The Conscience of a Pentecostal

Some defenders of former Missouri Sen. John Ashcroft, President George W. Bush’s nominee to be attorney general, say he is attacked because he is a person of religious faith. That is not accurate. Most citizens are religious, and most public officials profess a faith. What critics have questioned is whether the specific content of Ashcroft’s faith, and his manner of expressing it, might compli- cate his work as attorney general.

During his confirmation hearings, he told the Senate Judiciary Committee that “as a man of faith, I take my word and my integrity seriously.” That stance, Ashcroft said, means that he will enforce the laws “as they are written” and not enforce his “personal preferences.” Also, it “means advancing the national interest, not advocating my personal interest.”

The words “preferences” and “interest” are terribly weak. A man of faith like Ashcroft is guided by convictions grounded in profound belief, not preferences. His commitments go far beyond “personal interest.” By choosing softer words, Ashcroft hoped to make himself more salable to skeptical senators and the American public.

But Ashcroft’s “preferences” are not what led Bush to nominate him to be attorney general. The new administration needed someone unassailably acceptable to the far-right Republican constituency, notably conservative evangelical Christians. That constituency does not regard Ashcroft’s positions on abortion, gun possession, homosexuality, and the size and scope of the federal government as mere preferences. They represent God’s will and way.

Ashcroft’s posture represents an extreme version of a familiar American dilemma. For example, if, on religious grounds, he thinks that abortion is murder, can he with integrity enforce laws that permit such murder?

Public officials, including Cabinet members, have often faced such a dilemma. In 1915, Woodrow Wilson’s secretary of state, William Jennings Bryan, then an avowed pacifist, followed his conscience and resigned when he saw the president drawing the nation into World War I.

Resigning is not the only way some officials face issues where private faith and public duty clash. In 1984, former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo delivered a classic speech at Notre Dame that disturbed anti-abortion foes. He drew on a version of Catholic teaching that made it possible for him to claim that a Catholic could oppose abortion in private life but be called in public to support laws that permit it.

C. Everett Koop, a physician with deep evangelical convictions, had to remind the Christian right, whenever it disapproved of his policies and administration, that he was “called”--good Calvinist language--to be the nation’s surgeon general, not chaplain general.

Now comes Ashcroft, a firm and proud member of the Assemblies of God, the largest Pentecostal denomination in the world. Pentecostals are new to high government posts. According to historian Edith L. Blumhofer and sociologist Margaret M. Poloma, Pentecostals tend to be “apolitical.” Yet, many have recently been drawn into politics because of their opposition to abortion.

The American public, according to polls, consistently favor public servants who have “integrity” and promote morality. They go on to say that, ordinarily, such morality is grounded in religion. Ashcroft, in speeches to Christian conservative groups, has suggested that the grounding must be in religion, an affirmation appealing to fewer, but still not widely disfavored.

The public, however, is uneasy when personal faith is too closely applied to specific legislation and policies. Ashcroft may ground his views in his reading of the Bible, his grasp of Pentecostal faith, his loyalty to his Assemblies of God roots. But the public knows that other people of faith and integrity have come to opposite views on the basis of the same Bible and similar religious traditions.

How will Ashcroft reconcile his conviction that abortion is “murder” with his duty to enforce laws that permit such “murder”?

Public officials as “persons of faith” approach such conflicts in a variety of ways. Ashcroft’s religious tradition is “literalist” about the Bible, ready to refer to “absolutes” and intent on using biblical teaching to fashion civil law. Literalists and absolutists--and staunch Assemblies of God members say they are both--cite biblical passages against homosexual acts and find passages to support their “abortion is murder” claim. Senators who pressed Ashcroft on his views did not learn how, they only learned that he had worked all this out and that his oath of office would dictate his responses.

Conscience has come into play in a different way for Ashcroft the lawmaker. Lawmaking is easier on the conscience: One fights for what is congruent with one’s outlook, including faith. One loses? Conscience is intact. Enforcing laws that are incongruent with that outlook? That is another matter.

Another option is to take the Bryan road and not serve when demands on conscience are too conflicting. Many citizens, often Christians for whom Jesus is king and who take his “turn the other cheek” admonitions literally and absolutely, have refused military service and paid the price for their refusal. For people like Ashcroft, refusing appointment would have been an expression of integrity. Indeed, some of his co-religionists may feel he gave away too much to appease his Democratic critics, and that he cannot work his way back satisfyingly.

Also, public officials of faith and integrity are not always literalists or absolutists. The Roman Catholic bishops’ letters on nuclear war and the economy, as well as Protestant councils and thinkers, show another approach, what Reinhold Niebuhr, the 20th century’s top theologian, called “Christian realism.” They need such resources when they deal with the “impossible possibilities” that face those who would respond to Jesus’ radical words. Non-Christians, like Jewish Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, find parallel ways in their traditions to deal with conflicts of conscience in public life. To enter politics is to enter a world of compromise and conflicting interests and faiths.

Finally, other people of faith and integrity find occasions when a “higher law” compels them to disobey civil law. Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer became a traitor when he plotted against Adolf Hitler’s life. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. appealed to higher law when he violated civil law. But they were not public officials sworn to enforce laws that they think permit murder or gross sin.

Not all clashes are as profound as those convoked by pro-life, pro-choice issues. Catholic judges have accepted church teaching against divorce but granted divorces, following civil law. But on the life-and-death issues, and to people of Ashcroft’s faith, “killing babies” through abortion or flaunting divine law through permissiveness in respect to homosexuals are profound transgressions.

As so often is the case, two integrities are at stake in the soul of a public figure. How Ashcroft, if confirmed, will relate the two will provide a drama that will be much on view in the seasons ahead.