Stealing Jesus: how fundamentalism betrays Christianity

by Bruce Bawer

  To be sure, Reed acknowledges that his "faith community" was "on the wrong side of the most central cause of social justice in this century"—that is, racism—and he claims to be grieved by this. "The white evangelical community," he writes, "allowed our black brothers and sisters to be held in bondage and treated as second-class citizens for four centuries, and we quoted scripture to justify it." Yet while admitting that "the sad record of religious conservatives on race gives liberals reason to hurl charges of bigotry and intolerance at us," he adds that "they are wrong in making those attacks today," because "the white evangelical . . . legacy of racism" is "now being wiped clean." Wiped clean? White legalistic Protestant churches are still segregated; white legalistic Protestant parents still send their children to private schools, or home-school them, so that they won't have to mix with black children. White legalistic Protestants applaud black Republican Alan Keyes because he says what they want to hear and because it makes them feel unprejudiced to cheer a black man; yet how many of them would welcome an African-American as their pastor or son-in-law? In 1996 a white legalistic church in Georgia voted to dig up the body of a dead girl from its graveyard because she was black. That remains the prevailing mentality of many such churches today.

  The burning of several black southern churches in 1996 only raised the question, If racism is really a thing of the past in the American South, then why are there still such things as black churches and white churches? Reed complains that "commentators have by and large completely missed" the white evangelical community's efforts at "bridge-building" with blacks; yet how can anyone take such gestures seriously, given that community's ardor for Pat Buchanan? Reed, far from repudiating Buchanan, defends him. "I never attacked Pat Buchanan as some did," Reed brags. "When Buchanan was denounced by some as an 'extremist,' I rejected that label and called such charges the 'trappings of demagoguery'" Yet Reed never answers the question, How can "love ye one another" be reconciled with Buchanan's combative slogan "lock and load"?

  To Reed, of course, love is essentially a rhetorical device. "Among conservative evangelists," Reed insists, "love for the Jewish people and the state of Israel is a defining characteristic." In fact, legalistic Christians love Jews so much that they want them to become Christians. In the same way, they love gays so much that they want them to become straight. This is a very special kind of love, obviously. Apropos of gays, Reed uses the favorite legalistic Christian line about loving the sinner and hating the sin—which posits a judgmental dynamic in which it is always the other person who is the sinner, never oneself. In Active Faith, Reed lists sins that violate the Ten Commandments, and manages to slip into the list exactly one item not mentioned in the commandments—homosexuality. But then the Christian Coalition has done an excellent job of making its constituents think that homosexuality is in the Ten Commandments. (In 1996, when the SBC voted to censure the Disney Company for providing health-insurance benefits to employees' same-sex partners, the New York Times quoted a thirty-five -year-old Southern Baptist mother who said she approved of the resolution because homosexuality "falls under the Ten Commandments as adultery.")

  Reed contradicts himself in Active Faith on the question of whether the Christian Coalition wishes to change laws. On the one hand he seeks to squelch the image of the Religious Right as a group of extremists attempting to impose their worldview on American society; on the other hand, he argues for the importance of laws that do just that. "There are some in the evangelical community today," he writes, "who counsel retreat from constitutional or legal restrictions on abortion. 'We must first change hearts and minds,' they say. But [Frances] Willard [the first president of the Women's Christian Temperance Union] understood that politics is culture—that the law is a teacher, and that ballots can achieve much in shifting social attitudes." Thirty pages later, however, Reed says exactly the opposite: "We must seek to change hearts and save souls first, believing that the laws will change only as the culture does." He claims that "unlike fundamentalist political movements in the Middle East, religious conservatives in the United States are properly understood as an interest group within a democratic order. If they gained power, they would not repeal the Constitution or attempt to impose their religion on others through the state." Yet in its so-called Contract with the American Family, a set of ten proposals for legislative action issued on May 17, 1995, the Christian Coalition called for "a constitutional amendment to protect the religious liberties of Americans in public places," the idea being to circumvent Supreme Court directives safeguarding the separation of church and state. The Christian Coalition also placed immense (and ultimately successful) pressure on the Republican Party to secure support in its 1996 platform for several additional Constitutional amendments, one of which would indeed impose religion on others by permitting organized prayer in public schools. Reed also contradicts himself-—not only in his book, but in recent public statements—on the question of which matters most to the Christian Coalition, the so-called moral issues, such as abortion and gay rights, or economic issues; these contradictions plainly emerge from his attempt both to please his constituency and to calm the fears of mainstream readers.

  "The proper perspective of faith in politics," writes Reed, is "a fiery conviction of right and wrong tempered by a humility before God and a respect for one's foes." If this is the test, the Christian Coalition fails it. Reed lists "a decline in civility" as one of the organization's main concerns. Yet the Coalition is composed overwhelmingly of white heterosexuals many of whom are anything but civil to blacks and gays, and who at their 1996 convention displayed an astonishing incivility. One elderly rank-and-file member was seen on TV ranting to a journalist about how she was "sick of" various things; her list consisted mainly of categories of people different from herself. Reed himself notes that at the 1992 Republican Convention, a CNN commentator was "jostled" and his fiancee "heckled" by "some of the more unruly" evangelicals. He says he regrets this. But why were these activists unruly? When had delegates at national conventions ever behaved in this way? That evening, Reed recalls, he was being interviewed on the convention floor by Nina Totenberg of National Public Radio when nearby delegates (who, he says, were not Christian Coalition members) called her a whore and "other unprintable epithets." Reed wants mainstream America to think that he genuinely regrets this kind of hooliganism; yet he refuses to acknowledge that such behavior is in fact common among legalistic activists and that the Christian Coalition encourages it.

  Like fundamentalists early in the century, Reed and other Christian Coalition leaders have made extensive use of military images. When Pat Robertson opened the organization's annual convention in September 1994, he called the Christian Coalition "a mighty army"; in Active Faith, Reed cites a conversation in which Robertson told him how to "energize the troops." Elsewhere in the book, Reed betrays an awareness of the strategic unwisdom of using such language: "Early in the 1990s, I occasionally used military metaphors for effect. When they were quoted out of context by the left, they sounded frightening and were a liability. After the 1992 elections I realized that such language had allowed the media and the organized left to caricature our movement as intolerant and uncaring. Moreover, I felt such rhetoric was inappropriate for a Christian organization because it lacked the redemptive grace that should always characterize our words and deeds. I sent out a memorandum to our grassroots leaders urging them to avoid military rhetoric and to use sports metaphors instead."

  Here, without realizing it, Reed points up the problem at the heart of his relationship with his constituency. As we have seen, the fundamentalist movement has always used military metaphors—violent, angry ones—and it has done so because it viewed the struggle in which it was engaged as a battle to the death in which God was on its side and the Devil on the other. The movement did not and does not believe in pluralism; it did not and does not believe that its "foe" means well. It believes, on the contrary, that its opponents are the instruments of Satan. If rhetoric to this effect fr
ightens mainstream Americans, it is with good reason, for the rhetoric fairly represents the way these people think and suggests how far they would be willing to go if they gained political power. For Reed to call off such rhetoric is a purely strategic move designed to disguise his constituents' real feelings. Reed's comment about the need for "redemptive grace" in "our words and deeds" sounds exactly like something that Harry Emerson Fosdick would have said—and that the fundamentalists who opposed Fosdick would have rejected angrily. To such people, the idea of addressing modernists with respect and charity—indeed, of treating them as anything other than the tools of Satan—was and is anathema. In any event, Reed forgets to follow his own directive: He writes that during Colin Powell's book tour, the Christian Coalition "chose to keep our powder dry," and speaks of the organization's members as an "army." Along similar lines is a slip made by William Bennett in a September 1996 speech at the Christian Coalition convention: Intending to refer to "the cross on Calvary," Bennett spoke instead of "the cross on cavalry." A month later, in an address at the National Press Club, Reed, meaning to say that Christian Coalition voter guides help people "to cast an intelligent ballot," instead said "intelligent battle." These slips betray a dangerous warrior mentality that should not be taken lightly.

  What do the agenda and rhetoric of the Christian Coalition have to do with Christianity? Nothing. Reed admits as much when he states that "religious conservatives still lack a theology of direct political action" and "will need to develop one to achieve their full potential over time." Translation: There is no real connection between his constituents' professed Christianity and their politics. It is an extraordinary admission. Reed notes that in a 1993 survey, "we found that evangelical voters listed the economy and jobs as their top issue, followed by taxes and the deficit, crime, and education. Abortion was one of these voters' lowest priorities. This came as a startling revelation to those who assumed that evangelical voters were driven into politics exclusively by the cluster of social issues that included gay rights, abortion, and school prayer." Indeed, the Christian Coalition's "Contract with the American Family" was far less concerned with so-called moral issues than with traditionally conservative economic measures. Citing "welfare reform, tax relief, and a balanced budget amendment" as key concerns, Reed writes in Active Faith that "these are issues that resonate strongly with people of faith." This statement is nothing short of hilarious: To use the word faith in such a way is to drain it of all meaning.

  These and other statements by Reed have made clear his desire to "mainstream" the Christian Coalition. So does the wide detour he makes in his book around Robertson's esoteric theology: Clearly, Reed recognizes that the more mainstream Americans know about what Robertson really believes, the more they will realize that his faith is anything but traditional or moderate. A recent manifestation of Reed's mainstreaming efforts is the Christian Coalition's "Samaritan Project," unveiled in early 1997. Touted as "a bold and compassionate plan to combat poverty and restore hope," the program in fact takes familiar right-wing proposals that are hostile to the interests of poor urban blacks and puts a kinder, gentler spin on them. "It is time," Reed said in announcing the plan, "for religious conservatives and their estranged liberal brethren to unite to strengthen the essential building blocks of the family and the church for urban—and American—renewal."

  Though the proposals themselves were far from liberal, Reed's rhetoric about uniting with "estranged liberal brethren" may well prove too much for many legalistic Christians at the grassroots; indeed, it may well be that Reed's efforts in this direction had more than a little to do with his departure from the Christian Coalition's executive directorship.

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  11

  "NO MORE GRAY"

  To get A look at the reality of the legalistic Christian grassroots, one need only turn off any one often thousand roads around the United States. Set fifty or so yards back from one of those roads, a winding two-lane blacktop an hour northeast of Atlanta, is a plain, one-story brick structure that might easily be taken for a Rotary meeting hall or a local labor-union headquarters. Only the low roadside sign—which features the place's name, its slick modern logo (which might well be taken for a corporation's), and an invitation to "come in and meet our pastor"—identifies it as a house of worship.

  On a mild Sunday morning in October, I park in the unpaved lot and enter the building. The auditorium is austere, undecorated. About a hundred people—all of them white, most of them couples in their thirties and forties, some with children—sit in folding chairs facing a slightly raised stage. Most of the men are in casual shirts and jeans; the women are all in dresses or skirts and blouses. At stage right are three young male guitarists, three singers, a keyboardist, and an elderly woman with a tambourine; at stage left is a large projection screen; at center stage is a lectern and, a few feet behind it, a cross-shaped opening in the wall. Behind that opening stand a slim man of about sixty in a blue suit and tie, obviously the pastor, and a schoolgirl in white, whom he is holding by the shoulders and whose hands are clinging to his wrist. Suddenly and swiftly he lowers her backward out of sight; there is a sound of splashing, and he says, "I baptize you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit." When she rises again, the band strikes up a "praise song" (a musical genre with which most mainline Protestants are entirely unfamiliar). During the song, the pastor steps around the baptism tank and approaches the lectern.

  "Baptism. It's important, isn't it?" he asks his congregation when the song is over. His voice is firm, loud, authoritative, with a mild regional twang. Around me, heads nod affirmatively. "And what's important," he adds, "is to have a believer's baptism. It's not enough to be baptized as an infant. You've got to be baptized as a believer. Right?"

  "Amen!" the congregation replies in unison.

  "And the preferred biblical method," he goes on, "is by full immersion. How many of you are glad to be Christians?" He spits out the question like a drill sergeant issuing an order; I'm the only one who doesn't raise a hand. (Yes, I'm glad to be a Christian, but I'm wary of this raise-your-hands business.) "How many of you are glad to be in the Lord's house?" Again, everyone but me shoots up a hand.

  That settled, we move on to the announcements. The pastor tells us about this week's scheduled meetings. A man rises and reports on his efforts to win local prison inmates to Christ. Then the pastor plugs the forthcoming "men's meeting," which, he says, is "dedicated to the maturing of men in the service of Christ." He tells us that the meeting is scheduled for November 22, and then, just to make sure the congregation has gotten the information, he asks, "What day is it?" In one voice, the congregation shouts back, "November twenty-second!"

  Five minutes into the service it's already clear that this man speaks to his congregation as if they're elementary-school children, and that they're happy to respond in kind.

  Now, the pastor tells us, it's "worship time." All around me, the Bibles come out: In this church, the people bring their own, one per couple. I watch as, with an awkward reverence, they remove the books from bags and open them, as directed, to Psalm 145. I don't know whether the Bibles are all the same translation, but they certainly aren't all the same edition: They're different shapes and sizes, the bindings variously brown, black, green, maroon. All are larger, thicker, more expensive-looking than those usually found in the pews of mainline churches. Some come in custom-made cases, padded and zippered. The ones around me all look pristine, as if they're not actually read very much, though one man near me has plenty of very neat underlining in his. Together the congregation reads aloud from the psalm: "I will exalt thee, my God and King; I will bless Thy name for ever and ever. Every day will I bless Thee, and praise Thy name for ever and ever."

  The psalm over, the Bibles are put away. A member of the congregation stands to announce that it's "Pastor Appreciation Time." A dozen people step up onstage and present the pastor with two gifts. He opens the first: It's a big picture of our first president, fram
ed above a quotation from Washington that the pastor reads aloud: "It is the duty of the Nation to acknowledge the Providence of Almighty God." The congregation murmurs its approval. The pastor comments, "May we find that spirit in the White House today!" His flock replies, "Amen!" The other gift turns out to be a framed picture of Andrew Jackson, with a quotation from Old Hickory about the need to thank God for American freedom. "Did you know," the pastor says, "Andrew Jackson was a Sunday-school teacher? He'd arrange his schedule to come back from campaigning in the war to teach his classes." (In other words, he exterminated Indians on Saturday and taught the gospel on Sunday.) "Was he your Sunday-school teacher?" someone near the front asks. There is general laughter. The pastor responds with the obligatory smile.

  After the presentation of the gifts, the pastor raises his hands and says loudly, "Praise God!" It is time to exchange the peace. Everybody rises; there are hugs all around. Several men clamber up onstage and stand in line to hug the pastor. That done, they return to their seats and the pastor resumes his lectern. "You know, church," he says, "if we don't operate on the dynamic of God's love for us and our love for each other, we cease to be a church." He thanks the people for their enthusiasm and explains that enthusiasm means "God in you." Then the musicians begin to play and the words of a praise song appear on the projection screen. The congregation sings: