Hopkins on Gerson

Kara Hopkins has an elegant review of Heroic Conservatism, former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson’s book, over at The American Conservative. Worth reading in full, but here’s a taste. Gerson on war:

Shortly after Gerson began scripting Bush, reporters noticed Biblical phrases creeping into the presidential rhetoric and wrote, with cryptologist’s glee, that Bush was sending coded messages to his Christian base. The truth was more perverse. As Presbyterian minister Fritz Ritsch noted, when Bush alluded to the hymn “There’s Power in the Blood” in a State of the Union text, he spoke of the “wonder‐​working power” not of the “precious blood of the Lamb” but of “the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people” — the world’s substitute saviors. Similarly, the president referred to the U.S. as “the light of the world,” which the “darkness” has been unable to put out — a clear invocation of John 1:1 – 5. As evangelical pastor Gregory Boyd pointed out, “In this paradigm, what applies to Jesus (“the light of the world”) can be applied to our country, and what applies to Satan (“the darkness”) can be applied to whomever resists our country. We are of God; they are of the Devil. We are the light; they are the darkness. Our wars are therefore ‘holy’ wars. With all due respect, this is blatant idolatry.”

And on Gerson’s big government conservatism:

[None of this is] to say that social justice isn’t a Christian concern. But Gerson is more stirred by abolitionists and activists like William Wilberforce and Martin Luther King Jr., and the sweeping social change they wrought, than he is by Christ’s own model, which was conspicuously short on political impact and long on individual acts of mercy. He implies that his giants — poverty, AIDS, illiteracy, genocide — are too big for hand‐​to‐​hand combat. Thus the Biblical call to “do unto the least of these” — the hallmark of which is personal sacrifice — must be replaced by government programs — the wellspring of which is coercion. If this constitutes an act of worship, it honors a failed god.

Again, worth a read. I haven’t seen Gerson get a favorable reading anywhere this side of the Ethics and Public Policy Center.