The Enemy of My Enemy – Part 1
TimeWatch Editorial
October 05, 2016
According to his website, Jaymichaelson.net, Dr. Jay Michaelson is the author of six books and over three hundred articles on religion, sexuality, law, and contemplative practice. He is a columnist for The Daily Beast and the Forward newspaper, and is a frequent commentator on NPR, MSNBC, and online. In his ‘other’ career, Jay is an affiliated assistant professor at Chicago Theological Seminary, teaches meditation in Jewish and Theravadan Buddhist lineages, and holds nondenominational rabbinic ordination. On October 3rd 2016, he wrote an article for “The Daily Beast” entitled “Mike Pence, Postmodern Evangelical Catholic Conservative.”
Dr. Michaelson touches an element of the Presidential Election that for the most part has not been explored. If however, history is applied, this subtle undervalued piece of information will play a serious part in the aftermath of the election. It also reveals that the choices of running mates as Vice Presidents were much more seriously considered than at first appeared. Notice how the article begins:
“When Mike Pence and Tim Kaine take the stage tomorrow night in Farmville, Virginia, the vice presidential debate will be a showdown between two very unconventional Catholics. Kaine, as is well known, is a progressive Catholic whose focus on the church’s social gospel was sharpened during a year’s mission in Latin America. But while media coverage of Indiana Governor Mike Pence has tended to depict him as a standard right-wing conservative Christian, this label belies the complexity of his own spiritual journey. To be sure, Pence’s views are beloved of the Christian Right, and anathema to progressives. He is perhaps the most anti-choice, anti-LGBT governor in the nation, going out of his way to find innovative ways for the state to impose conservative Christian moral views on everyone else.” Dr. Jay Michaelson, “Mike Pence, Postmodern Evangelical Catholic Conservative,”The Daily Beast, October 3rd 2016
Clearly then, Tim Kaine’s socially progressive viewpoint is closely aligned with Pope Francis’ constant expression of opposition to the wealth oriented class system that exists today. According to his biography, Tim Kaine has helped people throughout his life as a missionary, civil rights lawyer, teacher and elected official. Mike Pence’s views line up beautifully with the promises made by the GOP Presidential Candidate to remove the wall that separates Church and State. According to his biography, Pence is a conservative and a supporter of the Tea Party movement, which is really not a political party but refers instead to the Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773, a watershed moment in the American struggle for independence from Great Britain. The present application of the name Tea Party is indicative of the desire of the members to restructure the United States in such a way that their interpretation of the early Christian Nation be restored. Dr. Michaelson continues with his description of Mike Pence.
“Pence is also very much a creation of the last half century of American political-religious life. Born and raised Catholic, he became a Catholic youth minister and reportedly wanted to be a priest. But according to interviews Pence has given over the years (interestingly, he has more recently declined to talk specifically about his spiritual evolution), while in college from 1978-81, he began blending his Catholicism with Evangelical Protestantism. “I made a commitment to Christ,” Pence said. “I’m a born again, evangelical Catholic.” Interestingly, Pence’s religious evolution came at precisely the time “evangelical Catholic” ceased to be an oxymoron.” Dr. Jay Michaelson, “Mike Pence, Postmodern Evangelical Catholic Conservative,”The Daily Beast, October 3rd 2016
What is refreshing is the fact that Dr. Michaelson reaches back into the history of the matter to describe the sizeable change that has taken place during the recent past. His amazing historical accuracy awakens an awareness that has apparently been hidden in recent years. Listen to how he puts this.
“From the mass migrations of Catholics to the United States in the 19th century through the 1960s, Protestants and especially Evangelicals regarded Catholics as disloyal, superstitious idolaters. Many openly preached that the pope was the Antichrist. And it is widely understood that anti-Catholic sentiment doomed the presidential candidacy of Al Smith in 1928—and almost cost John F. Kennedy the election in 1960. Indeed, much of the twentieth century’s supposedly liberal, Protestant-led campaigns for the separation of church and state were, in fact, bitterly anti-Catholic. In the first half of the twentieth century, Protestants railed against Catholic parochial schools, claiming that they taught not just superstition but sedition as well. The Protestant-led temperance movement associated Catholicism with alcohol abuse.” Dr. Jay Michaelson, “Mike Pence, Postmodern Evangelical Catholic Conservative,”The Daily Beast, October 3rd 2016
In just few sentences, Dr. Michaelson describes the beginnings of an absolute transformation that began to occur. Shared agendas did the trick. Evangelicals and Catholics saw the invasion of an environment that challenged their moral position. Soon the enemy of my enemy became my friend. Dr. Michaelson makes an astonishing point that the racial element became part of the motivation that brought these two sides together.
“At that time, threats posed by the civil rights movement and sexual revolution of the Sixties turned the former adversaries into allies. Tentatively at first, Catholics and Evangelicals (Southern Baptists in particular) began to make common cause against desegregation and feminism and to a lesser extent the nascent gay rights movement. The “New Christian Right” was about to be born. As one of the founders of the Christian Right, Paul Weyrich,told historian Randall Balmer, it took a while to bring the camps together. For example, Evangelicals didn’t care about abortion in the 1960s and 1970s; indeed, Evangelical leaders had earlier ridiculed the Catholic doctrine that life begins at conception, and argued that, in any event, such religious doctrines should not dictate public policy. According to Weyrich, what really united Catholics and Evangelicals was opposition to civil rights. After Brown, Evangelicals began imitating Catholics, setting up their own, segregated private schools in parallel to public ones. This effort intensified as a wave of Supreme Court decisions removed prayer from public school and allowed the teaching of evolution. And when, in the 1970s, the federal government began clamping down on these racist private schools — the Evangelical Bob Jones University first and foremost — Evangelicals found themselves in a similar situation to the Catholics they had once opposed.” Dr. Jay Michaelson, “Mike Pence, Postmodern Evangelical Catholic Conservative,”The Daily Beast, October 3rd 2016
We will continue this in our next Editorial.
Cameron A. Bowen
