At last week's "National religious Leaders' Summit on Civility," an ecumenical panel of clergy addressed impeachment-era incivility at a forum sponsored by the Interfaith Alliance in one of the Senate office buildings. Groggy religion reporters were nerfed senseless with the sponge bats of "civil discourse." Citing such great civility sages of our time as Stephen Carter, Mo Udall, and the Kings, Martin Luther and Rodney, the panelists issued a "call to understanding" to seek "the kind of catharsis that is the beginning of healing." Alliance executive director C. Welton Gaddy went on to discourage "harmful diatribes attacking the integrity of opponents' faiths."
Unless of course, that opponent is the Christian Coalition, for which the Interfaith Alliance bills itself the antidote. While purporting to be a nonpartisan foundation of clergy (the membership ranges from the ultra-liberal Philip Wogaman, Clinton's pastor, to the ultra-liberal minister Robert Meneilly, who likened the religious Right to Hitlerism), the Alliance rarely passes up a chance to beat the heck out of God's children on the right in as uncivil a manner as possible. Of the 64 press releases that are on the Alliance's Web site, a full 85 percent attack the religious Right in some fashion.
"Civility," it turns out, is just liberal aggression in disguise.