Spitting on Dick Cheney’s grave either metaphorically or figuratively is not biblical, three current and former Wyoming pastors with varied political backgrounds told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday.
The controversial, Wyoming-raised giant of national politics and global warfare died Monday evening at the age of 84.
He served as vice president to President George W. Bush, Secretary of Defense to the elder President George H.W. Bush, and chief of staff to President Gerald Ford, among other high-ranking roles.
Some Wyomingites remembered Cheney on Tuesday as a force for Wyoming who commanded the respect his offices deserved. Others memorialized him as a joker and a hometown bro.
Still others — critics across the social media sphere, commentators, media outlets and one Christian satire outlet — cast the late vice president as a ruthless war hawk.
“The nation is mourning the death of former Vice President Dick Cheney, who has tragically passed away without getting to see World War III,” wrote Christian satire outlet the Babylon Bee in a mock eulogy published Tuesday.
The outlet plunged on, calling Cheney, “the renowned politician, avid hunter of both animals and men, and 43rd most popular Vice President.”
Some commenters on Cowboy State Daily’s Facebook page were even less charitable, writing such missives as “he has received his judgment” and “some small 3rd world country is free of him and Halliburton.”
Cheney’s legacy is a twisting one with detractors on all sides.
Democrats in the early 2000s reviled the Bush administration-led Iraq war. So too did libertarians. Punk band Green Day released a whole album about it titled “American Idiot."
The tides turned in 2022, when pro-Trump Republicans derided both Cheney and his daughter, Wyoming Republican U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, as father and daughter said Trump should never reenter the White House.
In Our Stars, Not In Our Selves
But Dick Cheney was complex, and a human being like anybody else, Rodger McDaniel told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday.
McDaniel retired in 2023 from pastoring Cheyenne’s Highlands Presbyterian Church and worked in Democratic political circles prior,
“Dick was in a role where he had to make decisions that frankly resulted in a lot of violence and a lot of death,” said McDaniel. “But that was the role he was in.”
The power of high public office can amplify the sins to which a man is already prone, McDaniel noted, though he didn't sugarcoat the instances of suffering that he attributes at least in part to Cheney.
But to McDaniel, himself a persistent critic of President Donald Trump, Cheney’s efforts to rebuke Trump during the 2022 Liz-Cheney-vs.-Harriet-Hageman House campaign demonstrate a complexity that resonated with the pastor.
“The way in which he came to understand his … influence in politics and (use that) to reject Trump, and what Trump stood for, indicated to me that he had a good side too,” said McDaniel.
Either way, he Bible doesn’t condone spitting on Dick Cheney’s grave — literally or metaphorically, the retired pastor said.
“Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,” said McDaniel, quoting from one translation of Romans 32:35. He added in his own words, “I just don’t think any of us are pure enough to spit on anybody’s grave.”
McDaniel said the same lesson should also reach those who reviled Charlie Kirk after he was fatally shot in the neck Sept. 10 in an apparent political assassination.
“Nobody deserves what happened to Charlie Kirk — as much as I disagreed with him,” said McDaniel.
From The Right, Now
Jonathan Lange, a Missouri Synod Lutheran pastor and Cowboy State Daily columnist who runs to the political right of McDaniel, agreed on this point.
But Lange put it in words that accidentally channeled the renowned pastor John Donne, who gave the world the phrase “no man is an island.”
“Every human death is an utter tragedy that leaves a gaping hole in the universe,” said Lange. “And part of being part of a human family is weeping with those who weep, and rejoicing with those who rejoice. And I think we need to recognize and love those who are mourning.”
The wake of a death is not the time to speak ill, “but it’s a time to come together,” added Lange.
And In The Trenches
Scott Clem is in the political trenches as a member of the Campbell County Commission.
He served as a Republican in the state Legislature from 2015-2020, and pastored a Baptist church in Gillette from 2019 to 2022.
“I think it’s pretty dehumanizing when we attack people after their death, and especially right upon their death,” he told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday. “The family is grieving. They’re people.”
Clem was “not really a fan of Dick Cheney. Or his daughter Liz. But, there’s a time and a place for things,” he said.
Clem referenced Jesus’ most famous speech, the Sermon on the Mount, in which he equated calling someone a fool with murdering that person.
Clem also referenced the first letter of John, chapter four, verse 20: “Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar.”
“It doesn’t matter who it is,” added Clem in his own words. “This kind of ‘rot-in-hell’ stuff, that rhetoric is totally uncalled-for.”
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
