Recently in Bachmann Category

Last July, when Michele Bachmann was riding high in the polls and grabbing general media attention, a question arose about where she and her husband Marcus go to church. The story was that they had given up their longtime affiliation with Salem Lutheran Church and joined an evangelical megachurch called Eagle Brook because they had moved their residence and wanted to be closer to where they worshiped.

A little mapquesting showed, however, that all four Eagle Brook campuses were farther away from their new home than Salem Lutheran. The suspicion arose that the move actually had to do with Bachmann's desire not to be affiliated with Salem Lutheran because, as a member of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, it was tied to statement of faith that consider the Pope to be the Antichrist--which became a bit controversial the last time Bachmann ran for Congress. Such doctrinal baggage had best be jettisoned in a run for the presidency, no?

Now it seems that the Bachmann's have joined another evangelical church--for the same alleged reason as before. (RNS has a Bachmann churchgoing timeline.) Here's the relevant exchange from her interview with Christianity Today's Sarah Pulliam Bailey:

You mentioned your church attendance. Where do you attend now?

We attend Rockpoint Church in Lake Elmo, Minnesota. We had lived in another part of the community and we moved about 20 minutes away, so we moved to a church that was closer.

With the previous Lutheran church you attended, did you have any concerns about the stances they took?

No, it was a wonderful, conservative Lutheran church. The pastors were marvelous there. We really enjoyed being a part of it. We were very active. My husband was involved in the school board, our children attended school there. We were grateful for the years of fellowship there. Very giving, loving people attended that church. We gained a lot and we hope we contributed.

However, once again it turns out that the Bachmanns have a longer drive from their home at Stoneridge Golf Course to Rockpoint Church than they did to Salem Church--by five miles/10 minutes. One explanation for their joining Eagle Brook was that Marcus Bachman's counseling business had a relationship with the church. Bachmann & Associates is no longer mentioned on the church website. Has the relationship come to an end?

Folks are entitled to switch churches for whatever reason they want, of course, but why keep fibbing about it?

Fox's Megyn Kelly was last night's designated social issues questioner, and she directed herself to the middle of the field (transcript after the jump).

First up was Michele Bachmann, who got to explain her statement that church-state separation is a "myth." Backing off the myth thing, Bachmann took refuge in the standard conservative meme that the Establishment Clause merely bans a national state church: "That's really what the fundamental was of separation of church and state." Then, typically, she botched her history, contending that it was about a national church that those Danbury Baptists were concerned when they wrote to President Jefferson (drawing his famous response about the wall of separation). In fact, the Baptists wanted Jefferson's moral support in their campaign to undo the the Standing Order--religious establishment--of Connecticut.

Next up was Rick Santorum, on whom Kelly laid the video clip of a gay soldier in Iraq who wanted to know whether the candidates intended "to circumvent the progress that's been made for gay and lesbian soldiers in the military?" The booing that ensured from the audience was this debate's ugly moment, and it may have put the usually glib Santorum off his feed. Whatever, he wandered around for a while, hemming and hawing about how "any type of sexual activity has absolutely no place in the military" (huh?), why it's tragic to inject "social policy" and "social experimentation" into the military, declaring that he would reinstitute the policy "period," and finally suggesting that a Santorum DADT would be for heterosexuals as well as homosexuals. Yikes!

Finally, Kelly taxed Ron Paul with pro-life inconsistency for supporting a rape exception to abortion bans and the morning-after pill. Paul first took the federalism route (this is state issue), then talked about the difficulty of policing  the pill, and finally announced, "Only the moral character of the people will eventually solve this problem, not the law." It ain't easy being a pro-life libertarian.

Altogether, not exactly stellar performances.

In her piece on Michele Bachmann in Sunday's NYT, Sheryl Gay Stolberg managed to get some information on where the Minnesota congresswoman and her husband now go to church; to wit: "Friends say they now attend services at another evangelical church, Eagle Brook, closer to their new home in another Stillwater neighborhood." If so, then the Bachmanns have traded in their Lutheran identity for a Baptist one.

Not that you can tell from its website, but Eagle Brook belongs to the Baptist General Conference, a small denomination derived from Swedish pietism. Eagle Brook itself, however, is anything but small. Starting out as a tiny mission in White Bear Lake 60 years ago, it has become the largest church in Minnesota, boasting over 13,000 members--more than five percent of the entire denomination--at four different "campuses."

But contrary to what the friends told Stolberg, not one of the campuses is actually closer to the Bachmann's new home on the eighteenth green of the Stoneridge Golf Course than their old Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS) church, Salem Lutheran, was. The drive from their mini-mansion to Salem is just eight miles, as opposed to 19, 28, 29, and 29 miles respectively to Eagle Lake's facilities at White Bear Lake, Lino Lakes, Spring Lake Park, and Blaine.

So if not proximity, what could have accounted for the Bachmanns' change of allegiance? It's hard to avoid the suspicion that this had something to do with that pesky controversy which arose when Bachmann first ran for Congress in 2006, over WELS' doctrinal position that the papacy is the Antichrist. Why else would Bachmann have informed WELS that she was no longer a member just six days before declaring her candidacy for the GOP presidential nomination?

Eagle Brook looks for all the world like your standard evangelical megachurch--"real + relevant," as its logo says, but neither noticeably political nor (God forbid) doctrinally trouble-making. ("Baby boomer" is how one sour Twin Cities church blogger describes it.) Nor is it hard to get lost amidst the crowds in the stadium seats. Whether or not Bachmann's been attending regularly, it'd be hard for anyone to say she hasn't.

For what it's worth, the Baptist General Conference also includes 4,915-member Wooddale Church of Eden Prairie, which is pastored by Leith Anderson, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, and attended by Tim Pawlenty, the sometime Minnesota governor who also aspires to the GOP nomination. Apparent bottom line: Michele Bachmann has joined Tim Pawlenty's denomination, but her church is bigger than his church.

After avoiding "white evangelicals" like yesterday's coffee, the political reporting class has dusted off its old Rolodexes and discovered that when it comes to Iowa, it's all about, well, white evangelicals. As in, where's the Huckabee vote going? The big deal event of the summer is the Ames straw poll August 13, which WaPo's Chris Cilizza has pronounced to be Michele Bachmann's to lose. At the moment, that seems an easy call, since this exercise in organizational muscle has turned into a contest to see who will serve as Evangelical Challenger to The Mormon. Mitt Romney, the national frontrunner who won Ames easily four years ago (but then lost the GOP Caucus to Huckabee), has decided to sit this one out, as has his co-religionist John Huntsman. Bachmann's got the organizational leg up, plus by far the most evangelical pizzazz--though she should think twice before signing every family values pledge that comes down the pike.

Meanwhile, and not coincidentally, anti-Mormonism is on the march again. Once upon a time, when the likes of Al Smith and Jack Kennedy ran for president, the slimier forms of anti-Catholicism only circulated underground. Now their anti-Mormon equivalents are published by CNN. And where once serious religious leaders and sober editorial pages turned out to condemn the stuff, in the present media free-for-all, it's given a pass--and even indulged in. Four years ago, Romney may have fallen short of Kennedyesque performance, but he deserved far more in the way of principled condemnation of bigotry than he got. What anti-Mormon activist Tricia Ericson has to say is not merely "provocative" and "inflammatory," it's appallingly un-American:

Yes, it is my opinion that an indoctrinated Mormon should never be elected as President of the United States of America. Indoctrinated temple Mormons (as Romney is) have experienced years of brainwashing and indoctrination and also have made covenants and oaths that they plainly cannot disobey...

Long story short, it would be near to impossible for an entrenched Mormon to place his allegiance to the United States of America over the Mormon Church.  After Mitt's death oaths to the church, it is my belief that he lied about this to the American people and will continue to do so.

It is past time for editorial pages and columnists and religious leaders to take such views seriously and condemn them in no uncertain terms. And that goes especially for those religious leaders whose flocks are most susceptible. That means you, Land, Warren, Leith, Jakes, Robertson, etc. etc. etc.

Update: And Bachmann is now out in front of the rest of the field, including Romney, in the Hawkeye State.

Like the U.S. Constitution, I'm down with the concept that there should be no religious test for office. Still, I feel like I'm entitled to know the religious affiliation of a candidate for the presidency, especially if she's making a big hoop-de-doo about appealing for the votes of, er, social conservatives.

So when Michele Bachmann sat down last week with David Brody, White House correspondent for the Christian Broadcasting Network, to talk about faith and politics, did he ask her where she goes to church? Nope:

Let me just start with a topic that is near and dear to your heart, and that is prayer. Just simply about your prayer life. What has your prayer life been like recently? What do you pray about for yourself, for your staff, and what do you want people to pray for you about?

What we know about Bachmann's religious identity is that she started out as a Norwegian Lutheran Democrat (ELCA?) in Iowa but that after she and her husband moved to Stillwater, MN, they joined Salem Lutheran Church, a member of the ultraconservative Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS). But a few weeks ago, Salem's pastor told the AP that "the family stopped attending regularly when they moved to another Twin Cities suburb."

Yes, the Bachmanns moved a couple of years ago, but they did not move to "another" Twin Cities suburb. They bought a nice place on the 18th hole of the Stoneridge Golf Club in West Lakeland Township, which is part of Stillwater. According to Mapquest, it takes all of 13 minutes to drive the eight miles from Stoneridge to Salem Lutheran. So have the Bachmanns just stopped going to church? Joined another congregation? Or do they still show up at Salem as regularly as they can? Whatever the case, Bachmann no longer identifies herself as WELS.

Let it be noted that belonging to WELS may be a disability for an American politician. Back in 2006, someone noticed that the denomination, whose Lutheranism is pretty unreconstructed, considers the papacy to be the Antichrist. Bachmann vigorously denied that this was the case, and the little tempest quickly blew over. But now that she's front and center on the national stage, it could easily blow up again. Remember John Hagee and the Whore of Babylon?

While Bachmann has a particular reason to fuzz up her religious identity, she's hardly the only latter-day Republican politician to do so. Sarah Palin steadfastly refused to acknowledge her own lifelong (until she ran for statewide office) membership in the Assemblies of God. Other examples abound. I've got an idea that there's a memo out there to GOP candidates that they should just present themselves as "Christians." That's what white evangelicals increasingly prefer to call themselves, and it lets you evade all invidious denominational--and doctrinal--distinctions. Or even better, just talk about your recent prayer life.

Update: WaPo's July 5 story on Bachmann's husband Marcus simply shuffles in what the AP got from Salem's pastor :

The Bachmanns' strong belief that homosexuality is a correctable sin within the realm of possible redemption is consistent with the teachings of the Salem Lutheran Church in Stillwater, the birthplace of Minnesota on the banks of the St. Croix River. A modest brick building with a wide isosceles roof and stained-glass windows in the chapel, Salem served as the place of worship for the Bachmanns until their recent move. The church belongs to the highly conservative Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, which, in explaining its views on homosexuality, points to the passage in Corinthians where the apostle Paul says to former sinners, "That is what some of you were."

"The past tense is significant," the Synod's official Web site observes.

It's fair enough to bring Salem into the story, but the church just sits there as the place the Bachmanns used to go. 

Further update: Red State isn't impressed with Bachmann's performance.

Michele Bachmann, who's no fool, presented herself as the leader of a a broad-based populist movement, not the paladin of right-wing Republicanism:

The liberals, and to be clear I'm NOT one of them, want you to think the Tea Party is the Right Wing of the Republican Party. But it's not. It's made up of disaffected Democrats, independents, people who've never been political a day in their life, libertarians, Republicans. We're people who simply want America back on the right track again.

But that's another one of Bachmann's little fibs. According to Gallup, over 60 percent of Tea Partiers identify themselves as conservative Republicans; four out of five are Republicans of one sort or another. Moreover, as Rasmussen found recently (somewhat to his surprise), Tea Party Republicans are the most loyal of Republicans: 92 percent of them said they would vote for the GOP presidential candidate even if their favorite doesn't capture the nomination, as opposed to just 78 percent of non-Tea Party Republicans.

Just as Tea Partiers are really Republicans, their would-be leader is really rooted in the religious right. Whatever may be wrong with his Rolling Stone profile, Mike Taibbi is right to focus attention on this fact. Like Sarah Palin, Sharron Angle, Christine O'Donnell, and a host of lesser lights, she is just the latest creation of a movement that, among other things, has given conservative religious women the opportunity for political leadership.

I know I keep beating this horse, but the real question for Bachmann is whether she can establish herself as the candidate of her white evangelical co-religionists. Last week, a strong plurality of the board of the National Association of Evangelicals--45 percent--selected Tim Pawlenty as their GOP candidate of choice, as opposed to 14 percent for Mitt Romney and 22 percent undecided. What portion of the remaining 19 percent Bachmann picked up the NAE didn't say; presumably Pawlenty's strong showing had something to do with the fact that his pastor, Leith Anderson, is the NAE president.

Be that as it may, evangelical leaders have often shown themselves reluctant to support candidates who are overly identified with themselves. The same can't be said for the evangelical rank-and-file (see Huckabee, Mike). Michele Bachmann has, thus far, succeeded in persuaded most of the DC scribblers that she's all about the Tea Party, the religious right not so much. I'd like to know the buzz in the churches.