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  • Religious Dissociation in 2012 Campaign Discourse
  • Kristy Maddux (bio)

In his speech testifying to Mitt Romney’s character, fellow Mormon Grant Bennett answered a question that recurred throughout the 2012 campaign: what or who is authentically Christian? With a Mormon, an African American Protestant, and two Catholics atop the major party tickets, faith leaders, surrogates, and the candidates themselves all jockeyed to assert each of these faith traditions as authentic expressions of Christianity. Bennett did so by borrowing language from the New Testament book of James. “Pure religion,” he asserted, “is to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction.”1 With this line, the most emphatic and enthusiastically received of his speech on the final night of the Republican National Convention, Bennett suggested that works of mercy, more than right doctrine, serve as the truest measure of Christianity.

As he did so through the logic of dissociation, Bennett echoed a great chorus of church leaders who have endeavored to resolve tensions prompted by the cacophony of voices clamoring to speak for Christianity. In what follows, I situate the dissociative logic of the 2012 presidential campaign against the history of dissociative logic common from the New Testament writers, through early U.S. church founders, up to recent religious-political discourse. I argue that, in 2012, rhetors associated with both presidential campaigns used dissociation to bolster their candidates’ religious credentials, and I suggest that such dissociation turned on the [End Page 355] faith/works binary. Rhetors from both campaigns defined true Christianity, or Bennett’s “pure religion,” in terms of charitable works. In my conclusion, I reflect upon how this dissociation both broadens Christianity and supports the conservative political project.

Dissociation, Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca have taught us, resolves the tension within a seemingly unified concept by revealing its constituent parts and dividing it into those parts.2 Those parts are based on the prototypical appearance/reality pair, but other common dissociative pairs include means/end, relative/absolute, multiplicity/unity, theory/practice, and letter/spirit.3 By breaking apart a seemingly unified concept, dissociation “brings about a more or less profound change in the conceptual data that are used as the basis of argument,” they contend. Dissociation does not simply break the links joining independent elements; instead, it modifies “the very structure of these elements.”4 Often, dissociation does this conceptual work at the syntactic level. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca note that “any idea can be dissociated by the addition of the adjectives ‘apparent’ or ‘real,’ or of the adverbs ‘apparently’ or ‘really.’”5 Dissociation has commonly been used to manage religious tensions: Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca see it in the idea of original sin; Kathryn Olson has explained how dissociation legitimated the Shakers’ epistemological system; and Janice W. Fernheimer and Andreea Ritivoi have both identified dissociations within Jewish discourse.6

Dissociation in Christian History

This dissociative logic is basic to Christianity itself: New Testament scriptures evidence anxiety over tensions within early Christianity, and their authors use dissociation to manage those tensions. As these writers warned repeatedly of the false prophets who threatened the spiritual integrity of their young church, they created a dissociation between the real expression of Christianity they had experienced through God-in-Christ and the apparent expressions of spiritual truth being promoted by frauds. The Gospel of Matthew advises believers that “false messiahs and false prophets will appear and produce great signs and omens, to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.”7 2 Peter explains that there have been false prophets, and there will be false teachers who “will exploit you with deceptive words.”8 1 John, too, notes that “many false prophets have gone out into the world,” and gives its [End Page 356] readers instructions for distinguishing between real and apparent prophets.9 The book of Revelation predicts a singular false prophet who will give dupes the mark of the beast.10 That false prophet resounds as a significant figure in contemporary apocalyptic fiction, as personified, for instance, by the character Leon Fortunada in the Left Behind series.11

Religious pluralism in the United States has recreated such anxiety about false expressions of Christianity. Without a governing or dominant religious system, individual...

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