Preaching to the Choir? Not This Time
By Elisabeth Bumiller
The New York Times
Monday 23 May 2005
Washington - It's that time of year again when President Bush
turns up around the country in sumptuous commencement robes, assures
thousands of college graduates that a C average does not preclude the
presidency and urges them to go forth and do good.
Calvin College, a small evangelical school in the strategic
Republican stronghold of Grand Rapids, Mich., seemed a perfect stop on
Saturday for the president's message. Or so thought Karl Rove, the
White House political chief, who two months ago effectively bumped
Calvin's scheduled commencement speaker when he asked that Mr. Bush be
invited instead.
But events at Calvin did not happen as smoothly as Mr. Rove might
have liked. A number of students, faculty members and alumni objected
so strongly to the president's visit that by last Friday nearly 800 of
them had signed a letter of protest that appeared as a full-page
advertisement in The Grand Rapids Press. The letter said, in part,
"Your deeds, Mr. President - neglecting the needy to coddle the rich,
desecrating the environment and misleading the country into war - do
not exemplify the faith we live by."
The next day, Mr. Bush was greeted by another letter in The Press
signed by some 100 of 300 faculty members that objected to "an unjust
and unjustified war in Iraq" and policies "that favor the wealthy of
our society and burden the poor."
At first glance, it seemed as if a mainstay of Mr. Bush's base,
the Christian right, had risen up against him. At second glance, the
reality was more complex. The protests at Calvin showed that Mr.
Bush's evangelical base was not monolithic and underscored the small
but growing voice of the Christian left.
That movement, loosely defined as no more than several million of
some 50 million white evangelicals, opposes abortion and generally
supports traditional marriage. But as a group it is against the Iraq
war, the administration's tax cuts, Mr. Bush's environmental policies
and, not least, the close identification of evangelicals with the
current White House.
A leader of the Christian left is Jim Wallis, the editor and
founder of the Christian political magazine Sojourners and the author
of "God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't
Get It." Mr. Wallis, whose book has been on the New York Times
best-seller list for the past 15 weeks, appeared at Calvin College on
May 5 and is advising Democrats on how to appeal to religious voters.
"The monologue of the religious right is over," Mr. Wallis said in
an interview before Mr. Bush's appearance. "There is a progressive,
moderate evangelical constituency that is huge."
Others see the group as a far less powerful force, but they
acknowledge that the Christian left cannot be a cheery development for
Mr. Rove. "Were this movement to continue to grow, it could create
some problems, probably not for President Bush but for future
Republican candidates," said John C. Green, the director of the Ray
Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron and an
expert on the voting patterns of religious groups. In short, Mr. Green
said, "Democrats have an opportunity to get some votes."
One question is whether Mr. Rove knew what he was getting into
when he asked that Mr. Bush be invited to Calvin, a theologically
conservative college in the tradition of the Christian Reformed Church
that is politically more progressive than other evangelical colleges.
(Faculty members estimate that about 20 percent of students opposed
Mr. Bush in 2004.)
Mr. Rove secured the invitation through Representative Vernon J.
Ehlers, the Republican who represents Grand Rapids and who attended
Calvin.
"I think they understood the nature of Calvin," said Jon Brandt,
Mr. Ehlers's press secretary, who also attended Calvin. "The White
House isn't stupid."
That would be the view of Corwin Smidt, a political science
professor at Calvin and the director of the Henry Institute for the
Study of Christianity and Politics. Mr. Bush's visit, he said, was
both "rewarding the faithful" who voted for him in 2004 and a
strategic positioning for 2006.
That is when ***** DeVos, an heir to the Amway fortune and a member
of a Michigan family that has been a major contributor to the
Republican Party and Calvin College, may challenge Gov. Jennifer M.
Granholm, a Democrat. Republicans will also try next year to unseat
another Democrat, Senator Debbie Stabenow.
As for Mr. Bush, his commencement address on Saturday drew no
protests in the Calvin field house other than from students who wore
buttons that proclaimed "God is not a Democrat or a Republican."
One other small objection came from the bumped commencement
speaker, Nicholas Wolterstorff, a Democrat, a former Calvin academic
and a recently retired philosophy of religion professor at Yale. Dr.
Wolterstorff said in an interview last week, "Here's a Yale professor
being bumped by a Yale graduate with a very average college record."
He said he planned to stay home and garden in Grand Rapids instead of
attending the president's speech.
Dr. Smidt, a Republican, had a different view of the presidential
visit. "I do think it's an honor for the college," he said. "Even if
Bill Clinton had come at the height of Monica Lewinsky, I don't think
I would have objected then, either."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/052405G.shtml
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