People For the American Way emails to highlight something from last Friday’s pre-Thanksgiving celebration of Christian virtue in Iowa. Here is Carly Fiorina:
“I do think it’s worth saying,” Fiorina declared, “that people of faith make better leaders because faith gives us humility, faith teaches us that no one of us is greater than any other one of us, that each of us are gifted by God. Faith gives us empathy; we know that all of us can fall and every one of us can be redeemed. And faith gives us optimism, it gives us the belief that there is something better, that there is someone bigger than all of us.”
PFAW is doing the Lord’s work here—so to speak—but I can’t get too worked up about this. It’s annoying, but what do you expect at a big gathering of evangelical Christians in Iowa? But then there’s this from omnipresent messaging guru Frank Luntz:
Luntz then followed up on Fiorina’s statement by declaring that “I can back that up statistically,” asserting that “every single positive factor that you can describe is directly correlated to someone’s relationship with faith, with God, and all the pathologies that you would criticize are directly related to a rejection of God.”
You know, I’ve got nothing against organized religion. It provides an important part of life for a lot of people and does a lot of good charitable work. It also does some harm, but what human organization doesn’t?
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But it sure does get tiresome to hear Christians like Fiorina constantly preening about how great they are and then in their next breath boasting about their humility. Fiorina also explicitly suggests that nonbelievers are second-rate leaders and then immediately congratulates believers like herself for their empathy. As for optimism, I have rarely come across a community more convinced that the entire country has become a grim and ghastly abomination than evangelical Christians. Generally speaking, I’d say that evangelical Christians—the ones who blather in public anyway—are among the least humble, least empathetic, and least optimistic people in the country.
Still, you can just chalk all this up to political hyperbole and let it go. But then Luntz steps in to bring the Science™. It’s not just Fiorina’s opinion that believers are better than nonbelievers. By God, Luntz can prove that every single bad thing in the world is due to unbelievers. Who needs faith when you have dial tests? So there you have it: Revel in your overwhelming superiority, Christians. What better way to win sympathy for your views?
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Have a nice Thanksgiving, everyone. Eat with a few sinners and publicans this year, OK?
