A Problem for Pawlenty
Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs took strenuous exception to Gov. Tim Pawlenty's Newsweek interview.
Tim Pawlenty, the very model of a modern GOP candidate, considered by many as a possible front runner for the Presidency in 2012: Anti-science and anti-gay.
Let me ask you about social issues your party has been dealing with. In her book, Palin claims that McCain’s handlers wanted her to be silent about her belief in creationism. How would you describe your view?
I can tell you how we handle it in Minnesota. We leave it to the local school districts. We don’t mandate a curriculum or an approach. We allow for something called “intelligent design” to be discussed as a comparative theory. It doesn’t have to be in science class.
Is this a kind of “moderate” creationism?
Well, Pawlenty is clearly trying to soft-pedal it, but no, there’s nothing “moderate” about this. The fact is that “intelligent design” has no validity whatsoever, as a “comparative theory” or any other kind of theory. ID is not a “theory” at all in the scientific sense — it’s a marketing ploy to repackage fundamentalist Christian creationism in a cheap pseudo-scientific suit.
Johnson's comment seems to me radically unfair. Pawlenty is a model of sensible modern conservatism. His answers to Newsweek's barbed questions indicate an instinct for practical compromise, even as he eschews any personal support for creationism.
That said, the interview - and Johnson's reaction - bespeak a religious problem for Pawlenty that will require much tact on his part and that of his campaign team.
Pawlenty now attends an evangelical church, but he was born and raised a Roman Catholic. He changed denominations at marriage, accepting his wife's evangelical faith.
Without pretending any insight into the souls of the Pawlenty family, I'd guess a trajectory along the following lines. A not especially religious man married a rather more religious woman. She wished the whole family to worship together, and since affiliation mattered more to her, the man followed his wife to the church of her family. Decisions like that must happen a million times a year in this multidenominational country.
But this decision contains two landmines.
1) How will Catholic voters feel about a candidate who left the church? In 1944, President Roosevelt ruled out South Carolina's James F. Byrne as a running mate in large part because he feared Byrne's departure from the church into which he was born (also for marital reasons) would offend Catholic voters.
2) How will evangelical voters feel about a man whose conversion narrative is so pragmatic?
Suggesting that Pawlenty's reaffiliation was motivated by family concerns does not imply that the conversion is insincere. Far from it! It's honorably and attractively American to suspect that most of the differences between religions are more or less decorative ethnocultural elements atop the deep stratum of moral and ethical truth we call the Judaeo-Christian tradition. I wonder if God regards our attempts at theology more or less the way a parent feels about the clay napkin rings the children fabricate at summer camp: the intention is much more attractive than the product. In which case, honoring your spouse pleases Him much more than guessing correctly which religious tradition is least flawed and distorted by human fallibility.
But that's just one man's view. And I don't vote in Iowa.