On the second floor of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Thomas Jefferson’s Bible sits on display behind a thick wall of glass. The glue stains along the book’s pages are evident, as are the blank sections of passages that Jefferson found unbelievable, prompting him to physically cut them out.
“There will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man,” Jefferson wrote in a letter to John Adams. “I have performed this operation for my own use, by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book, and arranging the matter which is evidently his, and which is as easily distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill.”
Following in Jefferson’s theological footsteps, presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg is combing through the Bible, looking for his own “diamonds in a dunghill” — or applicable moral principles that come without strings attached.
When asked what he had to say to religious Americans critical of his gratuitous cherry-picking, Buttigieg blamed his habit of “picking and choosing” on, of all things, the Bible.
“Well, I think for a lot of us — certainly for me — any encounter with Scripture includes some process of sorting out what connects you with God versus what simply tells you about the morals of the times when it was written,” he told Rolling Stone.
“And to me, that’s not so much cherry-picking as just being serious, because of course there’s so many things in Scripture that are inconsistent internally, and you’ve got to decide what sense to make of it,” Buttigieg continued, adding, “Jesus speaks so often in hyperbole and parable, in mysterious code, that in my experience, there’s simply no way that a literal understanding of Scripture can fit into the Bible that I find in my hands.”
Jefferson’s heresy had at least some sort of moral end: He wanted to make virtue rational and accessible to the Bible’s average reader. Buttigieg, on the other hand, exploits the Bible for nothing more than political gain. Hoping to win back the Christian voters who went red for Trump in 2016, Buttigieg appeals to their sense of decency, honesty, and morality. This isn’t what Jesus would do, says Buttigieg, pointing at Trump.
And he’s right: Trump is no exemplar of biblical morality — but then he’s never claimed to be such.
Buttigieg, in contrast, makes such claims constantly, to the point that he can hardly be made to shut up. He regularly touts Christianity as the moral basis of his political beliefs and personal decisions, and then he turns around and uses that same fair-weather theology to advocate for abortion and promote anti-religious policies that would forcibly turn churches into social-justice centers.
And Trump might be an amoral dolt, but Buttigieg is a hypocrite. (The Bible has some striking things to say about hypocrites, but those are likely among the passages Buttigieg has chosen to ignore). The only thing inconsistent about the Bible is the way believers choose to obey it. There is no room in Christianity for a half-baked morality that is only as good as the votes it brings in.
Buttigieg, like Jefferson, is trying to reason his way out of the faith and obedience the Bible requires. But unlike Jefferson’s Bible, Buttigieg’s theology won’t end up in the Smithsonian.
