\n<\/p>\n
Vivek Ramaswamy emails me, as does half the Republican presidential primary field, because I am on the mailing list of a GOP fundraising outfit that does not honor unsubscribe requests.<\/p>\n
Ramaswamy\u2019s latest email stood out from the daily deluge, though, for the simplicity of its conceit.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am not afraid to say these truths,\u201d ran the subject line. Inside, the fundraising pitch was short and blunt: \u201cTRUTH. There\u2019s only one. Not yours, not mine. Just pure TRUTH,\u201d read the brief note festooned with links to donate.<\/p>\n
In the middle were the 10 affirmations Ramaswamy has increasingly placed at the center of his campaign messaging, rattling them off every chance he gets:<\/p>\n
Set aside, for a minute, the question of whether the list is as true as Ramaswamy claims, and look instead at the form. It\u2019s familiar\u2014or it should be, for Christians. This is undeniably a creed, and that\u2019s precisely the problem.<\/p>\n
Ramaswamy isn\u2019t unique in taking a creedal approach to politics. The best-known contemporary example is the \u201cIn this house we believe\u201d sign, which has become ubiquitous<\/a> in many progressive neighborhoods in recent years.<\/p>\n As creeds go, In this house<\/em> is remarkably efficient, dogmatic, and magisterial. Each line requires substantial knowledge of the faith: \u201cScience is real,\u201d for instance, invokes a whole host of beliefs about evolution, vaccination, climate change, masking, and more.<\/p>\n There are a few variants on the text\u2014some later manuscripts, which I suspect are more common in states where oil pipelines or fracking is an imminent concern, add the statement \u201cWater is life.\u201d But you never see an In this house<\/em> protestant posting a sign with a few of the lines crossed out. The creed is complete, and the faithful uphold it in its entirety.<\/p>\n Right-wing interest in mirroring and\/or parodying the In this house<\/em> mantra seems to match the original sign\u2019s spread. When I first researched the phenomenon for an article<\/a> at The Week<\/em> in 2020, I came across a red, white, and blue version with<\/a> lines like \u201cFetal rights are human rights\u201d and \u201cImmigration is a privilege.\u201d Yet more often, it looked like bumper stickers, campaign signs, and American flags were the Right\u2019s counterpart of choice.<\/p>\n Since then, however, the market appears to have expanded. There are jokey offerings (\u201cWe believe Bigfoot is real<\/a>\u201d) and theological ones (\u201cWe believe sola gratia<\/em>, sola fide<\/em> \u2026<\/a>\u201d) and a new political version<\/a> that ignores abortion and immigration in favor of declaring socialism to be \u201cthe gospel of envy\u201d and the news to be \u201cpropaganda.\u201d<\/p>\n However popular they may be, none of those have made the cultural impact Ramaswamy likely hopes his list will achieve. As a write-up at Mother Jones <\/em>observed<\/a>, Ramaswamy\u2019s 10 truths loosely follow In this house<\/em>, but they\u2019re less derivative than the explicit parodies.<\/p>\n Ramaswamy takes more freedom to include the dogmas he deems essential and adopts a soberer presentation than open mockery. His invocation of \u201cTRUTH\u201d is zealous but apparently serious\u2014or, at least, as serious as anything else in modern American politics. It seems inevitable that his supporters will learn to recite his creed.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s just the thing that unsettles me about all this. Contra the email\u2019s claim to be sharing \u201cpure\u201d truth, it\u2019s very much his<\/em> creed.<\/p>\n This is not, like the Nicene and Apostles\u2019 Creeds<\/a>, the work of the church under the guidance of the Spirit\u2014now ratified by more than 16 centuries of faithful Christian use. It is, as Ramaswamy told The Atlantic<\/em><\/a>, the work of 15 minutes on an airplane. It is the work of a political candidate whose \u201cone God,\u201d affirmed in the first line, is not the same God<\/a> as the one his typical evangelical supporter worships.<\/p>\n It is also the work of a man, as the same Atlantic<\/em> article indicates, whose understanding of truth and belief is strikingly incoherent. Consider the following exchange:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n [Ramaswamy] presents his ideas as self-evident, eternal truths. I asked him if he believes that truths can change over time. For instance, what did he make of the fact that most white Americans used to view it as a \u201ctruth\u201d that Black people were genetically inferior\u2014that they weren\u2019t fully human?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think that\u2019s true,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n \u201cIt is true,\u201d I said. \u201cThat\u2019s partly what justified slavery.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n \u201cBut it was a justification; it wasn\u2019t a belief,\u201d he said. \u201cLook at emperors\u2014Septimius Severus in Rome. He was Black. He had dark skin. They viewed dark skin as the way we view dark eyes.\u201d [The Atlantic<\/em><\/a>]<\/p>\n
\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n What Ramaswamy says here does not make sense. The part about Roman emperors is irrelevant to the matter at hand. The implication that a belief can\u2019t be false is laughably wrong.<\/p>\n And though the Atlantic<\/em> writer\u2019s phrasing is unclear too\u2014he speaks of truths \u201cchang[ing] over time\u201d but seems to mean that popular beliefs evolve\u2014Ramaswamy\u2019s answer is just as confused. He doesn\u2019t really defend the idea of ultimate, changeless, and (at least partially) knowable truth. He simply defends his list.<\/p>\n The original In this house<\/em> mantra has basically the same problem. Its author was a woman<\/a> in Wisconsin. Her homemade sign went viral on Facebook, and then it went into mass production. I\u2019d guess not one in a million adopters of her creed knows her name, though she wrote the very words by which they publicly define themselves.<\/p>\n Like many evangelicals, I did not grow up in a creedal tradition. Most of the churches in which I was raised were formally or functionally Baptist. As an adult, my longest church membership was in a Mennonite community where, like other Anabaptists<\/a>, we had \u201cno creed but Scripture.\u201d These noncreedal churches had statements of faith and confessions, some of which were very similar (albeit usually more verbose) than the major Christian creeds, but we didn\u2019t have the same doctrine of creedal authority.<\/p>\n For many years that made sense to me, and it still does, in theory. But in practice, I\u2019ve learned that just because a community espouses \u201cno creed but Scripture\u201d doesn\u2019t guarantee it will be marked by deep scriptural study and obedience. Instead, it can produce a community in which scriptural interpretation is an individual project undertaken without clear guardrails or a means of settling sincere disagreements<\/a> about what the Bible means.<\/p>\n I\u2019m now a member of a creedal church\u2014in part because I think most of us need the creeds\u2019 succinct and long-tested summary of our faith. I believe we have neither the scriptural knowledge nor the personal constancy and wisdom to do without them. Maybe creeds are training wheels; but I, for one, don\u2019t have perfect balance.<\/p>\n The choice to adhere to a creed, though, is a weighty matter. And I think that\u2019s why I have a strong instinct against creedal politicking. The In this house<\/em> author and Vivek Ramaswamy may have many merits. That doesn\u2019t mean their political agendas deserve creedal authority. Adopting a creed is too serious an expression of loyalty and identity for politics.<\/p>\n Creeds are important, and that\u2019s why they only belong in church.<\/p>\n Bonnie Kristian is the editorial director of ideas and books at Christianity Today<\/span>.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n