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For the week of 22 October 2006

© Janus Adams 2006

You know the feeling. Something’s on your mind, but you can’t quite express it. Then, someone else says exactly what you were thinking – only better.

Case in point: last Sunday’s “CBS: 60 Minutes” interview by Lesley Stahl with David Kuo – evangelical Christian, political conservative, self-exiled deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, and author of the new book, “Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction.”

Kuo confirmed my suspicions: “God and politics had become very much fused together into a sort of single entity. Where, in a way, politics was the fourth part of the trinity. God the father, God the son, God the holy spirit, God the politician.”

Kuo cited his own complicity: his strategy to rally “the base” (conservative Christians) with faith-based initiatives; his speechwriting for Republican leaders – even, as Stahl quoted, inserting “hidden snippets of hymns and biblical phrases as ‘a way to talk about faith without having people in the mainstream media identify it as faith.’”

Disillusioned now, diagnosed with a brain tumor, Kuo is a man on a mission; a man, perhaps, making peace with his creator. Visiting an evangelical convention, he points to the display booths as symptomatic of how “the base” has accepted Bush’s retreat from “compassion” and helping the poor. “You’ve got homosexuality in your kid’s school, you’ve got human cloning, and partial birth abortion, and divorce and stem cell.... Not a mention of the poor.”

Kuo’s antidote: “I think that Christians, particularly evangelical Christians need to take a step back... People are being manipulated. Good well-meaning people are being told, ‘Send your money to this Christian advocacy group or that.’ And that’s the answer... It’s not the answer.”

And it was then that I knew exactly what I’d been trying to express and who had said it so much better – Salman Rushdie in this classic scene from “The Satanic Verses:”

“Amid the palm trees of the oasis, Gibreel appeared to the prophet and found himself spouting rules, rules, rules, until the faithful could scarcely bare the prospect of any more revelation. It was as if no aspect of human existence was to be left unregulated, free.
“... On account of his scholastic advancement, Salman was made Mahound's official scribe, so that it fell to him to write down the endlessly proliferating rules. ‘All those revelations of convenience,’ he told Baal, ‘and the longer I did the job, the worse it got.’
“‘Finally I decided to test him.’ After that when he sat at the prophet's feet writing down rules, rules, rules, he began surreptitiously to change things, little things at first.
“‘Here's the point. Mahound did not notice the alterations. So there I was actually writing the book or – or rewriting anyway, polluting the word of God with my own profane language.
“’But good heavens if my poor words could not be distinguished from the revelation by God's own messenger, then what did that mean? What did that say about the quality of the divine poetry? Look, I swear, I was shaken to my soul. It's one thing to be a smart bastard and have half suspicions about funny business, but it's quite another thing to find out that you're right....’

Alas, what was Kuo – oops, Salman – to do?

“‘I knew I had reached the edge.... I lay awake holding his fate in my hands as well as my own. If I allowed myself to be destroyed, I could destroy him too. I had to choose on that awful night whether I preferred death with revenge to life without anything. As you see, I chose life.’”

Chosing his “write to life,” does Kuo think the White House will feel betrayed and come after him? “Of course they will. I can hear the attacks... ‘Oh, maybe that brain tumor really messed up his head...’”

“But you're okay with that?” asks Stahl.

“I'm fine with it.”

For Kuo, as for Salman, the road ahead is clear:
“Before dawn, I left on my camel and made my way suffering numerous misadventures... And now Mahound is coming in triumph so I shall lose my life after all. And his power has grown too great for me to unmake him now.”
“...Why are you sure he will kill you?” Salman, the Persian, answered, “It's his word against mine.”

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