I've been stewing for a couple of days over John Hagee's comparison of Rick Perry to Abraham Lincoln. It's just one sentence, but it's a very dangerous one:
"We pray for our governor Rick Perry who has had the courage today to call this time of fasting and prayer just as Abraham Lincoln did in the darkest days of the civil war." (LINK)
To begin with, this is one of those sentences with "weasel words." If you're not familiar with weasel words, they're something salesmen, politicians, and con artists use to great effect. They're powerful words designed to change people's emotions regardless of the content of the sentence in which they're used. Any great salesman will tell you the truth of this concept: It's not what you say. It's what people hear.
On the surface, this sentence is relatively innocuous. Abraham Lincoln did call for a national day of prayer. Perry did institute a statewide day of prayer. The country is in economic crisis today. The country was in economic crisis in Lincoln's day. Valid comparison.
But that's not all there was to Hagee's comment. Not by a long shot. Abraham Lincoln represents far more than just another president who signed a day of prayer into being. George Washington and John Adams established the precedent, not Lincoln. Hagee wanted the faithful to remember the Civil War. And in comparing Perry to Lincoln, he wanted the audience to picture Perry as a modern-day Lincoln -- the much beloved "good guy." The one fighting for the sovereignty of the godly nation against those uppity rebels, intent on spreading their moral turpitude to every state in the nation.
The image of Lincoln also reinforces a prevalent Christian belief. Many evangelicals really do see Christian life as an ongoing war -- a cosmic struggle between good and evil. They see the agents of Satan working to subvert the will of God. Demons and angels are fighting it out in the spiritual trenches, and the hearts and souls of humans are the battleground. The drought, the economic crisis, the debate over abortion? These are not the main issues. They are side-effects of the greater conflagration occuring in our country's collective spiritual well being.
This is where the Lincoln comparison breaks down. This is why it is not a unifying theme from our past, but a radical departure from the American tradition that Lincoln helped to create.
Earlier this morning, I was thinking about the passage of history, and how shocked many of the Founding Fathers would have been if they had known what America would look like today. In particular, I imagined what Lincoln might have done if someone had been able to convince him that by issuing the day of prayer in 1863, he would give Rick Perry the justification to spend millions of dollars on a prayer meeting in a stadium while a hundred thousand poor students sweltered in the heat just to get a backpack and immunization for school -- only to be turned away for lack of supplies.
Lincoln's views on religion were mostly private. There has been considerable debate about whether he was a "True Believer(TM)," a political panderer, a pantheist, or even some form of pre-Darwin non-theist. Both sides make reasonable points. (Was he an atheist?) (Was he a theist?) But the fact that his theism or lack thereof was so private that we cannot piece it together is one of the most powerful arguments against Rick Perry's presumptuous comparison.
Rick Perry is a Christian first and a politician for Jesus second. His commitment to the nation is synonymous with his commitment to Jesus. Somewhere around fifteenth or sixteenth place in his book of priorities comes respect for the rights, liberties, health, and well being of every U.S. citizen, regardless of their belief. Lincoln's firm stand against slavery was certainly informed by economics, and the Emancipation Proclamation was definitely an effort to weaken the military strength of the South. But regardless of whether his concern was first for the slaves or first for winning the war, his ultimate goal was the greater good. The same cannot be said for Rick Perry.
Let me say this again, because it's a human crime of... forgive me... Biblical proportions. While Rick Perry was spending MILLIONS of dollars to organize a prayer meeting, there were a HUNDRED THOUSAND poor children sweltering in one hundred degree heat several miles away. They were turned away because there was nothing more to give them. While Rick Perry spent MILLIONS OF DOLLARS to have a prayer meeting.
Lincoln would not be pleased.
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