Faith and Values

I cannot let the 2006 elections, due to take place tomorrow, arrive without registering my dismay at the latest indicator of cultural decline. Last week, listening to CNN in the car on my way home, I heard yet another story about an evangelist, a fierce opponent of gay marriage, having been exposed as a participant in a homosexual relationship. But, except for its tawdry nature, the story was unremarkable. Certainly, it's not news that CNN, like the rest of the media, considers this B-list sensationalism to be prime time "news." Or that hypocrisy lives and breathes in the land that gave birth to Advertising.

No, what has me exercised is the fact that this critical piece of "breaking news" was turned over, for further explication, to CNN's "faith and values correspondent," a breathless, young, surely attractive (remember, I was listening on the radio) woman who has learned to speak without inflection, accent, color, or identifiable characteristic of any kind, and to get rid of her gum before the cameras roll.

Leaving aside the question of why this story had anything to do with "faith" or "values," the fact that CNN has such a correspondent heralds, I am sure, the advent of a "faith and values" curriculum in, oh, I don't know, high schools? Journalism programs? Can faith and values police be far behind? Will Wolf Blitzer and other guardians of high seriousness in our media world soon be asking presidential candidates where they stand on faith? How long before the answer, "my personal values are none of your business; I'm running for political office" be sufficient to disqualify someone? I'm afraid that time has already arrived.

We've come full circle: when Kennedy was elected in 1960 the possibilty of one's faith intruding into decisions taken in high office was considered by the know-nothings to be a disqualification for office. Now, less than 50 years later, that same intrusion has come to be a requirement for high office. It is by such steps, with all their sanctimonious accompaniement, that we measure the decline of a republic. We are rapidly becoming indistinguishable from the backward theocracies against which we rail in the corridors of politically correct public discourse: not to parade our religion as an emblem of the justice of our cause is to devalue that cause. Or is the shortstop who crosses himself before hitting into a double play different in kind, rather than only in degree, from the young man half a world away who calls upon Allah to bless his AK-47?