I can’t get the description “white evangelical Protestants” out of my head, and it is colliding in there with images of a woman I have come to feel quite badly about, Tammy Faye Bakker Messner. What could possibly bring these two not directly related things together?
The first is a polling description of a whole slice of Christianity that, of late, seems to have attached itself to conservative Republicanism, but not as strongly as a few years ago. This most dependable slice of voting population may well not show up in the great numbers the Republicans need on Election Day, which will help explain matters should the GOP be hugely embarrassed.
That’s not why I’m stuck on the phrase.
It bothers me that we so quickly climb aboard such generalizations. Journalism always wants shorthand, shorthand for writing, shorthand for thinking, so that it can put everyone and everything into the proper cubicle and make reality stack up in an orderly way.
So, we slice and dice what is supposed to be a melting pot (in the ideal) into its diverse and identifiable parts, without considering at all whether the descriptions are appropriate, damaging, limiting or simply incorrect.
Were I a white evangelical Protestant, I would be mightily angered by any assumption that media outlets could predict my political behavior. What if I am having a crisis of faith (and we all have crises of faith) on Election Day and drift away from my white evangelical Protestantism for a bit.
Then what do you call me?
There are lots of other polling descriptions that fall into this same category, and I would urge everyone to resist this categorization as strongly as possible, perhaps by lying if a polling company calls and wants to know how you describe yourself.
As an independent, pro-life, Christian gun owner with country-and-western tendencies and a powerful opposition to illegal drugs, excessive drinking of alcohol and all gambling (particularly state lotteries because the odds are so abysmal), I might just tell a polling company I am a gay cowboy agnostic who always votes Republican just to mess up the sample.
You could do the same thing.
If enough people participated in this deception, the value of polling would become abundantly clear to everyone and we would all do a lot less of it. I would suggest the description: pro-choice Republican with an unhealthy tendency toward dominance and leather goods and strong opposition to any tax increase whatsoever. Ever!
I just hate it when people are lumped into groupings of any kind. We are all individuals and, here on the eve of an election, we should behave that way.
I am an American. That is enough.
Which brings me to Tammy Faye.
Tammy Faye is in my head just now because graduate students in a class I teach at Northwestern University said they wanted to watch the 2000 documentary “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” and I had not seen it the first time around. Pizza and beers and sodas in hand (followed by gingersnaps and chocolate cookies), we watched it at my house.
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I have a confession to make.
I once thought Tammy Faye was a TV parasite who, along with her felonious former husband, Jim, was all about raking in all the money she could and creating a religious cult of personality. That’s how judgmental I was about her.
I am apologizing now and although I know this message will never reach her, it is heartfelt.
Sometimes people get off on the wrong track, and for Tammy Faye, that apparently began early in life. Remember that excessive makeup?
I think now she was creating the only person she could create. She actually was her eyelashes, and that is a very sad thought.
What comes through in this great documentary is that Tammy Faye had a golden heart that just never stopped forgiving people for the abuse they heaped on her over many difficult years.
Gay people loved her, perhaps because she was very early to reach out to them, particularly when they were being shattered by AIDS and treated as though they were lepers.
On top of that, if you closed your eyes when she sang and ignored the painfully well-intentioned lyrics, you could hear shades of Patsy Cline.
Now Tammy Faye is ill. It sounds very serious.
I have been following her little messages on her Web site and I just want to say that no matter how this turns out, there are people who will always have (in Patsy Cline’s words) sweet memories of you, along with those of us who regret not being a little more Christian about your predicament a long time ago.
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