Rudy Giuliani made an effort to reach out to the fundamentalist right yesterday, sitting down for an interview with David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network, home of all things sequined and fanatical. You can watch the interview here, or read excerpts courtesy of CNN here (note that, in the passages cited, he manages to refer to 9/11 — in unrelated contexts — twice).
Giuliani, of course, is under attack from the fundies on two fronts — his supposed unreliability on abortion and other policy matters, and his rather unconventional personal life. In the interview, he used a biblical analogy to defend himself on the second subject, though he screwed it up a bit:
“I’m guided very, very often about, `Don’t judge others, lest you be judged,”‘ Giuliani told CBN interviewer David Brody. “I’m guided a lot by the story of the woman that was going to be stoned, and Jesus put the stones down and said, ‘He that hasn’t sinned, cast the first stone,’ and everybody disappeared.
“It seems like nowadays in America, we have people that think they could’ve passed that test,” he said. “And I don’t think anybody could’ve passed that test but Jesus.”
In the New Testament story, related in the Gospel of John, Jesus does not actually hold stones. The Pharisees bring Jesus a woman charged with adultery, reminding him the punishment for adultery is stoning. They are testing Jesus in an effort to charge him with breaking the law.
Brody himself was forgiving over this little gaffe, later writing that he “understood the analogy. It was simply to say that people shouldn’t be so judgmental of others.” Which is a nice sentiment, if one that seems to somewhat contradict the entire premise of a network like CBN. It’s not really for me to say, but it seems that the problem with Giuliani’s argument here, from the evangelical perspective anyway, is that it asks for a total suspension of judgment. It’s one thing to say that we should all try to be less judgmental; it’s another to infer that, since none of us can be as good as Jesus, there are no grounds for anyone to criticize anyone over matters of personal morality. Giuliani is trying to remove his personal life from the equation altogether, trying to assert that the choices he has made should mean nothing. But if fundamentalists accept that, then they have to abandon their project of making the personal political altogether. Somehow it’s hard for me to imagine they’ll agree.
Something to say?
