Perspective from the 19^th Hole is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

I devote this blog to a reprint of an essay written by Eliza Griswold, author of “Circle of Hope:  A Reckoning With Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church.”  The essay appeared in the New York Times.

It makes an excellent case against Donald Trump, who practices Christianity as a form of political persuasion, not real Christianity.

Here is the reprint.

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In the aftermath of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on July 13, a video with images of Jesus crowned with thorns, blood running down his face, followed by photos of the former president circulated on social media.

Days later, at the Republican National Convention, the evangelist Franklin Graham endorsed Trump from the stage, saying that “God spared his life.”

But the idea of Trump as chosen by God has infuriated those evangelicals who believe that he stands in direct opposition to their faith.  Their existence highlights an often-overlooked fact about the American religious landscape:  Evangelicals are not a monolith.

The troubling ascendancy of white Christian nationalism has galvanized evangelicals for whom following Jesus demands speaking truth to power, as well as building the kingdom of heaven on earth in actionable ways.  In 2024, this includes mobilizing voters against the former president.

Although this broader evangelical movement is often referred to as the evangelical left, it adheres to no party.  “This isn’t about being a Democrat or a Republican,” Jim Wallis, an evangelical Christian pastor, author and justice activist, told me.  Instead, believers like him say they refuse worldly labels and division.

They also believe that they can sway enough of their fellow evangelicals, along with other people of faith, and low-income Americans, who historically have had much lower voting rates than other groups, to swing this presidential election against Trump.

“The so-called evangelicals who support Trump have a Jesus problem,” Bishop William Barber II told me.  Jesus advocated tirelessly for the poor and warned that nations would be judged “by how we treat the hungry, the sick, the incarcerated and the immigrant,” Bishop Barber said.

To fulfill Jesus’ mandate to minister to “the least of these,” he is leading a revival of the Poor People’s Campaign, which the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. founded in the late 1960s and Bishop Barber re-started in 2018:  A national multi-racial coalition of Americans working to address the challenges of those struggling to make ends meet.

Historically, poorer Americans have had much lower voting rates than other groups.  The Poor People’s Campaign is mobilizing an estimated 15 million voters to cast ballots for candidates who address issues they care about, which has less to do with who uses what bathroom and more to do with a living wage and universal health care.

“Poor people are the new swing voters,” Bishop Barber said.  “And every real evangelical knows that the first issue that Jesus talked about was poverty.”  Bishop Barber called out the failures of the federal government and politicians who write “oppressive decrees,” ignore the needy, and rob the poor.

To organize Christian voters against Trumpism, Doug Pagitt, an evangelical pastor, founded the non-profit Vote Common Good, which aims to engage Christian voters.  He’s driving across the country in a bus to swing states to rally these voters against Trump.

“We’re specifically targeting those who want to detach their voting habits from the MAGA movement,” Pagitt told me.  It seemed to work in 2020, he noted, citing heavily white evangelical West Michigan, where Trump’s support dropped to 62 per cent from 80 per cent in two critical counties, delivering Democrats their win.

Evangelicals like these hew more closely to the original identity of evangelicals in America, which emerged from the Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th centuries, during which many Christians committed themselves to personal piety and a duty to address the ills of the world, as Jesus called his followers to do.

Among other things, they campaigned for the abolition of slavery, ministered to the poor and aided immigrants — all informed by their reading of Scripture.

This strain of Christianity is closer to the mainline Protestant tradition that I grew up in, which saw the Bible as poetry, metaphor, and history.  I was not brought up to read Scripture literally, as many evangelicals do.  As an adult, I am not a regular churchgoer.  Yet, I find that the convictions of these ardent evangelicals who stand against Trump — even as a vast majority of white evangelicals have rallied to him — cast a rare and hopeful vision of America’s moral heart.

“We refuse to cede Scripture to the right,” Jonah Overton, a 37-year-old pastor from Milwaukee, told me.

Instead of casting Trump as a holy martyr, these Christians offer an alternative vision of him as an Antichrist, who abuses his power and, in many ways, resembles the emperors of Rome.  (The Antichrist is sometimes likened to Nero, who persecuted Christians and sometimes crucified them.)

These other evangelicals also commit to following word for word Jesus’ moral teachings in the Sermon on the Mount, in which he commands people to “give to the needy,” as well as “love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you,” among other practical but difficult tasks.  

This provides a blueprint for the Christian ethic.  “There is no following Jesus without following his teachings on helping the poor and oppressed,” Lisa Sharon Harper, an evangelical theologian, told me.

Some American evangelicals justify Trump’s decidedly un-christian acts like cheating on his wife with a porn star, in service of advancing abortion restrictions.  But adherents’ beliefs about how to follow Jesus’ teachings vary.  And evangelicals who have found the weaponization of Scripture distasteful are showing us that their vote is very much up for grabs.

These evangelicals, who’ve long stood at the edge of their tradition, are eager to show fellow believers an authentically biblical way to oppose Trump.  It remains to be seen whether the Democrat Party is willing to take these believers, who are also persuadable voters, seriously.

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And this footnote from me:  Ever wonder how words mean one thing at one time, then often mean something entirely different later?

I hate it when that happens.

One of the best examples:  The word “gay.”  It used to mean happy.  Now, it means homosexual.

There is another word that has been usurped, this time by Trump and his minions.  The word is “evangelical.”

To me, it means this:  Living according to the principles laid down in Scripture, the Bible.

To Trump, it is just another political group to be carved out.

Perspective from the 19^th Hole is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan has underlined some of the qualities Kamala Harris has going for her as she takes on Donald Trump for the right to be the next president.

Noonan wrote under this headline and subhead:  “The Fight of Trump’s Political Life; Harris has the wind at her back; her strengths became clearer in the past two weeks.”

Here how she started her column:

“Those who think about politics and history as a profession can’t resist comparing presidential years.  ‘This is 1968 all over again.’  ‘We’re back to the dynamics of ’72.’  We do this because we know political history and love it, and because there are always parallels and lessons to be learned.

“But it should be said as a reminder:  This year isn’t like any previous time.

“This is the year of the sudden, historically disastrous debate, the near-assassination of one of the nominees, the sudden removal of the president from his ticket, the sudden elevation of a vice president her own party had judged a liability, and her suddenly pulling even in a suddenly truncated campaign.”

Noonan cited what she called “major pluses” for Harris:

• She is new.  She seems a turning of the page away from Old Biden and Old Trump.  She looks new, like a new era.  She displays vigor and the joy of the battle.  The mainstream media is on her side.  Coverage hasn’t been tough or demanding.

• On policy she is bold to the point of shameless.  This week she essentially said:  You know those policies I stood for that you don’t like?  I changed my mind!  Her campaign began blithely disavowing previous stands, with no explanation.  From the New York Times’s Reid Epstein:  “The Harris campaign announced on Friday that the vice president no longer wanted to ban fracking, a significant shift from where she stood four years ago.”

Campaign officials said she also now supports “increased funding for border enforcement; no longer supported a single-payer health insurance program; and echoed Biden’s call for banning assault weapons but not a requirement to sell them to the federal government.”

• She is a born performer.  She knows what she’s doing when she’s campaigning.  She is less sure of what she’s doing when she’s governing.  But she gets a race.  Running for the 2020 Democratic nomination, she wasn’t good at strategy or policy, but the part involving performing and being a public person and speaking with merry conviction — she gets that and is good at it.

• She is beautiful.  You can’t take a bad picture of her.  Her beauty, plus the social warmth that all who have known her over the years speak of, combines to produce:  Radiance.  It is foolish to make believe this doesn’t matter.  Politicians themselves are certain it matters, which is why so many in that male-dominated profession have taken to Botox, fillers, dermabrasion, face lifts, all the cosmetic things.  Because they’re in a cosmetic profession.

• She has a wave of pent-up support behind her.  By November, we’ll know if something big happened.  Barack Obama deliberately, painstakingly put new constituencies together.  He created a movement.  It had fervor and energy.  What we may see this year is something different — that a movement created Kamala Harris.  That is, the old constituencies held, maintained fervor and rose again when Biden stepped aside and Harris was put on top.  I’m not sure we’ve seen that before.

To this, I add a question:  Will Harris’ strengths be enough to beat Trump?  The old, hackneyed phrase is appropriate – “only time will tell.”

But, Harris’ start has energized many Democrats and, I hope, will entice independents to join the ranks of her supporters.

Meanwhile, according to another columnist, Dana Milbank, who writes for the Washington Post, “The out of control Trump — suppressed in recent months with varying degrees of success — is back.

Milbank continues:

“For the last year, we’ve been hearing about the “disciplined,” “competent” and “professional” campaign Donald Trump is running.  After his chaotic 2016 and 2020 campaigns, he brought in longtime Republican operatives to lead a “low-drama” operation.

“Well, the cat lady is out of the bag.

“The trauma caused by the broadly panned choice of Senator J.D. Vance as a running mate, combined with President Biden’s withdrawal from the race and the massive outpouring of support for Vice President Harris, have had a terrible effect on Trump:  They have caused him to revert to being himself.

“Discipline has broken down, and the out-of-control Trump — suppressed in recent months with varying degrees of success — is back on full display.”

Including as he tore into Harris as not really being black, a stupid comment if there ever was one – but I hope it redounds to Trump’s discredit.

Combined with Harris’ strengths, Trump’s out-of-control self could be his undoing.

Perspective from the 19^th Hole is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

Nobody who happens to read this blog would know the answer to the question in the headline.

I do…because it’s about me.  But forgive the lack of modesty.

So here goes.

In a column in the Wall Street Journal, Ben Zimmer, who writes about the derivation of words (Isn’t in laudable that a newspaper like the Wall Street Journal pays someone to write about words?), used his regular column to describe the derivation of the word “re-boot.”

His column appeared under this headline and sub-head:  “‘Reboot’:  A New Start, Whether for a Computer or a Presidential Campaign;  A now familiar term for starting fresh dates back to taking hold of bootstraps in the 19th century.”

Who knew that “re-boot” I were related?

Here is how it happened.

Story #1:  Zimmer wrote that, when President Biden announced he would not seek re-election and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democrats’ new standard-bearer, commentators turned to a highly appropriate word to encapsulate the huge shake-up in the political landscape:  ‘Re-boot.’

“’Inside the Democrat Re-Boot:  Joy, Hope and Fear,’ read one headline in Politico Magazine.  ‘The Democrat Party is rebooting,’ announced the Washington Post.  The Wall Street Journal reported on how Democrats have been ‘racing to mount an uncertain re-boot of their campaign.’

Zimmer goes on to cite the derivation of the word re-boot:

“The computing world is, in fact, where the term ‘re-boot’ originated.  It goes back to ‘bootstrap’ as the name for the process that allows the operating system of a computer to be loaded into memory.  The process involves a series of stages, each of which requires a small program to load and execute a larger program for the next stage.  Metaphorically, then, the computer is pulling itself up by its own bootstraps.

“And where does that notion come from? My research into the ‘bootstraps” idiom takes it back to 1834, when a would-be inventor from Nashville named Nimrod Murphree announced in a local newspaper that he had ‘discovered perpetual motion.’

“His claim was ridiculed in other papers, including one that quipped, Probably Murphree has succeeded in handing himself over the Cumberland River, or a barnyard fence, by the straps of his boots.’

“Over time, this comical image of an impossible task was transformed into a call for self-improvement:  To ‘pull oneself up by one’s own bootstraps’ came to be a feel-good expression for bettering oneself without assistance.”

Story #2:  To get back to this blog headline, I happened to use “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” a long time ago – but accurately.

The scene occurred about 40 years ago when I served as deputy director of the Oregon Department of Economic Development.

Our department was asked by French officials to travel to the Clermont-Ferrand region to speak to students in a French business graduate school.

When the department director could not go, he asked me to go in his place and I was happy to do so.

French school officials told us they wanted someone from Oregon to describe how the state had transitioned its economy from timber and fishing to high technology.  In France, those same officials wanted to know how to transition from Michelin tire factories — there were several major ones in the Clermont Ferrand region — to a broader, more diversified economy.

So it was that, with my wife, I traveled to France prepared with a speech about Oregon’s successful economic transition, one that, in fits and starts, is still under way today.

On the scene in France, I spoke to the graduate school glass with a translator for the first time in my life.  The French students wanted to hear the speech in English, the most used business language in the world, but they still needed translation from English into French.

All was well until the question-answer period.  Actually, hindsight says it went well, too.

To answer one student’s question, I used a metaphor to explain one part of transitioning an economy.  I said, “Oregonians had to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.”

My translator had trouble with that idiom, so, afterwards, he told me he simply said – “pull yourselves up by the seat of your pants” – and, as he said that, he grabbed the back of his pants.

Well, not quite accurate, I suppose, but point made.

To state the obvious years ago, I did not have the benefit of the kind of research typical of Ben Zimmer’s writing on the derivation of words.

Wouldn’t have mattered, though.  The idiom I used, according to Zimmer, was exactly on point — “a feel-good expression for bettering oneself without assistance.”

Oregonians had “pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps.”

We should all be doing the same today.