Political madrassas?

I got forwarded an article on this from a friend, and saw that J-Walk had linked to it, too, so … what do I think about this?

Grooming Politicians for Christ

[…] Nearly every Monday for six months, as many as a dozen congressional aides ? many of them aspiring politicians ? have gathered over takeout dinners to mine the Bible for ancient wisdom on modern policy debates about tax rates, foreign aid, education, cloning and the Central American Free Trade Agreement.

Through seminars taught by conservative college professors and devout members of Congress, the students learn that serving country means first and always serving Christ. They learn to view every vote as a religious duty, and to consider compromise a sin.

That puts them at the vanguard of a bold effort by evangelical conservatives to mold a new generation of leaders who will answer not to voters, but to God.

“We help them understand God’s purpose for society,” said Bouma, who coordinates the program, known as the Statesmanship Institute, for the Rev. D. James Kennedy. […] It’s one of half a dozen evangelical leadership programs making steady inroads into Washington. […] Such programs share a commitment to developing leaders who read the Bible as a blueprint.

As Kennedy put it: “If we leave it to man to decide what’s good and evil, there will be chaos.”

The implication is that Radical Evangelicals will march on Washington, take over, and turn the US into a theocracy.

On the one hand, I’m sure that if this were a concerted effort by, say, Islamic leaders to do such a thing, many of the conservatives that support such programs would be appalled, ask for investigations, and soundly condemn such activities.

On the other hand, if these programs were using Biblical teaching to support tolerance, social justice, arms control, feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, giving medical care to the indigent — and professed to be just as uncompromising in its efforts — I suspect that a number of folks who see this as a Horrible Danger would suddenly change their tune.

The problem is not, to my mind, that folks of a given religious or philosophical school are banding together to “groom” future political leaders, but the specific policy implications of that given group.

And consider the “leaders who will answer not to voters, but to God” thang. Aside from the inherent nature of leaders answering (in the short run) to voters in a representative democracy, there’s a long line of thought as to the proper role of what representatives should do in office, from Edmund Burke …

“Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”

… to folks like John Kennedy, whose book Profiles in Courage is all about politicians and leaders who followed their judgment, their conscience, their beliefs, rather than what the voters specifically asked for (most often demonstrated by their being voted out of office immediately thereafter).

In the cases Kennedy dictates, we are meant to admire those who “answered” not to the voters, but to their guiding moral and ethical principles (directly attributed to God or not), eschewing compromise in some cases. We can also imagine cases where folks doing so might be “rightfully” excoriated (though, again, that depends less on their having done so than our opinion of what they specifically did).

After all, we look down on leaders who appear to have no guiding principles. We disparage pols who rely on polls to determine which way to turn, or who are open to the highest bidder of power or money or votes. The flip side to that would seem to be someone whose actions are informed and guided by their principles. Is that necessarily an ill thing — or is it judgment on what those principles and their application that actually concerns us.

That may be a false dichotomy, of course. We don’t want amoral, unprincipled, too-easily-influenced/bought leaders, but we probably also don’t want leaders who can never compromise, for whom particular (or all?) policy positions become absolutes between good and evil.

Still, when I read a story like this, I am less worried about a conspiracy of religious types working to systematically get their adherents into office and government per se, but the specifics of the beliefs they carry along with them. Some of those are certainly worrisome, and worth seeking to counter by putting in folks who are guided by other moral and ethical principles that I agree with.

That is, after all, sort of how it’s supposed to work, I think.