Washington Post Profile on Sen. Sam Brownback

(Hat tip: Amy Welborn)

The Washington Post has published a profile of Sam Brownback, focusing on his Catholic convictions:

Faith-Based Initiative
Presidential Hopeful Sam Brownback Strives to Be Humble Enough for a Higher Power

... Four years ago, Brownback -- who'd been a Protestant all his life -- had another spiritual transformation. He decided to become a Catholic.

"Just felt a real deep calling," he says.

He won't talk much about this aspect of his religious life. "It's kind of a divisive issue," he says, perhaps conscious of his many evangelical supporters. "People divide along churches instead of trying to look at how you pull together. Like, okay, this church is better than that church. You can find the Lord in a lot of places if you're willing to look for Him."

Brownback says he felt drawn to Catholicism for several years before he converted. (He had been raised a Methodist, and later belonged to a nondenominational evangelical church.) He describes the decision as an organic process, less a journey away from his faith and more a return to its roots. He doesn't call it a conversion.

"A conversion is if I became a Buddhist," he says. "Joining the Catholic Church was joining the early church. This is the mother church. This is the church out of which orthodoxy and Protestantism came."

He was sponsored by his friend in the Senate, Rick Santorum (R-Pa.). The ceremony was performed by the Rev. John McCloskey, a member of the controversial and strict Opus Dei sect who has helped convert a number of high-profile people, including columnist Robert Novak and former abortion provider Bernard Nathanson.

***
Brownback has a folksy, reassuring presence: He might be lamenting Roe v. Wade or he might be tucking you in and reading "The Berenstain Bears." He grew up on a farm and uses agricultural analogies and words like "skedaddle." He keeps a Mother Teresa quote about not judging people on the back door of his home in Topeka.

"So easy to judge people," he says. "I see you coming in the hallway and my mind just automatically goes, 'Okay, reporter, Washington Post, that's a primarily liberal publication, be careful.' Well, now I've automatically judged you. So I've spent my time judging you instead of thinking, 'Oh, here's a great person that I can interact with. I pray to love 'em.' "

***
He practices prayer when he finds himself in heated situations, as he did recently during a meeting on a constitutional amendment he supports, which would ban same-sex marriage. (Marriage, he says, is "a man and a woman bonded together for life and grandparents surrounding 'em.")

"Instead of getting angry at somebody for opposing you on something, you're just praying for them," he says. "You just pray blessings on them, blessings on their family."

Because of his emphasis on compassion, Brownback does not fit the stereotype of the angry Christian conservative...

Brownback has teamed up with some of the most liberal members of the Senate to help victims of sex trafficking, and suffering Sudanese. He quotes Bono on the struggles of the poor and encourages college students to take their spring breaks in Africa. He has worked for women's rights in Afghanistan and for North Korean refugees. When the issue of illegal immigration blew up in the Senate earlier this year, Brownback embraced President Bush's plan for comprehensive reform, infuriating some conservatives who see it as too lenient. He has pushed for an African American history museum on the Mall, saying he became committed after a "divine intervention" came to him during prayer.

***
It would, in fact, be a grave error to characterize Brownback as squishy.

When he entered the House as part of the Republican sweep of 1994, Brownback argued for dismantling the departments of Commerce, Education, Energy, and Housing and Urban Development as part of an effort to downsize the federal government. Some years later he put forward the theory that part of the problem with the Social Security system was abortion, because too few children were growing up to become workers who could pay into the system.

During the 2004 Republican convention, Brownback told a closed-door rally, "We must win this culture war,'' according to the New York Times. "I say we fight."

"He has this kind of soft physical presence," says Burdett Loomis, a political scientist at the University of Kansas. "I think Sam Brownback is a very tough customer."

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Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
USCCB Official Expresses Gratitude to Sen. Brownback for Hearings on Capital Punishment

Senator Brownback Conducts Senate Hearings To Examine Pornography's Effects On Families, Society

Will This Catholic Senator Be the Next President?

Kansas Senator Brownback, Looking at Presidential Bid, Makes Faith the Bedrock of Campaign