Mixed Feelings about Governor Bevin

In the summer of 1959 June and I moved from our beloved state of Missouri to Kentucky. We spent seven years there and came to love Kentucky as our second “home state.” In addition to being a full-time seminary student I was also a pastor during most of that time, and I still have good memories and great respect for many of the Kentuckians in our churches.

 Perhaps because of that past connection, I was especially interested in the gubernatorial election in Kentucky last month. That highly contested election had ramifications beyond Kentucky: it may have even been a harbinger for the presidential election next year.

 Businessman Matt Bevin was elected as the new Kentucky governor. I have mixed emotions, however, about Bevin (b. 1967), who will be inaugurated on this coming Tuesday, December 8.

 On the one hand, Bevin seems to be a dedicated Christian layman. He is also a dedicated family man: he and his wife have nine children, including four from Ethiopia whom they adopted.

 Their oldest child, Brittiney, was killed in a car accident in 2003 on Lexington Road near the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS) about a month before her 18^th birthday. (I used to drive down that road several times a week.)

 Brittiney had wanted to be a missionary, so her parents provided an endowment in her memory to fund a facility at SBTS “for the advancement of the gospel amongst the nation and nations.” It opened in the fall of 2012. As one who went to seminary in order to become a missionary, the establishment of the Bevin Center for Missions Mobilization is something I have to evaluate highly.

 But there are aspects of Bevin’s words and actions that are troubling. Supported by the Tea Party, he ran in the 2014 primary election against Sen. Mitch McConnell, whom he considered too liberal. Bevin lost that election, but then the Tea Party successfully promoted his gubernatorial campaign.

 One of his main appeals during his campaign for governor was his pledge to cut the state’s Medicaid program and close the state-run Kynect health insurance exchange. After the election he tempered his rhetoric somewhat, but Bevin’s election was not good news for the poorest people of Kentucky who have been greatly helped by “Obamacare.”

 As one who agrees with the Tea Party, Bevin opposes all tax increases and wants to decrease spending for the needy in the state.

 That seems highly questionable for a man whose net worth is widely estimated as being between $13.4 million and $54.9 million, who lives in a house costing over $700,000, and who pays more in tuition for his children to attend a private Christian school than the yearly income of many of the families in the state of Kentucky.

 Bevin has also said that when he becomes governor on Dec. 8 he will call for barring Syrian refugees from settling in Kentucky.

 By contrast, Steve Beshear, Kentucky’s current governor, has said that Kentucky should do “the Christian thing” and welcome all refugees who have passed extensive background checks.

 It seems to me that Gov. Beshear is right, and I wonder how “good” Christians like Bevin, many other Republican governors, and some presidential candidates can be so harsh in their rejection of Syrian refugees, many of whom are terrified children.

 Moreover, does the election of a businessman who has never held public office to be the governor of Kentucky mean the same sort of thing might happen in the presidential election next year?

 Perhaps. But I certainly hope not, for the sake of our nation.

The Tea Party -- Then and Now

The Boston Tea Party occurred 240 years ago, on Dec. 16, 1773. Some say it was the actual beginning of the war for American independence. At the very least, it was an important precursor of the Revolutionary War, which officially began in April 1775.

As is widely known, the issue was taxation. More specifically, it was about taxation without representation. The colonialists didn’t mind paying taxes as such. They just didn’t want to send the money raised to King George and a government in which they had no voice.

A large majority of the colonialists were from Great Britain, and they liked their tea. The British, though, levied taxes on the tea they shipped to the Colonies—three pence per pound (equivalent to about $1.15 now). That may not seem like a lot, but the colonialists were consuming well over a million pounds of tea a year.

On that December evening in 1773, some 5,000 people met in the Old South Meeting House to debate British taxation. That gathering-place was the sanctuary used by Old South Church, which was founded in 1669; the church constructed their new facility in 1729 and in the 1770s it was still the largest auditorium in Boston.

After the meeting some of the protesters, many disguised as Indians, boarded three British ships in Boston Harbor and threw 342 chests of tea into the water. (The value of that tea would be worth about $1,700,000 today.)

That happening is what came to be known as the Boston Tea Party, although that term was not used until the 1820s.

A 1846 lithograph by Nathaniel Currier (1813-88), half of the Currier & Ives combo

In 1973, the U.S. Post Office commemorated the 200^th anniversary of that act of protest against Britain by issuing a set of four first-class (8-cent) stamps, together making one scene of the Boston Tea Party.

More recently, in 2009 grassroots political protest spawned what came to be termed the Tea Party movement. That movement is credited with electing 28 U.S. Representatives in 2010, helping the Republicans take control of the House.

At the beginning of this year, there were 48 Representatives who were members of the Tea Party Caucus, chaired by Michelle Bachmann. All are Republicans, including two of the eight Representatives of Missouri (where I live).

While there are numerous economic matters that are of great concern to the Tea Party movement, one of their main concerns is not raising taxes. In fact, they want to reduce the size of government and lower taxes as much as possible.

Even though there is a similarity in name, these modern-day “patriots” are quite different from those who participated in or supported the 1773 Boston Tea Party with the slogan “no taxation without representation.”

The current Tea Party seems to want representation with no (or at least very little) taxation. Those are two widely different matters.

The efforts of the original Tea Party in 1773 meant the loss of revenue for the British government, but it didn’t mean lower taxes for the colonialists.

The contemporary Tea Party movement works so their members, and many other U.S. citizens, would pay some less in taxes. And it is mainly the poor and needy who are the losers, with cuts in “food stamps” and now soon in unemployment benefits.

So, in looking back at the Boston Tea Party that took place 240 years ago this week, let’s be careful to note that its purpose and consequences differed greatly from those of the current Tea Party movement.