{"id":2352,"date":"2013-05-07T13:49:35","date_gmt":"2013-05-07T12:49:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/?p=2352"},"modified":"2013-05-07T13:58:35","modified_gmt":"2013-05-07T12:58:35","slug":"more-buddhism-in-congress-this-time-it-could-be-via-republican-mark-sanford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2013\/05\/more-buddhism-in-congress-this-time-it-could-be-via-republican-mark-sanford.html","title":{"rendered":"More Buddhism in Congress? This time it could be via Republican Mark Sanford."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>Today a special election in South Carolina pits former Governor Mark Stanford<\/strong>, better known as the guy who lied about hiking the\u00a0Appalachian\u00a0trail so he could cheat on his wife with an Argentinian woman (whom he now plans to marry) against Elizabeth Colbert-Busch<\/strong>, better known to many as the sister-of-Steven-Colbert. As a recent ABC news headline reads, the South Carolina House Race [is] Defined by People Who Aren\u2019t Running<\/a>. Along with the famous brother and the Argentinian mistress, Stanford was recently hurt (in fundraising at least) by charges of trespassing<\/a> on his ex-wife\u2019s property.<\/p>\n

Political pundits seem equally divided on the question of whether the race is either completely bizarre or completely inconsequential. According to\u00a0\u00a0Aaron Blake and Sean Sullivan from the Washington Post, the special election is, \u201cjust too unique to draw many\/any broad political conclusions about.\u201d<\/p>\n

But what is of interest here is Sanford\u2019s comments on Buddhism<\/a> in an interview with Yahoo! News<\/a> reporter Chris Moody. As Moody states:<\/p>\n

\n

I asked him about Buddhism. (Let\u2019s face it, it\u2019s not every day that a southern candidate for national office will drop a Siddhartha Gautama reference in casual conversation.)<\/p>\n

Sanford told me that his interest in Buddhism stretched back three years, when he retreated to his remote family farm after the scandalous end to his term as governor when he secretly left the country to have an affair with an Argentine woman who he now plans to marry.<\/p>\n

While in exile, Sanford began studying meditation, a practice he continues to this day.<\/p>\n

\u201cA buddy of mine said, Mark, you\u2019re\u00a0becoming a Buddhist<\/a> Christian. I come from the Christian faith. That\u2019s my faith tradition. But what I do like about Buddhism is the idea of being present,\u201d Sanford said during the car ride. \u201cI think that that\u2019s missed in Western culture, where we\u2019re so busy looking a week out, two weeks out, a month out, a year out and we\u2019re hurried and we\u2019re busy. And I think if there\u2019s any one thing I learned from that year I spent on the farm in the wake of getting out of office and just having a very, very quiet year, is the importance of stillness and quietness. And that extends beyond just the physical location. It extends really into the moment of, Are you really with that person or are you thinking of the next thing you\u2019ve got to do?\u00a0So I do like very much that part of Buddhism. I think it\u2019s right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sanford declined to describe his meditation techniques, but said, \u201cI\u2019ve tried to be disciplined about a quiet time each day.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While the election may not send ripples through the political world, having another Buddhist (or Buddhist Christian, or Christian with a Buddhist practice \u2013 as we know, defining a \u2018Buddhist\u2019 is no easy task) in Congress would be another step toward awareness of the religion \u2013 a growing awareness that would hopefully make woeful misrepresentations<\/a> a thing of the past (or at least we could hope that the misrepresentations would only appeal to a small fringe of society).<\/p>\n

According to a recent PEW survey<\/a>, there are currently 3 Buddhists in Congress: Rep.\u00a0Hank Johnson<\/a> (D-Georgia), Senator\u00a0Mazie Hirono<\/a> (D-Hawaii) \u2013 the nation\u2019s first Buddhist Senator, and, the most recent addition,\u00a0Colleen Hanabusa<\/a> (D-Hawaii).<\/p>\n

Like Congressman Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), who is well-known among Buddhists for his book Mindful Nation:\u00a0How a Simple Practice Can Help Us Reduce Stress, Improve Performance, and Recapture the American Spirit<\/a>, Sanford will almost certainly identify as Christian, leaving the religious makeup of Congress unchanged.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

However, Mark Sanford\u2019s status as a Republican meditator \/ Buddhist Christian \/ Buddhist\u00a0sympathizer\u00a0(whatever) should -we can only hope- give pause to much of the right\u2019s rhetoric about the innate Christain-ness of America, to the exclusion of all other religions and value-systems<\/strong>.<\/div>\n

That is, if<\/em> he gets elected.<\/p>\n

For more on the \u2018culture wars\u2019 around Buddhists in the public sphere I direct you (once again) to Scott Mitchell\u2019s paper:<\/p>\n

\u201cChristianity is for rubes; Buddhism is for <\/a>
\nactors\u201d: U.S. media representations of <\/a>
\nBuddhism in the wake of the Tiger Woods\u2019 <\/a>
\nscandal<\/a>\u201c<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today a special election in South Carolina pits former Governor Mark Stanford, better known as the guy who lied about hiking the\u00a0Appalachian\u00a0trail so he could cheat on his wife with an Argentinian woman (whom he now plans to marry) against Elizabeth Colbert-Busch, better known to many as the sister-of-Steven-Colbert. As a recent ABC news headline […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":118,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-buddhism","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nMore Buddhism in Congress? 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