Culture Friday - Reflections on Watergate

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday, June 17, 2022.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. It’s Culture Friday.

Let’s bring in John Stonestreet. He’s the president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast and he joins us now. Welcome back, John, we missed ya!

JOHN STONESTREET, GUEST: Thank you. It's good to be back.

EICHER: It seems like news that the Speaker of the House, second in the line of presidential succession, made a special TV appearance timed for “Pride Month.”

RUPAUL: Give a warm “Drag Race” welcome to the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi! Welcome back.

PELOSI: My honor to be here, to say to all of you how proud we all are of you. Thank you for the joy and beauty you bring to the world. Your freedom of expression of yourselves in drag is what America is all about.

Nancy Pelosi on Ru Paul’s Drag Race. She posted the clip on her own social media, and so that’s how we have the audio there. Now, John, we have to acknowledge the House Speaker’s home district is more aligned with this than middle America would be. So in politics, it’s standard “coalition building.”

But culturally, it’s much more than that, isn’t it?

STONESTREET: Well, I do think there has been no greater example of the extremes that the idea of expressive individualism will take you than the trans movement—and specifically the drag form or the drag expressions of the trans movement. Because there is this idea that no matter what reality is, if I want it, if I feel it, then that's actually what's true.

There's nothing beautiful about what the transgender movement is doing to children. Could you imagine a Speaker of the House going to a white supremacist event, saying that we're so glad that you are teaching these children this evil ideology that teaches you to see other people in a way that it is not true and ultimately harmful?

That's what's happening here.

The Speaker of the House is going to a group of people who teach children to see themselves in wrong ways, ways that are ultimately harmful. And this is what the Speaker of the House is celebrating as a good.

It's one thing if she decided to just say, “Well, you know, I don't want to legislate this, I don't want to actually say that it's wrong. It would be you know, that we need to take care of our morality and let people choose their own morality or whatever.” But to actually say that this is a good thing, that this actually brings good into the world, she doesn't really believe that I don't think because you can't. You can't actually believe that the best thing for a child is to feel lost within their own body and to be convinced to physically harm perfectly healthy body parts in order to pursue identity that will always be elusive for them. I mean, you can't actually believe this.

So it was a political calculation. It should be seen as every bit as evil and wrong as any politician that buys into white supremacy.

That's what I have to say.

BROWN: Lots going on at this year’s Southern Baptist Convention in California. Issues ranging from whether or not to abolish the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission to defining the term Pastor to the issue of sexual abuse. John, you can weigh in on any of those hot topics, as you wish. But I’m interested in hearing what you have to say generally about where denominations seem to be headed? Have they become more cultural than Christian?

STONESTREET: Well, some have, and some have actually become more orthodox. We've seen both of those things in recent memory.

And you also in many denominations, even in some that are as far progressive as the Episcopal Church, continue to have kind of a faithful remnant in, for example, Central Florida diocese and that have largely maintained faithfulness to Christ, while the larger denomination can't even be called Christian in any meaningful sense anymore.

The Southern Baptist is such an interesting annual story because they're the second largest religious body in the world and just like when the archbishops get together to do something in the Roman Catholic Church, it's a national and international story. People want to know.

But I will say that the top headlines that get so much of the attention can be confused with the whole story. When you actually back up and see that what the Southern Baptists are doing on the ground around the world, what they're doing in disaster relief, what they're doing in terms of, you know, kind of theological re commitments, what they mean when in terms of mission and, and just their commitment to evangelism. It's a denomination that outshines a lot of others.

And I know that there's a lot of Southern Baptists who think that the denomination is going the wrong way. And among that group, they think that for opposite reasons, you know.

This is a challenge right now, for denominations of all kinds, but I think that for the rest of us that aren't Southern Baptist, it is a very important thing to realize that there's a lot to this denomination beyond what we read in the headlines.

EICHER: So today is June 17th, 2022, let’s subtract exactly 50 years. On June 17, 1972, small news story about a second-rate crime that would become a massive story: police arrested burglars in the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. Eventually, evidence would link the break-in to President Richard Nixon's re-election campaign. One person at the center of the political scandal, special counsel to the president Chuck Colson. Interesting that we have the January 6 commission going on. Some say this is a straight line to Watergate, some say it’s just a show trial, but what do you say as president of the Colson Center, John, as you reflect on the 50th anniversary of Watergate?

STONESTREET: You know, at our recent Wilberforce weekend, we remembered Chuck Colson, given that this was the 50th anniversary of Watergate, this is also the 10th anniversary of his passing. And, you know, there's a lot of remembrances that will be had about Watergate and certainly a lot of connections that will be made to the January the 6th hearing.

And I think that one of the things that will be missed is that, that maybe the most significant positive legacy that came out was the conversion of this man, Chuck Colson. And when you think of the scope of the work, Nixon was known for being tough on crime, and because of Chuck, there has been remarkable advances made in prison reform, dramatic efforts to reduce the recidivism rate, caring for communities. Understanding human dignity.

When you think about the number of people whose lives have been impacted by Prison Fellowship, about the number of people who have been inspired by his life, I can't tell you how many people come up and say, “Chuck mentored me” and they never met, and it was just through a book. “And this is the book that meant the most to me,” they'll say, and I've heard 20 different titles. I mean, of course, Chuck wrote 30 books. I think that's huge. Now, of course, that's not the only thing that the story of Watergate is about, but you won't hear that being a part of the story. Now, there's an immediate legacy of Watergate, there's no question about it. And it was a pivotal moment in the loss of trust in American governmental institutions. And that's something that has only gotten worse.

You know, people are connecting it to the January the 6th incidents. And you'd look at how the whole break in Watergate and why did with Nixon ever want to do this when he was, you know, almost guaranteed reelection? And none of it makes any sense. And you look at January the 6th, and what seems to be coming to the top is there wasn't any sort of mastermind. You know, it was people behave badly in large groups, and especially people that are disaffected. And when you have a larger cultural setting, which people don't trust anyone who's in authority, and, you know, we were in a two year cycle of rioting and doing really dumb things. And we had a president who showed awful leadership that day, who had enough of an ego that wanted people to fight for him, even if it wasn't right. And then you had people faced with incredible ethical and a moral crisis like Vice President Mike Pence, and this was all part of it.

And maybe, maybe that's the connection with Watergate is that there was no genius behind it. It just kind of all happened. I say all that to say this. There is a deep loss in American institutions. There's a deep loss in the American government. This is the larger scenario upon which we get our leaders, upon which the leaders morality and integrity is questioned. And the path we're on is absolutely unsustainable.

But there's a bigger thing at work than any government headline and that's the kingdom of God. In the midst of Watergate here you have this man who once said he would run over his own grandmother to secure Nixon's reelection who ends up becoming a servant of Christ—a humiliated and then humbled man of incredible giftedness that in any sort of equation that takes Kingdom math into account is the most important headline of that whole thing. And I thank God that I get to be a part of it, it certainly
means a lot.

BROWN: John, as we remember Chuck Colson, the one verse comes to mind, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone, the new has come, amen.

STONESTREET: Amen!

BROWN: Well, John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Thank you, John.

STONESTREET: Thank you so much.

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