I always kind of thought of the audience for Kung Fu movies as a bit Sinophile, or at least Japanophile. Along with that, of course, comes an open mind about alternative medicine, alternative religion, and a broadened horizon about the world. While the athleticism of martial arts has an appeal of its own, the movies are infused with East Asian culture and the idea of master instructors and aspiring students. You can’t escape the influence of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shinto while watching Kung Fu.
That’s why I found it strange when I discovered that Chuck Norris was a buttoned down evangelical Christian. I’m biased, but I see that brand of Christianity as hopelessly pinched and provincial. It’s normally difficult to maintain those beliefs if you gain much exposure to the larger world, whether it be New York City, a conventional college campus, South Korea in the 1950’s, or the martial arts subculture in this country.
I am surprised by Chuck Norris’s religious beliefs and behavior but I don’t begrudge him his right to believe whatever he wants. That said, he’s crazy.
A video released this weekend by action movie hero Chuck Norris claims that America faces “1,000 years of darkness” if President Barack Obama is reelected.
“If we look to history, our great country and freedom are under attack,” Norris warns, standing next to his wife. “We’re at a tipping point and, quite possibly, our country as we know it may be lost forever if we don’t change the course in which our country is headed.”
The pair go on to explain that Obama won in 2008 because more than 30 million evangelical Christians stayed home on Election Day. “We know you love your family and your freedom as much as Gena and I do, and it is because of that we can no longer sit quietly or stand on the sidelines and watch our country go the way of socialism or something much worse,” Norris explains.
I would prefer it if people would refrain from trying to get various religious sects and denominations to vote as a bloc. But if evangelical Christians have common religious interests that can be translated into logical political action during this election, I would think preventing a Mormon from becoming president would be near the top of the list. Southern Baptists, in particular, have long taught that Mormonism is a profane heresy, and a cult. More importantly, they have found themselves in direct competition with Mormons as they do their missionary work. If they’ve put this much effort over this much time into preventing the legitimization of Mormonism, they cannot be unconcerned about the legitimizing effect of having a Mormon president.
Ironically, of the four candidates (Obama, Biden, Romney, Ryan), only the president is a protestant Christian. My point in bringing this up is less to sow division among the Republican base than to ask you to imagine what it would look like if the president decided to exploit those divisions in a way similar to how Chuck Norris is behaving. What if the Democrats launched a shadow campaign in the evangelical strongholds of this country in which they told people that electing a Mormon would lead to a thousand years of darkness and lead our country off to something worse than socialism?
The legitimization of Mormonism poses a more real threat to missionary evangelicals than, say, the legitimization of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s south side Chicago congregation. There would at least be some substance to the argument. But the Democrats will not do this. And the Democrats will not do this because it would be wrong and it would be inconsistent with the core American value of separation of Church and State. Congregationalists had their problems with Anglicans, and Anglicans had their problems with Congregationalists, but our country’s first presidents were all from Massachusetts and Virginia. That was made easier by the fact that Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and the Adams were all unitarians or Deists rather than conventional religious believers. But the people of those states still consented to be governed by people of different religious backgrounds.
Without that consent, our country would have fallen apart. For the same reason, Romney’s Mormonism is not disqualifying. And it would be wrong to try to convince people otherwise. This is why I think it is wrong for Chuck Norris to appeal to evangelicals as a bloc and tell them to vote against the president. Why they’d vote against the only protestant in the contest is a mystery to me, but they’d be equally wrong to vote for Obama simply because he’s a protestant.
If evangelicals know their history, they know that Andrew Jackson was the first president to be a trinitarian Christian. If they applied the test that a president must believe in the Son, the Father, and the Holy Ghost, they would have voted against Washington, both Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe. In fact, they would have voted against Jackson, too, because he only converted a year after he left the presidency. The Democrats respect that history. That’s why there is no shadow campaign against Romney in the evangelical community. Too bad the opposite isn’t true.