Rick Perry, Christian: What Would Pilate Do?

Tom Junod | Esquire | September 7 2011

Rick Perry is a Christian. It does us no good to ask, as Christopher Hitchens did last week, if he really believes what he says he believes; better to take him at his word, for then we can hold him to it. That is, we can see if he's a Christian not only by word, but by deed — if he is Christian by the proclaimed standards of Christianity.

Of course, Perry is very much a Christian by word. He is not only a professing Christian; he is a professional Christian, whose profession of Christian faith at a mass prayer rally in Houston served as prelude to his presidential campaign. Now, there are Christians who might regard as repugnant a man engaging in public prayer for the purpose of indicating his designs on power, but the American evangelical Christians Perry was courting are not among them. These are Christians who have made their peace with power; who have made their peace with wealth; and who have made their peace with war — who have, indeed, adapted themselves to the needs of a belligerent nation as surely as their ancient ancestors made their peace, in the form of Catholicism, to the needs of Rome. American evangelical Christianity is a mutant form of Christianity, in the sense that it is an evolved form of Christianity, in the sense that it has exchanged the nearly impossible terms that Jesus laid out in the Sermon on the Mount with terms that are much more favorable for aggressive growth and convenient for a healthy rate of return.

So it is no use applying the old "What Would Jesus Do?" standard to Rick Perry, for Perry belongs to a church that put aside that standard long ago. Would Jesus walk around in $2000 worth of hand-tooled boots? Would Jesus brag about jogging while "packing a Ruger .380 with laser sights and loaded with hollow-point bullets?" Would Jesus balance his budget by cutting funds to education? Would Jesus reject all clams of science except the "science" of raising funds through patronage? These questions are absurd, not only because they're anachronistic, but also because they have nothing to do with American evangelical Christianity in theory or practice. Rick Perry can with clear conscience call himself a Christian because he has accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior, and has as a consequence rejected the moral imperative of progressive taxation, the factual basis of evolution and global warming, and the extension of the Republican mantra of "personal freedom" into the realm of marriage. That the Jesus of the Gospels is notably forgiving in regard to sexual sins and notably unforgiving in regard to economic ones matters little; the Jesus of American evangelical Christianity has it the other way around, and that is the Jesus Rick Perry — along with millions of other Americans — has elected to follow.

Indeed, by the terms of the faith he professes, Perry might even be able to reconcile his Christianity with his enthusiastic application of the death penalty, despite the apparent contradiction of a religion created in emulation of history's most notable executionee giving its ultimate blessing to the executioner. After all, when American evangelical Christianity takes a New Testament position on the defense of "innocent" — i.e., unborn — life, it is reserving for itself the right to take an Old Testament position on the guilty kind, with the result that a religion that preaches from the pulpit against the expansion of state power in the form of Obamacare countenances it in the form of lethal injection. Although he has signed death warrants for 200 men; although like his predecessor in Austin he lacks the quality of mercy; although he has overruled even the rare recommendations of clemency from his hand-picked clemency board; although he is, on the face of it, that most un-Christian of things, a governor with a black hood, he can always say that he is following the biblical charge of rendering to Caesar what is Caesar's, and of fulfilling the law.

But what if he signed the death warrant for an innocent man? This is a biblical offense, no matter how you cut it. American evangelical Christians often protest the lack of absolutes in American morality — the soft-peddling of the language of sin in favor of the language of "mistakes." Well, if Perry permitted and saw through the execution of an innocent man, would that be a mistake, or would that be a sin? If a mistake, it would put into question the morality of the Texas death penalty apparatus; if a sin, it would question the morality of Rick Perry. If a sin, it would fall to Perry, as a Christian, to confess it, and ask forgiveness for it. If a sin, and if Perry's Christianity is anything but a campaign promise, he would have to welcome a reckoning — or at least a public examination that would decide whether the sin in question was committed by the man he put to death or by the state he governs.