Dean Hasn’t Got a Prayer in Dixie

After decades of reticence about religion, Howard Dean is now talking up his personal faith in Jesus Christ. How come? Could sinking poll numbers have anything to do with his sudden openness? Yet before Dean ventures too far into territory that’s obviously unfamiliar to him, he might pause and realize that those who prefer theocracy to democracy have already anointed their candidate -- and he isn’t it.

Dean is the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, but months of pounding from his fellow Democratic hopefuls have taken their toll on his general-election standing. According to Newsweek, his 7-point deficit against George W. Bush has deepened into a 13-point deficit.

Dean’s biggest hurdle is the South, which is home to nearly a third of the electoral votes in the country. So, looking ahead to November, the former Vermont governor has been struggling, however awkwardly, to appeal to white Southerners.

In November, he said he wanted to be “the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks.” Every Yankee veteran of the Civil War must have spun in his patriot grave over those words, but Dean rival Richard Gephardt had the best retort: “I will be the candidate for the guys with American flags in their pickup trucks.” Dean eventually apologized.

Now he is trying another route into the hearts of Dixie: speaking about religion in the region that the City University of New York’s 2001 American Religious Identification Survey called the most religious part of the country. As Dean told the Washington Post on Sunday, “I am gradually getting more comfortable to talk about religion in ways I did not talk about before.”

In fact, a recent cover story in the New Republic called Dean “one of the most secular candidates to run for president in modern history.” And the Post reporter, betraying a certain skepticism about Dean’s beliefs, noted that the Vermonter “rarely attends church services, unless it is for a political event.” Indeed, for all his religious display -- “God bless you and keep you,” he said recently in South Carolina -- Dean displays considerable unfamiliarity with the Bible. Having volunteered that he most identifies with the New Testament, he was asked to name his favorite book. His answer was the Book of Job, which, of course, is in the Old Testament.

Explaining his clumsiness, Dean said, “I am not used to wearing religion on my sleeve.”

But by using those particular words, he piled verbal klutziness on top of religious clumsiness. A proud Christian would be unlikely to admit wearing religion on his sleeve, because ostentatious devotion is directly condemned by Jesus. In Matthew 6, Jesus denounced “hypocrites” who turn praying into showing off.

Instead, Jesus commanded his followers, “when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen.” And so one might wonder: If Jesus disdained showy prayer, how would he feel about showily praying politicians?

In fact, in a country full of many faiths -- and of many people with no faith at all -- the public’s business is best conducted by those willing to keep their own beliefs close to their hearts, but never on their sleeves. That’s what the founders had in mind when they created the American republic. For the most part, Washington, Jefferson & Co. were believing Christians, but for their political inspiration they didn’t look to Moses or Jesus but rather to the pagan Greeks and Romans -- and also to theological radicals such as the Freemasons. That’s why early American public buildings look like Greco-Roman temples, and why there’s that Masonic pyramid on the back of the dollar bill, and not a cross.

That classical civic faith has faded. Today, candidates clamber onto the Born Again Express. And Dean will never catch up with Bush, who said in 1999 that his favorite political philosopher was Christ.

Indeed, those who declaim the loudest about their faith have already anointed Bush as their chosen candidate for 2004. On Friday, televangelist Pat Robertson announced that God had told him that “George Bush is going to win in a walk ... the Lord has just blessed him.”

Among such voters, Dean doesn’t have a prayer. So he might as well run at least honestly, as the candidate of Democrats, not theocrats.