a tiny margin, put over the top by New York. The victory came partly because voters believed that Cleveland had honorably confessed his mistake and partly because they found the Republican candidate's alleged financial and ethical transgressions slightly more repellent than the Democrat's sexual misdeed.
---
If history offers a lesson in these matters, it is that leaders take a large risk when they embrace the rhetoric of religious righteousness. Americans are awfully forgiving, but they harden their hearts to coverup and hypocrisy. Cleveland was saved from his sin by candor. Beecher's role reminds us that the task of a great moral teacher is not to condemn others from on high but to show us that we are all sinners and that the only figures worthy of public trust are those who have the courage to grapple honestly with their flaws. As Beecher so aptly put it: "Cant is the twin sister of hypocrisy."
The announcement this week that the Rev. Ted Haggard has embraced therapy and discovered his true heterosexuality rounds off a year of scandals that have plagued the powerful Religious Right-Republican Party alliance. It began with revelations about disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff's back-room dealings with Ralph Reed, former golden boy of the Christian Coalition; gained momentum with Mark Foley's emails; and peaked with Mr. Haggard's spectacular gay-sex scandal.
Among Republicans there has been much hand-wringing over the moral decline of the party's leadership, and--a continuing theme--our waning days as a Christian nation. In turn, Democrats and hypocrisy-hunters have offered gleeful "I told you so's" and redoubled their calls for a return to an era before the rise of the Moral Majority, before religion thrust itself into the political sphere.
Unfortunately, both sides are nostalgic for "good old days" that never existed. Sex, politics and religion have been regular, if cantankerous, bedfellows since 1804--when the Rev. Timothy Dwight, then head of Yale College, warned voters that if they didn't toss Thomas Jefferson out of office, the president "would make our wives and daughters the victims of legalized prostitution."
In fact, as the historian John H. Summers has observed, the 19th century suffered many more scandals than the 20th, when evolving standards of personal privacy, political professionalism and objective journalism brought a new decorum to public discourse. Ironically, a resurgence came in the 1980s, as the evangelical Christian movement began its political ascent, suggesting that mixing religious righteousness with politics may cause more imbroglios than it prevents.
---
The biggest of the 19th-century scandals, during the presidential election of 1884, offers a case in point. After a decade of government-corruption outrages--including the Whiskey Ring and Boss Tweed's Tammany Hall--the country had what we'd now call "scandal fatigue." Thus many Republicans were infuriated when their party's presidential nomination went to James G. Blaine, the former secretary of state who was dogged by rumors of graft and profiteering.
The Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, at the time America's most celebrated preacher and the Republican Party's most influential religious champion, was particularly incensed by Blaine's nomination. The minister had campaigned aggressively for every Republican presidential candidate since the party's founding in the 1850s. He promoted candidates from the pulpit of his 3,000-seat "mega-church" in Brooklyn, N.Y., and spoke at rallies nationwide, urging all good Christians to vote Republican.
For Beecher, Blaine's nomination was the final straw after years of growing disgust with both the ethical shenanigans in Washington and the GOP's shift from being the party of moral reform to the party of big business. This time, he declared, he was backing the Democratic candidate, Grover Cleveland. The former governor of New York had won a reputation for rare rectitude, earning the nickname "Grover the Good."
Just as Beecher announced his defection, a firestorm erupted: Newspapers reported that as a young bachelor in Buffalo, N.Y., Cleveland had fathered a child out of wedlock. Cleveland responded by confessing that he had indeed paid support to the child's mother for the past 14 years.
Most ministers would have abandoned the accused sinner, but Beecher was not like other men of the cloth. Only 10 years before he had faced down his own national sex scandal after being accused of seducing a married woman in his congregation. When the cuckolded husband sued Beecher in civil court, the story generated more press coverage than the entire Civil War. Unlike Cleveland, however, Beecher denied all, and the trial ended in a hung jury, allowing the minister to retain the mantle of innocence, however muddied.
When the Cleveland illegitimate-child story broke, Beecher's friends urged him to back off and save his own reputation. Instead, he threw all his weight behind the Democrat, who was continually taunted for his peccadillo during the unusually nasty campaign, including the famous ditty: "Ma! Ma! Where's my pa? Gone to the White House, Ha! Ha! Ha!"
Beecher seemed to take these slings personally; indeed, to be invigorated by them. As the campaign grew uglier, his rhetoric grew more reckless. "If every man in New York State tonight, who has broken the seventh commandment, voted for Cleveland, he would be elected by 200,000 majority!" he shouted at rallies, shocking even his most devoted followers and rekindling rumors of his own infidelity.
Beecher's instincts about the electorate were right, however. Cleveland won by a tiny margin, put over the top by New York. The victory came partly because voters believed that Cleveland had honorably confessed his mistake and partly because they found the Republican candidate's alleged financial and ethical transgressions slightly more repellent than the Democrat's sexual misdeed.
---
If history offers a lesson in these matters, it is that leaders take a large risk when they embrace the rhetoric of religious righteousness. Americans are awfully forgiving, but they harden their hearts to coverup and hypocrisy. Cleveland was saved from his sin by candor. Beecher's role reminds us that the task of a great moral teacher is not to condemn others from on high but to show us that we are all sinners and that the only figures worthy of public trust are those who have the courage to grapple honestly with their flaws. As Beecher so aptly put it: "Cant is the twin sister of hypocrisy."
posted by LeBlues @ 12:12 PM,
