Why Lincoln Matters by Mario M. Cuomo
Wolfe, Alan
A DEMOCRAT'S REPUBLICAN Why Lincoln Matters Today More than Ever 1lario 11. Cuomo Alan Wolfe ormer New York governor Mario Cuomo believes that Abraham Lincoln was a great president and...
...Just as texts are not plays and scores are not music unless they are performed, so faith is neither subjective interpretation nor objective text...
...This idea is supported and expanded by the other essays in Performing the Faith...
...Two insightful studies of Bonhoeffer begin the book...
...To be a people of peace is not merely to be nonviolent (though it is that), but to be patient, hopeful, and graceful in living in and living out the faith...
...Unlike today's Republicans, Lincoln had no fear of government...
...Lincoln matters to us, among other reasons, because he matPerforming the Faith Bonhoeffer and the Piactice of Nonviolence 11n1/t...
...It does not correlate formulated Christian answers with human questions...
...As serious as the threat is of an act of terrorism," he writes, "it cannot compare with the threat to the nation posed by the Civil War," implying that Lincoln had greater justification for his violation of civil liberties than Bush...
...Lincoln matters for almost more reasons than one can count...
...Had the South been allowed to go its own way, Cuomo re-minds us, other regions would have taken the hint as well...
...In the aftermath of Dred Scott, Lincoln certainly applied political litmus tests to the issue of who would succeed Roger Taney, just as Bush does in the aftermath of Roe v. Wade...
...In them, Hauer-was seeks to reclaim Bonhoeffer from "secular" theologians and situation ethicists...
...What appealed to me most about Lincoln was not his humble background," Cuomo writes, "but his lucidity, the sureness of his logic, the cogency of his analysis, and the apparent reasonableness of his conclusions...
...Performing the faith is not a "quantitative" thing, as if piling up performances increased faith...
...Why Lincoln Matters, though short, is really two books...
...Rather, the more skilled we become at living in and living out the faith, the deeper and richer our faith is...
...Among his books is The Transformation of American Religion (Free Press...
...He crosses the line separating faith and politics that Lincoln worked so hard to establish...
...Still, it raises the question why Cuomo does not simply ad-dress the current situation in his own words, for surely we need them...
...Bush, Cuomo argues, wants those who have already had all of life's opportunities to have even more of them...
...Of course he saved the Union...
...If racial injustice moves our current president, he has neither the eloquence nor the passion to address it...
...At this point, the scorecard approach adopted by the governor to compare these two men begins to break down...
...Lincoln was no great civil libertarian, and were Bush interested in history, which he is not, he could cite Lincoln's administration in support of the Patriot Act...
...In addition, for Cuomo, preserving the Union makes little sense unless the Union stands for something, and here Lincoln matters again, for he gave concrete meaning to the hints to-ward equality made in the Declaration of Independence...
...As Cuomo is not loath to admit, there are similarities between our greatest president and the present one that work to the disadvantage of both...
...Cuomo is right to compare these two presidents and to find the current one lacking...
...Even virtuoso soloists require a performing community to train them and to sustain their work...
...It is practical, not theoretical, wisdom...
...Permitting any group that does not like what Washing-ton does to simply walk away would spell disaster...
...Alan Wolfe is director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College...
...Other essays pay some overdue debts, especially to the late Victor Preller, renown scholar of Aquinas and Wittgenstein...
...Faith is performance...
...Although relying on Lincoln's own words and applying them to our own situation, the speech sounds Cuomoesque—a compliment, I hasten to add...
...The same could be said of Bush's approach to the Supreme Court...
...Cuomo Alan Wolfe ormer New York governor Mario Cuomo believes that Abraham Lincoln was a great president and that George W. Bush has so far proved a pretty bad one...
...Faith is the work of dis-ters to Mario Cuomo, and we should be indebted to the governor for bringing him once again to our attention...
...There are other reasons to appreciate Lincoln...
...The dance steps of faith are formed by the grace sustaining us, especially in the virtue of peaceableness, a necessary work of Christian charity...
...Performing faith is not the work of individual people...
...It is clear why it is Lincoln's intellect more than his biography that appeals to Cuomo, who, after all, is remembered most of all for his eloquence and common sense, qualities rapidly disappearing in today's political environment...
...Theologians are to say and show how the community can per-form the faith in the theater of the world, no matter how absurd, challenging, or supportive that world may be...
...The hallmark of performing the Christian faith is grace in action, as in a dance...
...Always stimulating, some-times exasperating, never boring, Hauerwas challenges us Christians to rethink our easy accommodations with the dominant culture...
...ciples, those disciplined in following Christ, however creative and inventive their performance may be...
...His ability to use the language of religion in his speeches while endorsing principles of religious freedom and diversity (he was the first to appoint a Jew as a military chaplain and took the lead in denouncing an anti-Semitic comment made by General Ulysses S. Grant) got the balance between religion and politics just right...
...By making government the enemy, Bush has distanced himself from his own party's once rock-solid commitment to internal improvement...
...And for excellent performers, be they actors, dancers, musicians, or Christians, the work plays them as much as they play the work, especially when they engage in that ecstatic improvisation that marks a brilliant performance...
...in Pastoral Studies Parish Nursing http://www.bc.edu irepm 4 -0 Generous Financial Aid Special Rate for Those Employed or Volunteering in a New England Diocese Graduate Student Housing Enriching Liturgical and Social Opportunities Both Academic Year and Summer Study Mary Magennis Boston College Institute of Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry (IREPM) Chestnut Hill, MA 02467-3931 800.487-1167 or 617.552-8440 fax: 617.552.0811 email: irepm@bc.edu BOSTON COLLEGE Commonweal 28 September 10, 2004 lambastes Bush, but combining the two does not always work...
...Yet even while admitting that Bush and Lincoln are not far apart on some issues, Cuomo insists that Lincoln's record is better...
...There are two reasons for this—one he acknowledges and one he does not...
...Abraham Lincoln matters so much to Mario Cuomo because George W. Bush has accomplished so little...
...Still, as Bill and Hillary Clinton reminded us, it makes little sense to turn down the offer of two for one, especially when the two come from a man as admirable and thoughtful as this one...
...Christian faith lives, moves, and has its being in the performance called discipleship...
...Yet no one, in the aftermath of September 11, knew whether other at-tacks would be coming and how serious they might be...
...Still, Cuomo's method, inspired at the start, slowly tires...
...Perhaps, Cuomo suggests, we can learn where and how the latter president went wrong by comparing his actions and ideas to those of the former...
...Cuomo ventures too often, at least for my taste, into the realm of the imagination, even offering a speech that Lincoln would have given as an address to Congress in 2004...
...Do we really need to know what position Lincoln would have taken on stem-cell research or whether he would support the interstate highway and space pro-grams...
...Despite what Cuomo says about the relative unimportance of Lincoln's background, he does believe that America at its best offers opportunity to the many, a position both lived and articulated by Lincoln long before he became president...
...Whether Bonhoeffer felt required to abandon his pacifist commitments in planning to do such violence in serving God's truth is controverted in Bonhoeffer studies...
...I'O 'Terrence W. Tilley or the past thirty years, Stanley Hauerwas has been our most prolific, provocative, and pro-found theological essayist...
...Cuomo's venture is an engaging and lively one, marked by a deep appreciation for, and familiarity with, the life and thought of our sixteenth president...
...Although he never traveled abroad, Lincoln, according to Cuomo, underF A website where Pastors, Lay Leaders, & Scholars can find information on What's Been Learned...
...He profitably recognizes Bonhoeffer's efforts to connect politics with truthfulness, not with utility...
...Our country is fractured enough as it is...
...Grants Information For religious leaders Newsletters • Initiatives in Religion • InSites into American Religion Commonweal 2 7 September 10, 2004 stood what today we would call global interdependence...
...Theology is fundamentally rhetorical performance...
...It also breaks down when Cuomo ventures too far into what the academic experts call "counterfactual history...
...The one that appreciates Lincoln is as good as the one that Continuing a Tradition of Excellence in Educating for Ministry Since 1971 GRADUATE DEGREE PROGRAMS MA IN PASTORAL MINISTRY With concentrations in: Church Leadership Health Care Ministry Hispanic Ministry Liturgy and Worship Parish Nursing Pastoral Care Religious Education Social justice Spirituality Youth and Young Adult Faith MEd CAES PhD IN THEOLOGY AND EDUCATION DUAL DEGREES: MA/MSW Social Work MA/MA Counseling Psychology MA/MS Nursing MAIM E d Educational Administration CONTINUING EDUCATION: Internet Courses Weekend Courses Workshops, Seminars CERTIFICATES IN PASTORAL MINISTRY: Post-Master's in the Practice of Spirituality Continuing Education in Ministry Advanced Continuing Educ...
...Research on American Christianity Ministries Reshaped Through projects to revitalize Christian life and mission Ministries Reconsidered By recipients of sabbatical grants for pastoral leaders I1 ,4r4 Resources for hAmericanstia,nity Information & Reflection on Selected Projects funded by the Lilly Endowment, Inc...
...It would be difficult to find a president less Lincolnesque than the current occupant of the White House...
...Any novelty in theology is the result of novel circumstances requiring novel proclamation and performance...
...The heart of this book is the essay "Performing Faith," co-written with Jim Fodor...
...Bush, after all, invokes Lincoln in his speeches, thereby inviting a comparison that can only make him lookbad...
...Doing theology well means knowing how to display and sustain the ways of performing faith...
...Another argues seriously yet playfully with radical orthodoxy about peaceableness as a key virtue in Christian life...
...Bush was anxious to go to war in contrast to Lincoln's well-known hesitation...
...Hauerwas suggests that Bonhoeffer's participation in the plot to assassinate Hitler was a piece of his theological politics, an enacting of the truth of peaceableness in such a completely bizarre situation...
...Hauerwas reflects thoughtfully on the proper place of punishment F FAITH-BASED INITIATOR Don't mess with Texas Commonweal 2 9 September 10, 2004...
Vol. 131 • September 2004 • No. 15
