Skip to footer

When things get tough, politicians look to the 'amen corner'

Campaigns occasionally get compared to religious movements, so it’s not surprising to see the term 'amen corner' in greater use. 

|
Nati Harnik/AP
Republican presidential candidate, Sen. Marco Rubio (R) of Florida talks to supporters after speaking at the Iowa GOP's Growth and Opportunity Party at the Iowa state fair grounds in Des Moines, Iowa, on Oct. 31, 2015. The New York Times recently said that Senator Rubio can count on an 'amen corner' in the conservative press.
  • By Chuck McCutcheon Voices contributor

“Amen corner.” In a church, the section of a congregation hosting the most vocally devout worshipers; in politics, the most fervent supporters of a candidate or issue.

Because campaigns occasionally get compared to religious movements, it’s not surprising to see this term in greater use. The late language expert William Safire said the phrase predates the Civil War and first surfaced in the Congressional Record in 1884. “Trouble in the Amen Corner,” based on a poem, became a popular country gospel song in the 1960s. (Among those who recorded it: Wink Martindale, who later became a TV game-show host.)

Discussing right-wing pundits’ fondness for Sen. Marco Rubio (R) of Florida, The New York Times’s Jonathan Martin said Sunday on CNN: “Marco has a great advantage in this campaign – he has got an amen corner in the conservative press. It is so revealing when he’s under attack from the left, or from folks inside the primary, the people that rally to his side.”

The Seattle P-I’s Joel Connelly in September noted the GOP field’s enthusiastic response to Kentucky clerk Kim Davis’ refusal to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples: “Davis has found an ‘Amen Corner’ among Republican presidential candidates.” And The Nation’s John Nichols has used it to dismiss pro-free trade news media outlets as well as new House Speaker Paul Ryan (R) and other deficit-cutters resisting Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’s plans to increase government spending on education and other services.

Former GOP presidential candidate and international isolationist Patrick Buchanan popularized the expression in a controversial 1990 blast at plans for Operation Desert Storm. “There are only two groups that are beating the drums for war in the Middle East – the Israeli Defense Ministry and its amen corner in the United States,” Buchanan said.

Since then, it has come up again in the context of Israel. When that country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, spoke to Congress earlier this year in forcefully arguing against a nuclear deal with Iran, Bloomberg Politics ran a piece headlined: “At Netanyahu’s Speech, Scenes From the Amen Corner.”  More recently, longtime GOP national-security hawk Elliott Abrams, writing in the Weekly Standard, referenced Buchanan’s comment in accusing President Obama of being unwilling to stand strongly with Israel.

The popularity of “amen corner” extends to other areas. It’s best known in golf as the 11th , 12th and 13th holes at Augusta National, the site of the Masters, which are seen as so challenging that they require prayerful meditation. And it was the name of a 1960s British psychedelic-rock band.

Chuck McCutcheon writes his "Speaking Politics" blog exclusively for Politics Voices.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to When things get tough, politicians look to the 'amen corner'
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/Politics-Voices/2015/1102/When-things-get-tough-politicians-look-to-the-amen-corner
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe