Born again

Former NBC news anchor John Chancellor brought two phenomena to the fore during the 1976 presidential campaign. He was the first to coin "red state" and "blue state" as descriptors for how states voted in a presidential election. He also introduced the American public to what it meant to be "born again." As in "born-again Christian."

Actually, it was born-again candidate Jimmy Carter who brought evangelicals out of the political underbrush and "born agains" into the light of day. But it was Chancellor, in a nationally televised interview with Carter, who elevated the term into public discourse by asking what much of Middle America wanted to know: What exactly is this business of being "born again?"

(Ever the intrepid journalist, Chancellor prefaced his questioning with the reportorial assurance: "We've looked up born again, and it is nothing new." Columnist Cal Thomas wrote years later, "The term wasn't invented by Jimmy Carter, though the one who coined it had the same initials.")

It seems a silly question now. For nearly 30 years, abetted by the success of Carter's successor Ronald Reagan and his political operatives, evangelicals became major players in U.S. politics. Born again was no longer a foreign-sounding phrase.

But like so many religious concepts made into sound bytes, "born again" has been caricatured and delimited until it seems only to define a demographic with a penchant toward conservative politics.

Deep religious truths don't fare well when they become slogans, especially when appropriated for political reasons. It was refreshing, then, to come across these lines this week from Diary of an Old Soul, by George MacDonald:

"But we who would be born again indeed,
Must wake our souls unnumbered times a day."

Being born again is nothing less than committing one's self, day by day, moment by moment even, to being in conscious awareness of God. That is a deeply spiritual exercise. Once engaged, we may or may not say we are born again. But we can always say we hope to be.

Original posts at http://wrigleypreacher.blogspot.com