Scott Dickensheets: Bring up God, watch the sparks

By Scott Dickensheets

Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2010 | 2 a.m.

The message was short, direct, completely nuts. “What do Democrats know about God?” the voice-mailer demanded. “They abort children.” Click.

Well, that’s not an official requirement of party membership, I’m pretty sure. And I’m equally certain that one or two Republicans have terminated pregnancies. But ours is not a time and place that allows nuance, perspective or accuracy to get in the way of a good emotional blurt.

I won’t often build a column out of reader responses. But a squall of real voices seems the perfect way to close accounts on last week’s election and the fervors and fevers it aroused. Like the woman quoted above, these are reactions to my Friday column and its gentle(ish) parody of God talking to Sharron Angle after the election. Not surprisingly in a country where, according to a 2008 poll cited by The Washington Post, 92 percent of us believe in a god, these messages indicate just how tightly ensnared politics and religion are in each other.

“Well, if you think there’s a God, and most of us do,” said one old gal, her tone heating the phone in my hand, “then you must know there’s also a devil — and believe me, he was working with Harry Reid all the way. They put a choice in front of us, between good and bad, and unfortunately, the Teamsters, the people of color and a few others put Harry right back to do more damage.”

Another woman: “Frankly, I’m insulted by the way you mocked Sharron Angle and talking to the Lord. There are people who do talk to God every day. And not some people, like our president, who maybe went to church two or three times in two years and calls himself a Christian? No.”

All right, I confess: I’m not a religious man. But I’m not quite ready to rule anything out, either. Agnostic, is what I’m saying; I don’t know the truth, or The Truth. So what I was satirizing wasn’t the idea of talking to God; that’s a private exchange that’s none of my business. Rather it was the notion that God — who normally calls people to serve the church — would summon a cold ideologue like Angle to run for the Senate. (Las Vegas pundit Steve Sebelius, who’s quite fluent in the Bible, noted, “Never do we read or hear about somebody being ‘called’ to serve in political office.”)

A Las Vegan named Jim wrote a long and heartbreaking e-mail about his severe health and financial problems, and the role his spirituality plays in his perseverance. Even a waffling agnostic can be moved by that. “I wrote you today,” he concluded, “to let you know my God works in strange ways.”

It’s under that same Moves in Mysterious Ways rubric that Jim files Angle’s campaign. “I believe God told Sharron to run. We may not know the reason today, but one day we will.”

I’ll be waiting for that divine news release.

And there was this call for, uh, closure: “Don’t you think it’s time you stop demonizing Sharron Angle?” one caller asked. “I mean, the election’s over ... Show a little class.”

The call for class rings a little hollow considering that Angle’s party offered safe harbor to Beckian extremists, birthers, Tea Party nihilists, socialism alarmists, people who insist on saying “Barack HUSSEIN Obama” as if his middle name proves solidarity with terrorists, and every other flavor of swift-boater the American id coughs up during an election.

Turns out my intent was clear to some.

“I just wanted you to know it was hilarious,” said one caller, who identified himself as an Angle supporter. He doesn’t think he’s the only right-winger who’d like my parody: “Even Angle, if she has a sense of humor, would have to smile about that one.”

That might be optimistic; despite the grin she deployed for the entire campaign, I never got the sense that Angle harbors a funny streak. On the other hand, I am encouraged by this caller’s ability to laugh across party lines.