Book Briefs: October 21, 1988

Rendering To Caesar … And Bending His Ear

Representing God in Washington: The Role of Religious Lobbies in the American Polity, by Allen Hertzke (University of Tennessee Press, 260 pp.; $29.50, cloth). Reviewed by Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and nationally syndicated columnist with Copley News Service. He is the author of Beyond Good Intentions: A Biblical View of Politics (Crossway).

“One cannot adequately understand American politics without understanding the dynamics of religious political engagement,” writes Allen Hertzke, a political science professor at the University of Oklahoma. After reviewing America’s various church and nondenominational religious lobbies, he concludes that while the organizations often do not advance the specific opinions of their membership, the lobbies’ values “must be in some sense articulated if the [political] system is to be evaluated as truly representative.”

Representing God in Washington provides a balanced, comprehensive study of organized religious politics. First, Hertzke looks at the different strategies employed by clerical activists. For example, the Religious Right and some liberal groups have been effective in mobilizing constituents at the local level; liberal Protestant denominations, the U.S. Catholic Conference, and Jewish organizations have been better able to influence opinion makers directly. And black churches and some fundamentalist groups have preferred partisan electoral involvement.

Hertzke also analyzes ideological differences between churches. The large Protestant denominations tend toward liberal activism; the fundamentalists tilt conservative on social issues; the U.S. Catholic Conference goes left on economic and foreign policy but right on social matters. Evangelical representation is divided among a moderate-to-conservative mainstream, black churches, and small leftist organizations.

Whose Representatives?

Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of Hertzke’s work is his comparison of church positions with lay opinions. On issues ranging from foreign policy to budget matters, lobbies on both the Right and the Left represent their members very poorly in Washington, according to Hertzke. The reason: The lay constituency of many groups and denominations is far more fractured politically than the respective clerical hierarchies want to admit. (Some of the differences are surprising. For instance, denominational and independent surveys show Southern Baptists are more supportive of food stamps than are members of any of the liberal Protestant denominations.)

Hertzke’s analysis, however, stumbles at several points. He argues that while particular churches may not accurately reflect their members’ views, “the interactive, collective activities of religious lobbyists” do enhance the representativeness of American politics and do articulate the concerns of many people. Though this is probably true, the claims of some clerical activists to represent millions of believers remain nothing less than fraudulent. And while Hertzke is right to suggest that “religious leaders, as trustees of their faith, have the right, indeed, obligation, to apply their understanding of gospel imperatives in the world,” most church lobbying occurs on issues that have no obvious relation to “gospel imperatives.”

Ideology Or Good News?

Indeed, Hertzke raises, but does not really answer, the question of whether the church’s growing involvement in partisan politics has harmed its Christian witness. Religious leaders, he reports, like to say they are not lobbyists because they represent a general view rather than a narrow special interest. But that distinction is easily lost when church officials line up behind business executives or labor leaders or welfare-rights activists to press their case. Since Scripture does not directly speak to most specific policies, clerical lobbyists usually end up promoting their favorite secular ideology rather than Christ’s Good News.

Their actions then cause people to question the church’s larger purpose. Hertzke quotes one unnamed congressional staff member as saying: “The Lutheran Council, the National Council of Churches, the United Church of Christ, etc., have become the butt of jokes. They are totally secularized people who could give a damn about religion.… Secular liberals would agree with everything they stand for, but the nagging question: Why are they religious at all? Why bother? Does this policy flow out of a profound, transcendental sense—or as a hasty addition to liberal politics?”

Religion has an important role to play in politics, for if Christian values do not predominate in the public square, other principles will. But the denominational divisions explored by Hertzke show how hard it is to create a common Christian legislative agenda. In fact, the church’s most powerful impact on policy, writes Hertzke, comes not through lobbying, but rather from “its indirect, cultural influence, providing the moral restraint essential in a democratic society, educating people in their obligations to each other, and directing the attention of citizens occasionally away from the self-interest, materialism, and hedonism which spring up in a society which celebrates individual freedom.”

Representing God in Washington is an invaluable guide to the activities of the many religious lobbyists who now roam the corridors of Capitol Hill. Hertzke’s generally positive assessment of their involvement in partisan legislative struggles, however, underestimates the erosion in the church’s credibility to speak to more fundamental biblical truths that results from such involvement. For as the church has become just another interest group in a faction-ridden political process, its transcendent message of the risen Christ has grown increasingly faint.

C. S. Lewis As Father And Friend

Lenten Lands: My Childhood with Joy Davidman and C. S. Lewis, by Douglas H. Gresham (Macmillan, 225 pp.; $16.95, hardcover) and Jack: C. S. Lewis and His Times, by George Sayer (Harper & Row, xvii + 278 pp.; $17.95, hardcover). Reviewed by Pat Hargis, assistant professor of writing and literature at Judson College, Elgin, Illinois.

Anyone who returns to the writings of C. S. Lewis time after time finds that each reading reveals more depth than the one before. The same is true of Lewis’s life. Though several biographies and collections of reminiscences have been published already, authors continue to return to the subject to explore new and different aspects. In this twenty-fifth year since Lewis’s death, two complementary views of his life add valuable insights into one of the century’s best-known Christians.

The preface to Lenten Lands notes: “This book is not primarily a book about C. S. Lewis; it is a book about Douglas Gresham.” Nevertheless, Gresham knows that it will mainly be read because he is one of Lewis’s two stepsons, and therefore offers his distinct angle on Lewis and his marriage to Joy Davidman, Gresham’s mother.

Gresham has no ax to grind or theory to put forward; his anecdotal ramblings are relaxing and enjoyable reading. He is a good storyteller, at least as far as particular incidents go, with a wonderful sense of humor. Gresham, now a prosperous farmer living in Tasmania (how he got there is part of his story), occasionally arranges material awkwardly or writes in an affected fashion. But his book gives a splendid impression of what the household was like at the Kilns during the 1950s. It is a welcome addition to the various memoirs of Lewis, and almost as valuable as brother Warnie Lewis’s diaries, Brothers and Friends (Harper & Row, 1982).

Important Relationships

George Sayer, one of Lewis’s students at Oxford who also became a personal friend, follows the approach of a traditional literary biography—and produces a good one. While writing for an audience who may be unfamiliar with Lewis’s life, Sayer manages to offer some important new perspectives that even Lewis fans will find informative. His treatment of Lewis’s childhood, youth, and education is excellent, especially as it explores Lewis’s relationship to his father, which Sayer examines more fully than anyone else to date.

Sayer also offers a significant new evaluation of Lewis’s relationship with Mrs. Moore, the mother of his roommate during officer training in World War I. After Paddy Moore died in action, Lewis fulfilled his promise to look after Mrs. Moore, who has usually been portrayed as an ill-tempered woman who distracted Lewis from more important things with domestic tedium and tyranny. Sayer claims this was probably the case only during and after World War II, when Mrs. Moore was getting old and ill. After World War I and throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Mrs. Moore provided Lewis with emotional support and a domestic environment, which did him good and which he enjoyed.

Sayer’s success in these and other important points comes not only because of his long friendship with Lewis, but also because he is the first biographer to make extensive use of “The Lewis Papers,” a large collection of family letters, diaries, and other papers collected and compiled by Warnie Lewis.

Literary Digressions

As in many literary biographies, the sections on Lewis’s books feel like digressions from the main thrust, rather than integral parts of the whole. Curiously enough, they digress not when too long, but when too short. A substantial chapter on Dymer (Lewis’s second book, a long narrative poem) is outstanding, largely because space has been devoted to its summary and interpretation. On the other hand, the two pages given to Perelandra will say little to anyone who has read the book and will probably not convince those who have not read it to do so.

A Call For Consistency

Completely Pro-Life, by Ronald J. Sider (InterVarsity Press, 240 pp.; $7.95, paper). Reviewed by Myron S. Augsburger, president of the Christian College Coalition and minister at Washington Community Fellowship, Washington, D.C.

To think Christianly about life begins with the recognition that we were all created in the image of God. Life is a divine gift, and we treat it as a sacrament, as an extension of divine love. As evangelical Christians, we are challenged to engage in careful and serious thinking. Completely Pro-Life: Building a Consistent Stance is an expression of this kind of thinking, dealing effectively with the challenge of consistency in our attitudes toward the sacredness of life.

The book, in one respect, is a statement of the position of Evangelicals for Social Action. Ron Sider, president of ESA was assisted by qualified ESA staff, who contributed about one-third of the material. The teamwork itself is a witness to the consensus of thought that does already exist among many evangelicals on the issues of abortion, the family, nuclear weapons, and responsibility to the poor. Where differences remain, Sider urges Christians at all points along the religious and political spectrum to be consistent in their prolife vision. For example, he calls conservatives who condemn abortion to consistency in the area of militarism, and liberals who oppose military spending to consistency on abortion.

A Declaration Of Identity

This book is unashamedly and aggressively evangelical. Sider is a soul winner, a man of compassion for people, and the book expresses this fact. Completely Pro-Life is not simply an academic treatment of issues; it is an exercise in identity declaration, a call to compassionate and creative participation in responsible Christian action.

As a people of God in the world, the Christian community needs to think together on these issues. While we are called to avoid “letting the world squeeze us into its mold,” it seems the church today is merely a reflection of the same differences of thought that characterize society in general. This book should help us to think together more carefully and to engage in dialogue with one another more openly.

As a prophetic word, Completely Pro-Life calls us to be a Christian presence in the social order. As we share the righteousness of Christ, we will share his justice/righteousness with all peoples. Christians can make a difference, not by developing religious structures that confront secular structures, but by being truly Christian wherever we are within the structures. While we may not see alike on every aspect of these issues, we can try to see together as we share the shalom of God.

Weaknesses, however, are certainly minor, and the virtues outweigh them without a doubt. In fact, because it is a more up-to-date, better-researched, and well-documented volume, containing helpful bibliographies and photographs, this book may well displace C. S. Lewis: A Biography, by Roger Lancelyn Green and Walter Hooper (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1974), as the standard biography of Lewis.

Highlighted

Diagnosing Social Llls

In The Death of Ethics in America (Word Books), veteran journalist and syndicated columnist Cal Thomas scrutinizes the moral condition of America. With characteristic bite, Thomas confronts issues such as family disintegration, the upsurge of materialism, the moral descent among teenagers, and the dichotomy between the personal lives and the expressed values of politicians from Warren Harding to Gary Hart.

“We must diagnose our ailment before treatments are prescribed. Unfortunately, social engineers and timid politicians are force-feeding the medicine before the diagnosis has been properly made.

… Men and women who are not afraid to tell the truth must be encouraged to take the lead in our country and say what needs to be said, unafraid of the criticism and name calling from those who seek legitimacy for their immoral lifestyles.

I liked what Pope John Paul II said to reporters aboard his plane on the way to the United States. Asked about opposition from the liberal Catholic community to his stand on marriage, divorce, abortion, and other issues, the pope responded that he is used to criticism and, besides, he is not the first to be so criticized. The first, he said, was Jesus Christ!

… If our nation returns to the basic truths that launched our revolution, undergirded our Constitution, and sustained our country through war, economic upheaval, and other uncertainties, we can prosper again. But if we continue down the path of these last twenty-five years, we will be a footnote in the history books of the tyrants who will occupy this land.”

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