Faith & Works

Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said Kerry's comment "was beyond the bounds of acceptable discourse and a sad exploitation of Scripture for a political attack."

That's from this article, "Bush Campaign Blasts Kerry's Bible Quote."

Here's what Democratic candidate John Kerry said:

"The Scriptures say, what does it profit, my brother, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? … When we look at what is happening in America today, where are the works of compassion?"

The passage Kerry quotes — James 2:14 — was one I cited quite a bit when I worked for a group called "Evangelicals for Social Action." Our whole agenda at ESA was to get evangelicals to "walk the talk" — to live their faith in deed as well as in word.

Martin Luther famously called the book of James "an epistle of straw" since its emphasis on works and action could be seen as undermining his emphasis on salvation by grace alone. (I don't see James as contradicting Luther, but apparently Luther did.)

James seems pretty timid, though, compared to 1 John, which is full of this kind of thing:

How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.

That passage — the entire chapter — was a favorite of Martin Luther's namesake, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Dr. King, according to Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt, regularly went "beyond the bounds of acceptable discourse." Dr. King was a ruthless, notorious "exploiter" of scripture.

I'd weigh in here on how ridiculous and hypocritical it is for the Bush campaign to suddenly claim that scripture-quoting is off limits, except that Amy Sullivan and Kevin at Lean Left have already said everything I'd want to on the subject. (See also this commentary, from Avedon Carol of The Sideshow.)

Schmidt's bizarre claim is that only certain people — his people — are allowed to quote scripture. James' strawy point is that it doesn't matter what you say, it matters what you do. Allow me to exploit one more passage, from Matthew 7. This time it's Jesus talking:

You will know them by their fruits … Every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit.

Or, as they say in writing workshops: show, don't tell.

UPDATE: Corrected to get Kevin's name right. (sorry, Kevin) Speaking of whom, one observation in his post that struck me as particularly astute was how very Catholic this passage from James is (hence Luther's dislike of it). One wonders how much the brouhaha over Kerry's quoting of scripture arises from his choice of this particular scripture, and whether part of the dynamic at work here may be some of the perennial Protestant/Catholic dispute.