'St. Jack' and the Bullies in the Pulpit

"Votes reflect moral values. The struggle for hearts and minds gets reflected in the ballot box," Land says, setting up the twist of the knife. "It just sounds to me like Danforth's sore that he lost the argument with a majority of the American people."

The Turning Point

It seems like another era when John Claggett Danforth was perceived as one of the most publicly pious players in Washington. He led weekly worship at St. Albans and served as the eulogist for former president Ronald Reagan and former Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham.

When asked in 1991 to respond to critics who used "St. Jack" as a pejorative to suggest sanctimony, he told a Post interviewer, "I think anyone who felt that he was, you know, Mr. Wonderful, with an agenda that is the God-given agenda for the country to be accomplished at all costs -- he would be both sick and ineffective."

Danforth was talking about himself. Little did he imagine that there was a battalion of evangelical Mr. Wonderfuls marching on the nation's capital, which they would soon rule. Now he wishes that part about ineffectiveness were only true.

Danforth, 69, is out of government after 18 years in the Senate, service as a peacemaker in Sudan and investigator in Waco, Tex., and a recent stint as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. An heir to the Ralston Purina fortune, who received degrees in religion from Princeton and law and divinity from Yale, he largely focuses on good works in St. Louis while delivering the occasional sermon.

One morning last spring, as he walked with his wife, Sally, in Palm Springs, Calif., where they are building a house, his dismay with the Republican Party turned to dissent.

The trigger was the case of Terri Schiavo, the brain-dead Florida woman whose husband wanted to disconnect her from life support. Schiavo's parents fought to keep her alive, backed by prominent Christian conservatives, including Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.).

"If you turned on Fox News, you would hear relentless talking heads talking about, 'They're killing Terri!' and 'This is murder!' " Danforth says, recalling the campaign to remove the case from Florida courts that had ruled she should be allowed to die. "I thought, 'This is not what the Republican Party does. The only explanation for it was an effort to appease the Christian right.' "

Danforth saw the Schiavo case as meshing with the right's opposition to gay marriage and embryonic stem cell research.

"I think a marriage is between a man and a woman, but it's beyond me how the whole thing has become so politicized and people have become so energized by it. Because, what difference does it make? How does it constitute a defense of marriage to legislate in this area?"

In Missouri, where Danforth won five statewide elections, a constitutional amendment outlawing gay marriage passed overwhelmingly last year. Yet he believes most people would say no if asked, "Do you believe we should just be nasty and humiliate people and degrade them because of sexual orientation?"

"The Ten Commandments in the courthouse?" he says of another front in the culture wars. "Talk about much ado about nothing."