Thumpin' It: The Use and Abuse of the Bible in Today's Presidential Politics [Paperback]

Jacques Berlinerblau (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 17, 2007

In one of the most witty and insightful books yet to explore the fascinating relationship between the Bible and American politics, Georgetown professor Jacques Berlinerblau looks at:
the recent history of how Scripture has influenced public policy debates about the environment, abortion, stem-cell research, and foreign policy;
how recent U.S. presidents have employed the Bible BR>Plus how each of the major candidates in the 2008 presidential elections is using and often misusing the Bible in his or her race for the White House.

Politicians, especially those seeking the presidency, must develop a good Scripture game, as Berlinerblau calls it. However, "It is a cynical business, politics is. It becomes no less so when public servants and interest groups get it into their heads that God Himself provided proof texts for their policy initiatives two thousand years ago. It is a peculiarity of the Good Book that it elicits in its readers the strong conviction that it unequivocally supports their strongest convictions."

"Berlinerblau's sangfroid about Bible-thumpin' pols [is] 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." Boston Globe

"This is a very smart, funny, and insightful account of the way in which the Bible and its authority are often invoked in American politics. Evangelicals should read his book for a reality-check from a keen observer whose assumptions about many matters (Scripture included) may differ from their own." Books & Culture

"When [Obama] opens his mouth, not only the words, but the tone invokes religious imagery," says Jacques Berlinblau. But Clinton need not throw in her political towel. "We are a secular democracy and while there are constituencies for which this is appealing, other constituencies, including many Jewish Americans, have some trepidations about the overplaying of the religious card in political life," says the author, a District resident. "McCain, on the other hand, is a mainline Protestant he was an Episcopalian who recently announced a 'denominational shift' to being a Baptist. He is cozying up to the religious right that he excoriated eight years ago, a good call on his part." Washington Jewish Week

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Georgetown University professor Berlinerblau (The Secular Bible) makes the unoriginal argument that American politicians on the left and right use Scripture in their speeches, and that policy wonks on both sides of the aisle draw on the Bible to defend positions on the environment, stem-cell research and foreign policy. Berlinerblau finds politicians' use of Scripture to be shallow—they offer poor and tendentious readings, throwing in a verse here or there and failing to acknowledge Scripture's internal diversity and contradictions. A few of Berlinerblau's sweeping historical assertions are questionable—did the U.S. really undergo a thoroughgoing secularization in the first 75 years of the 20th century? A wealth of scholarship on the persistence of conservative religion and the extent to which religion shaped liberal agendas such as feminism would suggest not. His tone has the faint veneer of sarcasm (Enter, as if on cue, the Evangelical Climate Initiative), so when he gives speechwriters tips about using Scripture effectively—be vague, avoid theological depth—it is hard to tell if he is being sincere or snide. Two concluding chapters assess the ways leading presidential candidates, from Clinton to McCain, present their religious bona fides. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

This book uniquely combines the author s expertise as a biblical scholar with his canny perception of the American political scene in a volatile presidential election year. Events move quickly and unpredictably, but this kind of analysis may prove useful for a long time to come. --J. Philip Wogaman, author of From the Eye of the Storm: A Pastor to the President Speaks Out, and former pastor of Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, DC.

Jacques Berlinerblau ... couldn't be more timely with his wittily titled warning to presidential wannabes....The message here is that Oval Office hopefuls, all of whom are prone to quoting from the Good Book to support their positions, need to be more careful about those slippery, contradictory, and sometimes even nonexistent passages from the Bible. Try as one might, it's hard to make a compelling case against stem cell research from anything contained in the Old or New Testaments. But try pols most certainly will, on this and other matters, and the results of their efforts should come, Berlinerblau tongue-in-cheekishly suggests, with a candidate's disclaimer that his (or her) use of a particular passage may be subject to radically different readings. --From US News & World Report, written by Jay Tolson on his "Faith Notes Blog"

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 216 pages
• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press (December 17, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 066423173X
• ISBN-13: 978-0664231736
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,056,779 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Breezy, concise, insightful, unconventional, February 18, 2008

By 

K T Jones - See all my reviews

This review is from: Thumpin' It: The Use and Abuse of the Bible in Today's Presidential Politics (Paperback)

Berlinerblau's slim volume is one of the best guides to religion and presidential politics around today.

Berlinerblau is exactly right that the Bible has come back into our politics because politicians are aggressively targeting the evangelical vote. At the same time they are carefully ignoring the substantial (and growing) secular voting bloc. His discussion of secularism in America today is more nuanced and balanced than anything I have read on the subject.

Chapters 2, 3, 4 talk about how the candidates justify their ideas on issues like the stem cell research, the environment and Middle Eastern foreign policy. Chapters 5, 6, 7 give very balanced portraits of the religion strategies of all the 2008 candidates and Bush and Bill Clinton. The sections on Giuliani and Obama are excellent. This book will be an important resource for those trying to understand Obama's religious influences. Inexplicably, Berlinerblau leaves out any discussion of the evolution/ intelligent design controversy--the only significant weakness in an otherwise authoritative overview of the contemporary political-religious terrain.

Berlinerblau concludes that even though there is a lot of religion in American politics it still has little actual influence on governmental decisions. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and appreciated the author's sense of humor and his refusal to take sides. If he has an axe to grind, there is no hint of it in the book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thumpin', March 13, 2008

By 

Rick Stilwell "Coffee, Books, Mini" (Cayce, SC USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Thumpin' It: The Use and Abuse of the Bible in Today's Presidential Politics (Paperback)

I think it's a literary breath of fresh air for my own political re-emergence this electoral season. Subtitled "The Use and Abuse of the Bible in Today's Politics", it's actually a pretty good primer on the Bible's use throughout American history. He does a bang-up job at describing the details without taking a partisan side, explaining credibly that both sides "use and abuse" the Bible.

"... no empire, no society, and rarely even one denomination has ever been able to agree on what the Bible says. Put differently, even if there were one 'right' reading of the Bible, we have yet to find a social body that has achieved agreement as to what it might be." (p. 32)

His first pass is into such divisive hot button topics as the environment, stem-cell research and foreign policy - all areas of current event interest that are not really addressed in 2,000-year-old texts. But each "side" has its own loose prooftexts to cite, its own spin and perspective on the issues and problems at hand, and the Bible serves to give some weight and authority to those opposing views. Both sides paradoxically use the same Bible to point to diametrically opposed viewpoints. He also leads into dialog on the campaigns and the party dynamic, where Democrats are waking up to the spiritual side of the electorate that the Republicans have had a stranglehold on for decades. In most cases, the pointed use of vague and victorious-sounding scriptural rhetoric is a plus for a candidate, while relying too heavily on the Bible, or appearing to take it too seriously, is also almost always a pitfall.

I want to recommend this one to everyone - but it's mostly for those who see something spiritual on the political scope that "just smells funny". It's like everyone is spiritual, but not everyone's exactly truthful. The scriptures are as helpful as they can be when prooftexted to back up a point, but there's not any real political reliance on the Bible for much more than "a personal faith". Whether that's a plus or a minus is left to the reader. I appreciate that Berlinerblau's work goes beyond the current soundbites to a place that wrestles with truth beyond the pithy truths of the speeches and negative ads.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars So far, so good...but falls short in the end, October 23, 2008

By 

Ranger Gary (United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Thumpin' It: The Use and Abuse of the Bible in Today's Presidential Politics (Paperback)

"Thumpin' it" is well written and the author understands the subject far better than many, whether secularists or Christians. But the author's extended, italicized disclaimer of "no bias" piqued my suspicions from the outset, and by the time I finished I concluded that the book fell short of its purported purpose--and is, indeed, a biased tome.

First, it is not scholarly. Its thoughtful, but not scholarly. One quick example--Berlinerblau accepts without critique the separationist interpretation of Jefferson's "wall of separation" metaphor, despite extensive (and scholarly) criticism that the modern hyper-separationist model arising from that phrase rests in bad history and created bad law. So bad that one federal appellate court recently called the concept a "tiresome extraconstitutional construct." Thus, his "neutrality" unfortunately slides onto the secularist end of the scale.

More subtly, he astutely analyzed the schism between Republicans on the embryonic stem cell issue, noting that two pro-life LDS Republican senators had allied themselves with pro-abortion Democrats to support federal funding for that embryonic stem cell research. But he didn't go to the next level, and explain why LDS theology leads its believers to accept embryonic stem cell research, while evangelical Christian theology finds the research morally repugnant (it has to do with the ensoulment of the embryo). And this failing is one of several factors that disproves his theory that religious principles don't influence American policy--Mormon theology drove that acceptance of a morally questionable act as throughly as Christian theology drove opposition to it.

The baseline shortcoming is that he seemed to be looking for a politician "proof texting" his way through a public policy thicket, spouting Bible verses on the way, before he would admit to the real impact of religion on civic life. But religious beliefs come out through principles and the application thereof--often easily traceable to the trained eye--and hold far greater sway in our society than one might think. Jacques' unfortunate conclusion is that the Bible is mere political puffery in American politics, when nothing could be further from the truth. One might get the French Republic with the benefit of Enlightenment thought, but one will never get the American republic without the Bible.... All in all, its a good read and worth reading--but biased, and stops short of a full analysis in some critical areas.