Here's a rash thought: Hilary Clinton is not a godless East Coast Intellectual. She is a good midwestern Methodist.
I actually am married to a midwestern Methodist. In his youth, my husband Jess went to Bible study every Sunday, in addition to weekly services. He speaks of Methodism fondly although he also calls it "the oatmeal of religion."
My husband is no longer a church goer but he works in a soup kitchen once a week, feeding homeless people. He is also a hospice volunteer. Every week he visits people who are dying. He holds their hands, reads to them and listens to them tell stories about their lives. During the summer months, he helps out with Habitat for Humanity, driving a truck around to pick up donations for their store.
When people pout about the fact that Hillary is not more flashy or inspiring, I think, oh come on, that's not how she was raised! Methodists are humble. They get the job done and they don't brag about it. They don't build big flashy cathedrals or start wars, that was more the provenance of my old stomping grounds, the Catholic Church. Nor do the Methodists get involved in bossing everyone around. Faith and good deeds and Bible study. That's where it's at, for the oatmeal of religion.
Listening to all the people calling our Hillary crooked, a liar, a monster, really has been a trial for me. So many people are still saying they're going to vote for Mr. Trump because Hillary is so horrible and evil. It's just not what I see and I get personally wounded when the screaming goes south. It makes me want to not get out of bed, to think that so many people in America live in a completely alternate universe, where someone who says "American is great because it is good" gets told she should be in jail. She's given her life to public service and they're still incensed because she once said she'd rather be a lawyer than stay home and bake cookies. Say what?
After watching this whole bewildering show for thirty years I'm pretty sure Hillary Clinton is who she says she is. All those leaked emails just made me believe in her more. She says one thing in private and another in public? Well, who doesn't do that? Only an idiot would run around telling everyone whatever crazy thing comes into his head! (Oh, yeah… that Access Hollywood thing…)
Anyway I like hearing our soon-to-be Methodist-in-Chief talk about the stuff she wants to do. Job creation, education reform, rebuilding the middle class, equal rights for women and people of color. These are all good moral positions.
The one that is closest to my heart right now is trying to reverse global warming. We are commanded by God in both the Old Testament and the New that we be stewards of this good earth. It is past time that we took that commandment seriously, for ourselves, for the global poor—who, we already know are being hit hardest by the extreme weather global warming creates—and for future generations. I think that anyone with a moral compass and even a shred of a belief in God needs to vote for our Hillary on that ground alone.
I also think it's time to turn to our fellow Americans and challenge them to a discussion about morality.
I also grew up in the midwest and I was raised, it must be acknowledged, ultra-Catholic. For eight years I had to go to church every day of the week except for Saturday. I have sixteen years of Catholic education under my belt, Kindergarten through Notre Dame. I'm as collapsed a Catholic as you've ever met—don't get me started—but I know a lot about God, and Jesus, and religious authority, and an abiding yearning for grace and righteousness.
And all my relatives are midwestern Catholics. When I go to Cincinnati to visit my family, I am deep under cover, a bona fide spy in the enemy camp. And let me tell you: way too many of my relatives have been taught to hate our Hillary simply because she defends a woman's right to choose.
I worry that that is what it at the heart of all this nuttiness. It IS all about gender, as we have seen over and over again. But it's not being framed that way, from the point of view of those who would cast us all into a Trumpian hellscape. The American Catholic Church, in concert with the Evangelical Churches, have told their congregations that anyone who supports a woman's right to choose is a baby killer. All other terrors are excused and made light of, next to the ultimate good of enacting laws that will stop the baby killing.
Anyone who is pro-choice is a Baby Killer. Period. That is a big wall to climb, and because those churches are authoritarian in nature, many of their membership do not know how to begin. They don't have to talk to us, or reason with us; they don't have to see us as fellow citizens. We are all baby killers! And they are told by God that the way to save the babies is to stack the Supreme Court. They will vote for a completely immoral person, if he promises to do that.
And the Republican Party has been only too happy to exploit this situation, which is one of the reasons we ended up here.
Hillary's powerful and articulate response to this unholy mess has provided, for the first time in my memory, a real road forward. Her insistence that morality is vital but personal, and that the state has no business interfering in it, is both compassionate and firm. Those on the religious right can hold firm to their beliefs but she is not going to let them impose those beliefs on the rest of us. And she is not afraid to talk about any of it, even to a roomful of powerful Catholics, as she did this week.
People say she's too political. Facing down a room full of Bishops and Cardinals in full regalia a day after she told us all, quite powerfully, that a woman's right to choose is a moral position? That was not political. That was brave. And let's not forget, by the end of her speech they were applauding and cheering for her.
Hillary Clinton is not going to dictate to us what morality is. That is not what Methodists do. They live by their principles and they get the job done. They provide guidance by example.
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October 23, 2016
