Christianity, Sarah Palin, and American Conservatism

As I am sure all of you know by now, Sarah Palin delivered a 12-minute rant at the NRA convention last week that included the words,

Oh, but you can’t offend them, can’t make them feel uncomfortable, not even a smidgen. Well, if I were in charge, they would know that waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists.

Palin's equation of waterboarding with baptism immediately cleaved American conservatives into two camps. On the one side were Palin's tough guys, the people who like guns and bombers and solitary confinement for degenerate criminals. On the other side were the serious Christians, who began putting out statements like this one from Joe Carter at the Gospel Coalition:

In our attempts to dehumanize our enemy we end up becoming less than human ourselves. It would be a Pyrrhic victory to save civilization and lose our humanity. We must never hesitate to defend our culture, our future, and our lives against those who seek to destroy us. The liberal cosmopolitan elite appeal to tolerance and understanding in the face of such an enemy is suicidal. However, the right-wing populist position, which is willing to face up to and address the evil of terrorism, fails to understand the ramifications of becoming like the enemy by dehumanizing them.

The truly Christian position is to never forget that evil comes not just from the actions of “terrorists” or “enemies” but from the heart of a fallen, sacred yet degraded, human beings. If we are to preserve our own humanity we must not forget that our enemy differs from us in degree, not in kind. Like us, our enemies need to accept Jesus and to be baptized by water and the Spirit. That is the Christian way, not as Palin would have it, to have our enemies fear a pagan god and have their spirit broken by water.

Or this from Rod Dreher:

OK, stop. Not only is this woman, putatively a Christian, praising torture, but she is comparing it to a holy sacrament of the Christian faith. It’s disgusting — but even more disgusting, those NRA members, many of whom are no doubt Christians, cheered wildly for her.

Dreher was attacked for his statement in many corners of the right-wing media, insults like

Rod is no conservative, he's as phony as David Brooks.

This came along with some snarky comments about Catholics from evangelicals. Dreher used to be a Catholic but converted to Greek Orthodoxy, and he responded to these taunts like this:

Like I said, I’m not Catholic, but I’ll proudly stand with Catholics and any other Christians who believe that human dignity and the Holy Name is more important than maintaining solidarity with barbarism and its proponents. How can it make you proud that the more an American goes to church, the more likely he is to support torture? What is perplexing is the increasing self-marginalization of the populist right. Do they imagine that most Americans take pleasure in hearing a conservative leader promote torture in a gleeful tone, and a crowd cheer for her in doing so?

Look, I hate Islamic terrorists; I saw the south tower of the WTC fall with my own eyes, and stumbled back home that morning covered with its dust. . . .  I hated those terrorists so profoundly for what they did I struggled to sleep at night.

Torture is still wrong.

If you associate conservatism in the public’s mind with torture advocacy, that’s too bad, but it’s not the worst thing in the world; conservatism never saved anyone’s soul. But to yoke with delight the cause of the crucified Christ with torturing another human being? Is that really the kind of Christian you want to be?

Think, people, of the torture victim you and I call Lord.

Repent.

I bring this up to ponder once again the importance of Christianity in our culture. Without a religion of mercy, without authoritative teaching that stresses forgiveness and repentance and the possibility of rebirth, what would America be like? I don't know, but I imagine a vengeful, militaristic state sliding toward fascism.

Maybe this is a mistake on my part; in Europe, after all, they seem to have both less religion and less vengefulness than we do. But I look around America and I see a seething mass of rage, kept in check as much as anything else by Christian teachings. It is not liberals but evangelicals who have lately taken the lead in reforming our justice system, a movement that sprang from the prison ministries; the most powerful critiques of corporate capitalism have come from Catholics rather than socialists. Can you imagine American conservatism without Christianity? The thought frightens me.