Spiritual advisors

It was quite a spectacle. Rev. Jeremiah Wright comes out of retirement to perform a spectrum of parodies and stereotypes guaranteed to make a lot of people angry and to hurt one high-profile parishioner.

At times insightful but most of the time ridiculous, Sen. Barack Obama's pastor showed the world how one can get a lot of attention without making much sense.

"Reverend Wright got it right on a few points," Obama explained in front of subdued supporters in North Carolina. "He is not my spiritual advisor. He is not my spiritual mentor. He was my pastor."

Whether or not these strong words can minimize the damage done in one weekend by one retired and reckless minister is still to be determined. But what is evident from both the spectacle and the defense is that Protestants are no longer immune to the charge of undue influence from the pulpit.

Given how important religion, particularly Christianity, has become in defining a candidate's moral character, it may come as a surprise that the American experiment had a particular type of religious expression on mind.

The founders wanted people whose sense of morality was inwardly determined, who went to church with

their eyes wide open, and who could think beyond the logic of each Sunday's sermon. In other words, they wanted Protestants.

John Locke, the 17th century thinker who pretty much wrote the book on liberal democracy, described church as a "free and voluntary Society," a place where thoughtful people went to weigh and consider the value of the sermon and for "mutual Conversation and Discourse."

Each citizen would choose a particular congregation because of the quality of the discourse, not because their parents were raised in that faith. If the discourse dissolved into mindlessness or ideologies, a free citizen should go elsewhere.

Given the type of religiosity expected of its citizens, one can see why the founders thought that nonProtestant religions would not produce good citizens. Catholicism, Judaism and Islam were all problematic because all three promoted the community of the faithful over individual autonomy.

In the eyes of classical liberal thinkers, Catholicism, Judaism and Islam demanded orthodoxy at the expense of reason. To be Catholic, Jewish or Muslim was to be intellectually enslaved.

NonProtestant candidates know this history. Both John Kennedy and Mario Cuomo had to testify how each could think beyond the influence of the Pope. Up until the last few weeks, Protestant candidates had a free pass on this test. What we learned from Obama's denouncement of his former pastor is that Protestants can end up in the same pew (so to speak) as nonProtestant candidates. "He's not my spiritual advisor" is the Protestant equivalent of "When it comes to public policy, I can think differently than the Pope."

The political fallout aside, Senator Obama's predicament provides us with a useful reminder that we should not close our eyes when we go to church. We cannot afford to surrender our judgment when facing a spiritual advisor. We have to keep thinking through our faith.

That seems to be the message John Locke was trying to cultivate with his emphasis that church is a voluntary association. Unfortunately, in recent times, religiosity has come to look more like unreflective obedience than weighing and considering the various possibilities in a moral conversation. Ironically, the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church may have made its parishioners closer to John Locke's ideal than their Protestant brothers and sisters.

Of course, Obama's predicament could easily be reduced to a problem of the Black Church and not of concern to the rest of us. Racial stereotypes might suggest that Black candidates (even if they are Protestant) are more at risk of being influenced by their spiritual advisors than white candidates.

Under that line of reasoning, a lot of white Democrats in North Carolina and Indiana will go with Hillary since she seems free of any crazed and charismatic influences. (Sure, there's her husband, but everyone knows that husbands don't carry the same degree of influence as pastors.)

In my mind, Obama's predicament has less to do with the Black Church and more to do with the past 20 years of presidential politicking. As long as candidates create a spectacle of their religious affiliations, they should have to answer to the charge of undue influence. As long as candidates participate in the ruse that going to church is a sign of moral character, or that observing religious practices is a sign of stability, they need to explain to us how they actually think for themselves. It seems only fair that in an era of great shows of faith, all religious candidates should be put through the paces that used to be reserved to Catholics.

But here's an interesting complication: John Locke figured out a lot of wonderful things in his life, but one thing he couldn't accept were the powerful intellectual traditions of Catholicism, Judaism and Islam, all of which allowed for people's eyes to be wide, wide open while observing religious rites. Within those traditions one could have a spiritual advisor and an intellectual sparring partner. Averroes, Aquinas and Maimonides are examples of intellectual heavyweights who engaged and challenged their spiritual advisors.

But Protestantism turned its back on the scholastic tradition in favor of exit strategies. Interestingly enough, while Obama may have been accused of something normally associated with Catholics (dangerous spiritual influence), his solution was right of the Book of Locke (go find another congregation). Given the Protestant biases built into our culture, that may make political sense. But it was also a missed opportunity. We already know how to leave a community when we disagree with its leader. That lesson of Locke's was easy. What we still need to figure out is how to bring reason to bear when we disagree with our spiritual advisors. After all, that's the sort of practice Obama keeps promising to deliver.

Meg Mott teaches political theory at Marlboro College. She writes from Cedar Street in Brattleboro.