I'm in the Deep South now, and knee deep in political campaigning, Southern Style. I don't really enjoy politicking, which may sound strange to some who know me. I do enjoy figuring out issues of law and government, but politicking is more about who knows who, and who has done what for whom.
Yesterday, I drove the candidate around the state for an interview and a county party cook-out at which he spoke. I am perhaps one of the two or three worst people in the world at walking up cold and striking up a conversation. I have a hard time assuming that someone wants me to talk to them. Still, the people I talked to were receptive, and I enjoyed trying to persuade them of the importance of the issues and the election of our candidate.
The experience of working on a campaign for one of the highest state offices is exciting. If you believe in the issues and the person you are working for, it seems more like witnessing than politicking. Godly government is a means of grace, in a broad sense, and seeking fidelity to God and His requirements for lawful civil government is a part of His good news for the redemption of man. We need godly men to govern in accordance with God's law, and it is an honor to roll up my sleeves and plow a few rows.
People joke a lot about southern politics, and some politicians' antics definitely lend themselves well to the lampoon. I don't think this is the real cause of the scorn, though. I think there are two things that most people (unfortunately even Southerners) consider contemptible: Accountability to human authority and accountability to divine authority.
At the core of the popularly contemptible caricature of a Southern politician is the politician's submission to the reality that his authority derives from God with the consent of the governed requisite to achievement and maintenance of his position. Those ideas, at their base, are honorable and right, not merely populist demagoguery.
I appreciate the Southern politicians' deferential nod towards (if not genuine belief in) two fundamental principles upon which a stable constitutional republic must rest: God is the source of all authority, and God has delegated to the governed the authority to select their rulers. As a result, those rulers must give an account to God and their people. This humility before both God and man leaves a bad taste in the mouth of arrogant modern man who believes he is himself the measure of all things.
The rest of the country seems to follow a different way of politicking: The politician preens and waxes eloquent about his innate superiority in order to demonstrate to peon voters his godlike properties, thereby convincing them that he is the deity to whom they owe allegiance.
The Southern politician may view himself and his task in exactly the same way. I am not trying to glorify the bufoonish Southern politicians. It may be no great virtue to just do what works, but the fact that it won't work otherwise is significant.
Generally, a politician in the South must show deference to the Christian God and a willingness to "get dirty" in answering to even the poorest, most benighted of his constituents for his decisions. That simple fact is a sign that the crashing waves of humanistic religion have failed to erase the cultural etchings of a Christian culture from the Southern psyche. I like that. I am happy to be a part of an effort not merely to continue preserving the etchings, but to be a part of an effort to rebuild the walls of which those etchings are a sadly ephemeral reminder.
I think I need some fried chicken and tea, it's hot.
