Almost a century ago, G. K. Chesterton made a comment that could most appropriately be applied to Monday night’s forum at which leading Democratic presidential candidates discussed faith and politics: anything worth doing “is worth doing badly.”
The purpose of the forum, organized by the liberal evangelical journal Sojourners and broadcast on CNN, was to hear what Democratic contenders might say about religion and whether they might convincingly enlarge the list of religious and moral (or “values”) questions to include topics like poverty, war and the environment rather than only those emphasized by the religious right.
Not a bad idea. Clearly, the nation and first of all the Democrats could use a better, broader, more sophisticated conversation about religion and politics.
Yet it is hard to imagine anyone serious about either of these subjects watching Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Senator Barack Obama and former Senator John Edwards on Monday without cringing at some of the questions or chafing at some of the speechifying and the general absence of intelligent follow-up.
Chesterton and Sojourners are interesting entities to be captured in the same paragraph. Chesterton was known for exhorting us to close our minds around something solid. Sojourners is marked by mush. I heard Jim Wallis speak not too long ago and whenever it came to a topic championed by those opposed to him politically, he always called for “dialogue” and so on. But if he were to be candid, he would have to admit that his position in this dialogue would never veer to what is theologically orthodox on those issues. His mind is closed all right, but not on what is solid.