I refer, of course, to the Iowa caucuses.
The quadrennial starting gun to the presidential election is Jan. 3, plunking the caucuses squarely amid the 12 Days of Christmas, which begin on Dec. 25 and end at the Epiphany. It's an apt coincidence (even if the chosen ones in this rite - one proffered Republican messiah and one Democratic - will be chosen by Iowa voters rather than the Almighty). Politics and religion are hardly strangers to each other; the leading candidates in both parties sometimes drape their speeches in biblical language.
"It is a peculiarity of the Good Book that it elicits in its readers the strong conviction that it unequivocally supports their strongest convictions," Georgetown political scientist Jacques Berlinerblau observes in "Thumpin' It," which is a rundown of current candidates' faith-laced utterances and a Valium for secularists panicked about an impending theocracy.
Be forewarned that the chapters on the 2008 contenders could hit their expiration date before Valentine's Day, by when there will have been about 40 primaries or caucuses and both parties may have settled on their standard-bearers for the fall. Less perishable insights include Berlinerblau's sangfroid about Bible-thumping pols, a welcome antidote to the army of alarmist authors who've been predicting the establishment of the United States of Pat Robertson any day now.
Christians, Berlinerblau also says, including evangelicals, historically have been unable to agree on the proper interpretation and political implications of scripture. Differing takes on the Bible are also a theme in Karen Armstrong's "The Bible: A Biography." Her expertise falls on the church side of the church-state equation - she is a former nun and has written several bestsellers on religion - and her new book dispels any notion of religion as a rigidly fixed reading of sacred texts. Spanning millennia, from the scripture's origins in oral stories to the conflicting beliefs, ancient and modern, over its message, her book will discomfort fundamentalists who believe that the Bible means what it says and says what it means.
