St. Louis Post-Dispatch: The gospel according to Rick Santorum
Between 1960, when John F. Kennedy's Catholicism was an issue, and 2008, when Barack Obama had to distance himself from his pastor's incendiary language, religion was not a major topic in any presidential campaign.
In 1976, there was a mini-furor over Jimmy Carter's profession of having been "born-again" and having had "lust in his heart." Yet 24 years later, except for a few hundred disputed votes in Florida, America would have elected a Jewish vice president.
But this year, the finalists in the Republican presidential primary race include Mitt Romney, a Mormon; Newt Gingrich, a twice-divorced Lutheran-turned-Southern Baptist-turned-Catholic; and Rick Santorum, a Catholic traditionalist. Because white evangelical Protestants are a significant part of the Republican base, and none of the candidates has a natural claim to them, the candidates desperately are seeking common ground.
But until last Saturday, no presidential candidate ever had made an issue of the another candidate's faith. That changed when Santorum told an Ohio audience that Obama's agenda is based on things that "are not scientifically proven" and "some phony theology. Not a theology based on the Bible. A different theology."
Santorum hastened to say he was not challenging Obama's Christian cred. God forbid. "In the Christian church there are a lot of different stripes of Christianity," he said. "If the president says he's a Christian, he's a Christian."
What a guy.
Any time a politician starts talking theology, people should be nervous. And if he wants to limit the discussion to concepts that are scientifically proven, he would do well to avoid the topic of theology altogether.
On Sunday, Santorum told Bob Schieffer on CBS News' "Face the Nation": "Well, I was talking about the radical environmentalists. That's what I was talking about: Energy, this idea that man is here to serve the Earth, as opposed to husband its resources and be good stewards of the Earth. And I think that is a phony ideal. I don't believe that that's what we're here to do — that man is here to use the resources and use them wisely, to care for the Earth, to be a steward of the Earth, but we're not here to serve the Earth.
"The Earth is not the objective. Man is the objective. I think a lot of radical environmentalists have it upside-down."
Even for Santorum, this idea is spectacularly obtuse. There is nothing radical or anti-biblical about concern over global warming. The idea is not to preserve the Earth for Earth's sake, but for the 9 billion people who will inhabit it in the next 30 years.
It might be nice for Santorum and the fossil-fuel industry to claim a biblical foundation for continuing to spew carbon into the atmosphere. But science is a better foundation for policy-making than belief.
But let's give Santorum's Bible-based theology its due. In the first book of Genesis, God tells Adam, "Be fruitful and increase in number. Fill the earth and subdue it."
We have been fruitful all right. We have filled the Earth and subdued it to the point of ruin. And as to the point of stewardship, which Jesus addressed in the parable related in Matthew 25, we have some work to do to become "good and faithful."
