His faith guides; his duty demands

John Ashcroft's history suggests he has been able to accommodate contradictions between the law and his faith.

By MARY JACOBY

© St. Petersburg Times, published January 16, 2001

WASHINGTON -- There was nothing subtle about faith for the young John Ashcroft. At the Pentecostal church he has attended nearly all his life in Springfield, Mo., God grabbed worshipers by the throat, shook them by the shoulders, threw them to the ground. Baptized in the Holy Spirit, they spoke in tongues.

The son and grandson of Assemblies of God ministers, the future U.S. attorney general nominee was steeped in a tradition of emotional, physical and personal encounters with the Lord. Ashcroft's spiritual world was one where prayer healed cancers, Satan was real and life was an interlude in eternity.

In this denomination born at the turn of the century of the poor and lower classes, education was looked upon with suspicion and morality was never cloaked in gray. The difference between good and evil was as clear as black and white.

"It would be right to say that Pentecostals are not good at ethical nuances," said Dr. Russell Spittler, a theology professor who was a friend of Ashcroft's late father, a progressive and at times controversial Assemblies of God educator and minister.

In nominating Ashcroft for the nation's top law-enforcement job, President-elect Bush aims to put a leading Religious Right figure in charge of the government's legal strategy on such social issues as civil rights, abortion, affirmative action, immigration and illegal drugs.

Critics ask how a man raised in a culture of moral absolutes would handle a job that requires him to essentially act as referee of rights in a diverse society where many do not share his beliefs.

"John Ashcroft is so extreme that he is virtually certain not to provide equal justice for all," Georgetown University law professor David Cole said at a recent news conference.

Yet Ashcroft, 58, is not the one-dimensional Bible-thumper that his political opponents portray. A graduate of Yale and the University of Chicago law school, he won five statewide elections in historically Democratic Missouri.

Thus Ashcroft was not seen as a particularly polarizing figure, despite his rigidly conservative views, until Bush nominated him for the nation's top law-enforcement job Dec. 22.

Unlike Christian Coalition head Pat Robertson, North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms or some other figures of the Religious Right, Ashcroft has displayed a kind of intellectual sophistication that has shielded him from easy caricature.

In confirmation hearings that begin today, Democrats will question whether Ashcroft would uphold laws that conflict with his religious views. But an examination of his background suggests that Ashcroft has found a way to intellectually accommodate the contradictions between what is legal and what he believes is moral.

John Ashcroft grew up in a religious tradition that exalts the experience of body over mind, emotion over intellect. The story of how he learned to reconcile the two begins with his father.

Of good and evil

"Dad's prayers were not the quiet, whispered entreaties of a timid Sunday School teacher," Ashcroft wrote in his 1998 memoir, Lessons from a Father to a Son. "My father prayed as if his family's life and vitality were even then being debated on high."

Yet J. Robert Ashcroft, an educator and minister, was never wholly comfortable with life in the Assemblies of God, headquartered in Springfield, where Ashcroft grew up.

"He was an intellectual in an anti-intellectual environment, and that got him into trouble sometimes. People complained about his ideas," said Spittler, provost of Fuller Theological Seminary in California.

"In a sense, he and I were on the margins of the Assemblies of God because we had advanced training and we couldn't give ourselves up to wild, emotional religious demonstrations, but nonetheless we both believed there is a powerful spiritual core to the Pentecostal experience," Spittler said.

The son of an itinerate Pentecostal preacher, J. Robert Ashcroft studied at New York University and help found Evangel College, the denomination's liberal arts college.

He was a great influence in his son's life, so much so that Ashcroft wrote a book about him.

In one sense, Ashcroft's book was a promotional vehicle for a presidential bid. He hawked it on Robertson's 700 Club television show and at Christian Coalition events before deciding against a 2000 run in the face of a difficult Senate re-election campaign.

Ashcroft was narrowly defeated in November by the late Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan, a Democrat whose name remained on the ballot after his death in an airplane crash. Carnahan's wife, Jean, was appointed to the Senate in his place.

Ashcroft is not giving interviews. But people who knew the elder Ashcroft describe him as a maverick.

Assemblies of God was "very closed up until World War II, thinking that outsiders didn't have the full gospel. People who ventured into larger associations were suspected of not being fully loyal," said Edith Blumhofer, a professor at Wheaton College in Illinois who has written histories of the Pentecostal movement.

J. Robert Ashcroft was different. "He was always willing to learn and be in a bigger conversation than the denominational officials," she said. "But he was quintessentially Assemblies of God in terms of expect a miracle, the immediacy of the nearness of good and evil."

He remained traditional. The Ashcroft family did not smoke, drink, dance or go to movies. Such was the path of the wicked, who did not know God and personal salvation.

"Pentecostals are kind of cultural avoiders. You keep away from the world," Spittler said. "It's why you don't dance or go to theaters. You don't play cards. That's avoidance of, quote, "worldly' activities. For us growing up, "worldly' was a pejorative term."

Color lines

Now, Ashcroft is poised to oversee a Justice Department whose work is deeply enmeshed in culture, the diverse "world" that Ashcroft's religious background taught him to avoid.

Black leaders are particularly wary."I know a racist when I see one," African-American Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., said of the attorney general nominee.

One episode that blacks find troubling is Ashcroft's acceptance in 1999 of an honorary degree from Bob Jones University, an evangelical school in South Carolina that until recently banned interracial dating and marriage.

Historically, however, Pentecostals were more open to blacks than were other white evangelical denominations. At the turn of the century, black Pentecostal preachers led whites in worship, and there was a rosy glow on race relations.

"Some of them liked to think at the beginning that this was what the Pentecostal revival was all about: It was going to wash away the color lines," Blumhofer said.

But by 1914, Pentecostals split into black and white branches. In the 1950s, the head of the white Assemblies of God called integration "disastrous" for the church, Blumhofer wrote in a book. It was not until 1989 that the Assemblies of God formally denounced racism as a sin.

Ashcroft's father was progressive on race, Ashcroft wrote in his memoir.

He asked his son to read Black Boy by Richard Wright and cultivated in him an appreciation for gospel music.

"Some might ask why my father bothered introducing me to this culture," Ashcroft wrote. "He wanted to empty me of prejudice by helping me to fall in love with the highest levels of black performance."

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee will ask Ashcroft to square such sentiments with his opposition in 1999 to black Missouri Supreme Court Justice Ronnie White's appointment to the federal bench.

Ashcroft led a successful drive to defeat White's nomination, accusing him of being "pro-criminal" for reversing several death sentences for constitutional error.

Ashcroft's critics accuse him of cynically playing the race card in a covert appeal to white voters; they say White's rate of reversal was only marginally lower than that of other Supreme Court justices appointed by Ashcroft himself.

Man's law or God's?

Ashcroft's father died in 1995, one day after using Crisco cooking oil to anoint his son in an quick blessing before his Senate swearing-in.

But his influence didn't end. He left Ashcroft with strong moral convictions that are at the heart of liberal interest groups' fierce opposition to his nomination.

Ashcroft would allow abortion only to save the life of the mother and believes homosexuality, gambling and illegal drug use are sins. He has called government drug treatment programs an example of the nation operating at its "lowest and least."

Ashcroft has said he would uphold a law guaranteeing women access to abortion clinics blocked by protesters. He has deplored clinic violence.

But what really has abortion rights advocates worried is that as attorney general, Ashcroft would shape the government's response to Supreme Court court challenges on abortion. The opinions of the Justice Department's Office of Solicitor General carry great weight with the court.

Yet in terms of women, his religion has been more progressive than many. Unlike Southern Baptists or Catholics, Pentecostals see no Biblical proscription on women in the ministry.

"God does indeed call women to spiritual leadership," an Assemblies of God position paper says.

Ashcroft has pledged to work to change the law to reflect his moral vision. "I think all we should legislate is morality," he has said. "We shouldn't legislate immorality."

His record suggests he respects the distinction between man's law and God's. As Missouri governor, for example, he implemented a state lottery approved by voters, even though he believes gambling is morally wrong.

Ashcroft himself said in a 1998 interview with Pentecostal Evangel magazine, "You can't impose spirituality on a culture. You can impose legality."

No king but Jesus

If Ashcroft is confirmed, he will become the highest-ranking Religious Right figure ever in the federal government. What would his confirmation mean for church-state separation issues?

In a 1998 speech before at a Christian Coalition convention, Ashcroft called the Supreme Court a "robed elite" that practices "religious oppression."

At Bob Jones University in 1999, he said the country has "no king but Jesus."

"Clearly, John Ashcroft's speech shows that he has little or no appreciation for the constitutional separation of church and state," the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said in a statement.

Yet Ashcroft has also been quoted many times saying, "It is against my religion to impose religion."

Evangelical Christians believe Ashcroft is being tarred by the left for his faith.

"It's religious profiling," said George Wood, Ashcroft's friend and general secretary for the Assemblies of God.

Ashcroft himself believes that everything happens according to God's plan. When he lost his Senate seat in November, Wood said his faith allowed him to accept the voters' verdict with grace.

"I'm at peace with this," Ashcroft told Wood, according to Wood. "I trust the Lord has a good end for me."

- Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright