I live in a neonatal bubble with my little girl right now, so I don't pay as much attention to the news as I might (or... what passes for news in our modern media environment).
I happened to read Ross Douthat's column "Let's Talk About Faith" in the Times this morning, defending Brit Hume of Fox News for his on-air suggestion that Tiger Woods should convert to Christianity to find the "forgiveness and redemption" that the golfer/philanderer might need to stabilize his life right now. Here's what Hume said on Fox the other day. Pretty direct, sincere-sounding. And, predictably, it made some folks really angry.
Douthat defends Hume, saying that liberal democracy is predicated on the notion that we must be free to advocate and promote our beliefs, even and especially religious ones. There is nothing wrong, he says, with holding the view that one's own religion is better than another, nor with promoting that view. Douthat writes:
If you treat your faith like a hothouse flower, too vulnerable to survive in the crass world of public disputation, then you ensure that nobody will take it seriously. The idea that religion is too mysterious, too complicated or too personal to be debated on cable television just ensures that it never gets debated at all.
I could not agree more... agree, that is, in principle.
Michael Gerson, a former Bush speechwriter and now Washington Post columnist, agrees, too. Gerson puts the free-speech concept well, and I quote him here, at length:
[T}he American idea of religious liberty does not forbid proselytization; it presupposes it. Free, autonomous individuals not only have the right to hold whatever beliefs they wish, they also have the right to change those beliefs and to persuade others to change as well. Just as there is no political liberty without the right to change one's convictions and publicly argue for them, there is no religious liberty without the possibility of conversion and persuasion.
Proselytization, admittedly, is fraught with complications. We object to the practice when an unequal power relationship is involved -- a boss pressuring an employee. We are offended by brainwashing. Coercion and trickery violate the whole idea of free religious choice based on open discussion.
But none of this was present in Hume's appeal to Woods. A semi-retired broadcaster holds no unfair advantage over a multimillionaire athlete. Hume was engaged in persuasion.
"Persuasion, by contrast," argues political and social ethics professor Jean Bethke Elshtain, "begins with the presupposition that you are a moral agent, a being whose dignity no one is permitted to deny or to strip from you, and, from that stance of mutual respect, one offers arguments, or invites your participation, your sharing, in a community."
Well said, Mike. In principle.
Except you missed the issue entirely. The issue is not whether Hume has the right to say such a thing--it's whether he exercised good judgment is saying it. The real concern for me is not whether what Hume did was proper for a broadcaster--it's whether what he did was proper for a Christian.
First, I presume Hume was sincere. Hume's Christian faith is real, vital, and, according to his own testimony, came as many of ours do: through suffering. His story, and his accounting of his on air remarks, is printed here in Christianity Today. In a liberal democracy, sincere religious beliefs and convictions are legitimate sources of thought and action. They have a place in the public sphere, the same way one's perspective on free market capitalism has a place. Hume has a right to bring Christianity into the sphere of public discourse--even to argue that Christianity offers a great foundation upon which to build a morally-sound life.
But what Gerson and Douthat miss is that Hume was NOT making a general case for Christianity as a source of moral strength and human character--a case to be examined and considered in the public sphere. He wasn't making an appeal for his general audience to re-affirm or make a Christian commitment. He wasn't even making a statement about Christianity over and against Buddhism. Instead, Hume framed his remark as a personal comment to one person: Tiger Woods. It was, on its face, an attempt to encourage one person convert to the Christian faith, to seek Jesus Christ as savior. It was, in Christianese, an act of personal evangelism. On THAT level, Hume's attempt was ham-handed and probably did more harm than good.
Why? Christian evangelism--sharing the good news--is required of every Christian. But it is rarely, if ever, effective as a broadside. We bear witness to our faith in Christ in humble, sincere, interpersonal encounters. I love the expression that says: "evangelism is one hungry person telling another hungry person where to find bread." That's not what Hume did. Hume used a national pulpit to offer what should have been one-on-one counsel. He wasn't talking to Tiger Woods. He was preaching--to the choir, no less. If Hume was sincere in his motives, he should have called Woods, or written to him. Now perhaps Hume was (or is) a philanderer, too. In some ways, his remarks would have been more defensible if this were true--often the best type of testimony is from a person who has come through the same struggles that the person with whom they're speaking is presently enduring. If that were true, all the more reason to call Woods in person, in private. But if Hume has not endured the same struggles as Woods, he's preaching that which he does not know personally and his effort at evangelism strikes most of us as arrogant and inappropriate.
A second reason that Hume's comments fail is that they probably strike many as naive, if not hypocritical. Hume draws a paycheck from Fox. No employer is morally perfect (not even my employer--a church!). But one could make a strong case, on the grounds of Fox's history of militarism, anti-immigrant stance, and tendency of its hosts and reporters to bear false witness, that Fox does more to undermine the truth of the Christ than any other mainstream media outlet. For Hume to use Fox as the vehicle for his testimony eviscerates its own effectiveness. It's fine for Hume to assert that Christianity is a means of forgiveness--but Hume sounds hypocritical to me when he suggests that it's Woods who needs forgiveness, when he's sitting on the set of a pro-war network whose employees' hands--including his own--are (can I say this?) stained with the blood of innocent victims of current American wars. Yes, the Prince of Peace offers forgiveness to those who sin. The Prince of Peace also expects those who would follow him to be peacemakers, and to repent of our complicity in violence. You don't have to be perfect to evangelize. But you should be working on the log in your own eye before you go messing with the sticks in others'.
Hume's appeal to Woods perpetuates the un-biblical notion, popular in American evangelicalism, that Jesus' chief role is to forgive us of our personal moral failings--our lust, our unfaithfulness, our greed, our jealously. Without noting the ironic tension of working for Fox and professing faith in the Christ, Hume betrays Jesus' essential message: forgiveness is necessary for all of us, for our individual failings and also and especially for or participation in the sinful social systems that undermine the coming of God's Kingdom on earth.
I am fine with Brit Hume promoting the Christian faith as a free speech act. But that's not the issue here. Hume should be criticized not by journalistic standards, but by the standards of his own faith tradition. Evangelism is a gift of the Spirit--and not everyone has it. Nor is every moment the right moment, every place the right place. Unfaithful evangelism does more harm to the Kingdom of God than faithful, humble, prayerful silence.
Hume embarrassed himself and other Christians. Not because he's a broadcaster who brought religion into the public sphere, but because he betrayed the sacred work of evangelism by smothering the Good News under his own bad judgment.
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