by Bruce Bawer
Not surprisingly, given its endorsement of traditional concepts of masculinity, Promise Keepers is big on military rhetoric. Indeed, some of the organization's literature and speakers would seem to imply that it plans to develop into a paramilitary movement. Promise Keepers issues "calls to arms"; McCartney has preached about "spiritual warfare"; at the Atlanta rally, he announced that "the fiercest fighting is just ahead. . . . Let's proceed. It's wartime!" Kenneth Clatterbaugh, a professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin, observes that Promise Keepers shares with other groups spawned by the men's movement the idea "that men are best able to help men become men and that warrior men are what we need." An article in The Nation noted that McCartney "has referred to the clergy as 'the commissioned officers' of his movement" and that "the Atlanta clergy conference included a special meeting to organize military chaplains." Another Promise Keepers director, James Ryle, describes the organization as an "army of God" that, according to the Nation reporters, he regards "as the fulfillment of the Bible's prophecy of a great force that will destroy sinners and infidels in the period preceding Armageddon." "Never have 300,000 men come together throughout human history," says Ryle, "except for the purposes of war.'"
Yet just as many Baptists find the SBC insufficiently fundamentalist, so many legalistic Christians are alarmed by Promise Keepers because it's not legalistic enough. On a fundamentalist Web site, a writer complains about a Promise Keepers book called The Masculine Journey in which one Robert Hicks writes that when he met "Christians who were homosexuals and Marxists," he "listened, tried to understand, debated back and forth, but was left with the conviction that they were sincere about both their faith in Christ and their views on sexuality and politics, though those views differed from mine." Hicks adds that he learned a great deal from a Catholic priest who told him that
The way to look at God or the world is not necessarily through the lens or categories I currently believe are the correct ones. The labels don't matter all that much. . . . I think I now see the world and people differently because I try to look beyond the labels to the person, his unique situation, station, and needs. I fail often and get hooked back into my old warrior responses, but now I consciously recognize that pattern for what it is, I believe this is the way Jesus related to people, and His modeling provides me with a much richer and broader perspective on ministry.
In a 1995 open letter to McCartney, a pastor named Bill Randies complains that Promise Keepers is insufficiently devoted to "truth"— a legalistic way of saying that it's not doctrinally stringent enough. "If a Mormon keeps all seven of your promises," writes Randies, "that could well make him a moral person, but that moral Mormon will go right to Hell." Why? "Because he doesn't believe the testimony God gave of His Son." Promise Keepers, Randies complains, is too inclusive. "Catholics, Mormons and even homosexuals are encouraged to be 'included and welcomed in all our events.'" Randies's comment:
"When the true God-ordained organization, the Church, upholds the Word of God, it divides people either onto the broad way that leads to destruction or the narrow way that leads to life." That's legalistic Protestantism in a nutshell. For legalists, any proposed approach to salvation is suspect precisely to the degree that it is inclusive, and the door to heaven is precious in exact proportion to its narrowness.
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14
"THESE SECULAR TIMES'
Until very recently, the mainstream media have paid insufficient attention to the phenomenal growth of legalistic Protestantism in America. Secular Americans are more likely to dismiss Pat Robertson as vulgar and perhaps weirdly amusing than to find him and his movement truly dangerous. When things do happen—as in Waco and Rancho Santa Fe—that underscore the dangers inherent in legalism, the media back off from drawing connections between the beliefs and practices of so-called cults and those of legalistic Protestantism in general. Yet those cults, which are routinely characterized as extremist aberrations, are in fact absolutely at one with the rest of legalistic America in their apocalyptic obsessions, their violent End Times scenarios, and their implicit view of the unsaved as being less than completely human. Far from violating the letter and spirit of contemporary legalistic Protestantism, the cults, militias, survivalists, and so-called Christian Identity groups have taken standard legalistic beliefs to their natural conclusion. (Remarkably, as I write this—on March 11, 1997—an anchor on MSNBC is announcing a breaking news story from Detroit, where "a man reciting the Lord's Prayer" walked into a bank and started shooting.) As long as millions of American children continue to be brought up to view the world through legalistic eyes, no one should be surprised at the proliferation of communities that do not know the difference between religion and terrorism.
Or, for that matter, between salvation and self-slaughter. In the wake of the astonishing mass suicide of the Heaven's Gate cult in March 1997, observers sought ways to distinguish the beliefs of Marshall Applewhite and his followers from those of "mainstream" religion— meaning not just mainline churches but such widely professed faiths as Mormonism and Adventism. Some argued, for example, that "mainstream" religions have ancient roots while Heaven's Gate was the brainchild of one disturbed individual; yet the Mormon and Adventist churches, among many others, were themselves cults only a century ago, and their founders were routinely dismissed by their contemporaries as cranks. Commentators have ridiculed Heaven's Gate because its theology included space-age elements that seemingly owed less to the Bible than to Star Trek; David Gelerntner sneered in the New York Times that "their souls needed religion but their minds were stocked only with Hollywood junk." Yet Hal Lindsey's vision of the End Times, to which millions subscribe, also owes a great deal to modern American pop culture, just as the theologies of Mormonism, Adventism, Christian Science, and other nineteenth-century cults that are now "mainstream" reflect many of the popular preoccupations of the times and places in which they were founded.
In point of fact, it's impossible to draw a clear line between Heaven's Gate and legalistic Protestantism. The parallels, indeed, are striking. A conviction that the world is corrupt beyond redemption; a commitment to live apart from the world under the tight control of a leader who sets strict rules that enforce conformity; a belief that a few (those who do and believe the right things) will be saved and most will not; a detailed vision of impending apocalypse, preceding which the few will be raised up from earth to safety; an assertion of absolute certitude about life, death, and the universe—all these attributes are common to both dispensationalism and Heaven's Gate.
Both theologies draw heavily on the Book of Revelation. The two "witnesses" in the Book of Revelation, who figure importantly in dispensationalist dogma, were identified by the cult with Applewhite and his late co-leader. The assurance, expressed by one member in the cult's valedictory videotape, that the cult was in possession of "the real facts, the real truth" mirrors fundamentalists' fixation on "real truth" and their insistence that they, and no one else, possess that truth.
Finally, and importantly, both Protestant fundamentalism and Heaven's Gate involve a powerful loathing of sex and a denial of sexual identity. In his young manhood Applewhite, son of an evangelical Presbyterian minister, had homosexual relationships and sought a "cure" for his homosexuality. Well, he finally found a cure: suicide. And he took over three dozen people with him. Would the Heaven's Gate cult, with its enforced suppression of sexuality—to the point, in some cases, of castration—ever have existed but for the self-loathing that a conservative evangelical upbringing brought about in the young Applewhite? I doubt it.
Yes, there are differences between contemporary Protestant fundamentalism and Heaven's Gate. Most of those differences, however, cut in the cult's favor: By all reports, the cultists were kind and gentle; they didn't seek political power in order to deny the rights of others; and they didn't hurt anyone but themselves.
If anything should amaze us, it is not that events like the mass suicide at Rancho Santa Fe take place, but that
more legalistic Christians have not chosen to act out in conspicuous and sensational ways the loathing of this world, the disgust with the human body, and the capacity for violence at the heart of their faith. On this score, Americans have been luckier than people in some other countries. During the same period that has seen the rise of legalistic Christianity in America, growing numbers of societies in the Moslem world—which, not long ago, had seemed to many Western observers to be irreversibly set on a track of social and cultural modernization—have fallen under the sway of militant Islamic fundamentalism. The rise to power of Islamic fundamentalists in Iran was followed by similar takeovers in Sudan, Algeria, and elsewhere. In Egypt, the struggle to protect democracy against the growing threat of Islamic fundamentalism has become the major preoccupation of that country's government. In Turkey, the 1996 election victory of a conservative Islamic party was followed by apparent government efforts to desecularize the nation, which since the 1920s had been an officially religion-neutral state. And the takeover of Afghanistan in late September 1996 by fundamentalist militiamen plunged that nation's capital into what the New York Times called a "medieval labyrinth"; in the four days after the fall of Kabul, the nation's new rulers—members of a movement that originated in religious schools—closed movie theaters, shut down the country's sole television station, and forbade all music. Male government employees were told to grow beards and leave Western-style suits at home; women were ordered to wear traditional garb in public. Though no one would deny the huge differences between American and Afghan society, the takeover provided a terrifying illustration of what can happen when legalistic religion moves from theory to practice. (To be sure, Islamic fundamentalism does not seem fated beyond question to triumph: In a May 1997 election, Iranians surprised the world by rejecting the fundamentalist candidate for president in favor of a "moderate"; a month later Turkey's military forced the resignation of that country's pro-Islamic premier.)
Elsewhere around the world, other fundamentalists have also raised threats to democratic pluralism. Consider the results of 1996 elections in various countries. In Israel, the number of Knesset seats held by strongly anti-Arab Orthodox Jewish parties rose from 16 to 24 out of a total of 120. In Russia, the nationalists, who appeal not only to Russian pride and patriotism but to anti-Semitism and to many people's historic identification with the Russian Orthodox Church, almost managed to bring down Boris Yeltsin's democratic government. And in India, a Hindu nationalist party which in 1984 had held only 2 seats in the Parliament won 186 seats, more than any other party, largely on the strength of its anti-Moslem rhetoric. Like all fundamentalisms, the ones in these foreign countries are defined largely by whom and what they are against.
Just as respected right-wing American intellectuals have defended legalistic Protestantism, moreover, so they have also—incredibly—stood up for fundamentalist Moslems and against "moral relativism." In a 1995 item about the UN Conference on Women in Beijing, American Enterprise condemned "a group of Western lesbian feminists" who protested at that conference as "forces of cultural decadence" while claiming to find it "heartening" that fundamentalist Moslems were uniting with legalistic Christians to stand up for "wholesomeness and sanity." Among the manifestations of "wholesomeness and sanity" for which Islamic fundamentalists have been responsible in recent years are the execution of adulterers and homosexuals, the total subjugation of women, and the crushing of democratic institutions, religious freedom, and civil rights generally. That respected institutions of the American Right can describe this as "wholesomeness and sanity" only underscores the need for the rest of us to know the real truth about legalistic religion both at home and abroad (for American Enterprise and its ideological bedfellows have done a splendid job of whitewashing both) and to oppose potentially totalitarian phenomena wherever they may be found and however they may represent themselves.
During a relatively brief period in the 1970s, gay rights made huge strides in American society. Then the organized Religious Right established itself as a force of resistance against the nascent movement, and nothing has been the same since. In the years that followed, Americans grew accustomed to the spectacle of legalistic Christians railing against homosexuality. Because those legalists did such an effective job of misrepresenting the nature of sexual orientation, many Americans who might have come to understand and accept homosexuality instead came to fear and hate it. As a result, homosexuality became a controversial issue, and the whole nation argued—and continues to argue— about whether homosexuality is a danger to society. The mainstream media have covered this debate, giving all points of view full coverage, thereby lending credence to the idea that antigay animus has intellectual legitimacy.
Yet in all these years the mainstream media, which legalistic Christians routinely smear as liberal and anti-Christian, have almost entirely refused to treat legalistic Christianity in the same way they do homosexuality—as an issue with two sides. In recent years, legalistic Christians have argued fiercely against allowing gay couples to raise children. It would be interesting to see a study comparing the children of gay couples with the children of legalistic Christians, showing which are more well-adjusted socially and more successful academically or professionally. Independent investigations of these two groups suggest what the results of such a comparative study might be: Children raised by gay parents have been shown to suffer no ill effects therefrom and to do at least as well in all respects as other children; meanwhile, sociological studies and voluminous anecdotal evidence suggest that children raised in legalistic Christian families tend to suffer to an unusual degree from severe alienation, emotional and sexual abuse, drug problems, and compulsive sexual behavior. Yet this has never been treated as an issue in the mainstream media.
While people in the media routinely soft-pedal criticism of legalistic Christianity, however, former legalistic Christians are less hesitant to call a spade a spade. An interviewee in Growing Up Fundamentalist describes legalism as "fake Christianity ... a distortion of the gospel." Secular defenders of legalistic Protestantism—prominent among whom are many neoconservative Jewish intellectuals—admire it because they believe that it helps preserve social stability and civilized values. On the contrary, legalistic Protestantism encourages a host of socially negative traits: selfishness, self-righteousness, ignorance, bigotry, intolerance, and antagonism to education and social concern and high culture.
Why haven't the mainstream media, then, viewed all of this as a legitimate issue? Probably because they don't dare to do anything that makes them look as though they're attacking religion. Legalistic Protestants know this and have shamelessly used Jesus as a front man for their prejudices. If these people assailed in their own names the individuals and groups whom they despise, fear, and resent, and the ideas and social developments that they find strange and threatening, they would not receive much of a hearing—and would be laying themselves open to full-scale criticism. But to make attacks in the name of Jesus changes the equation entirely. The simple word religion lends dignity to prejudice, muffles opposition, and obliges the media to tread carefully. Not only politicians but journalists, too, are less likely to criticize frankly the attitudes of individuals or groups when they identify themselves as Christian and attribute their attitudes to their faith.
This is not to deny that the media cover major Religious Right figures when they do and say things that cause offense. When the tel-evangelist Oral Roberts told his viewers that God had revealed plans to bring him home to heaven by a certain date if they didn't contribute a certain amount of money to his ministry, the media gave the story ample coverage. When SBC president Bailey Smith declared that God does not hear the prayers of Jews, he made headlines around the country. Yet the newspapers, newsmagazines, and network news divisions generally didn't follow up on the implications of these events. Such stories tend to be treated as isolated embarrassments, not as symptoms of sensibilities and theologies that merit closer inspection. In recent years, with the Christian Co
alition's rise to power, the media have paid increasing attention to legalistic Christianity. But they focus almost exclusively on the movement's political manifestations rather than on its underlying mind-set. The few prominent exceptions to this rule—the names of television commentator Bill Moyers and New York Times columnist Frank Rich come most readily to mind—stand out all the more for their efforts to shed light on the reality of legalistic Christianity.
Indeed, despite such admirable exceptions, and despite claims by Robertson, Reed, and others of media bias against them, the mainstream media have almost invariably handled legalistic Christians with kid gloves. The questions that reporters ask people like Cardinal O'Connor and Pat Robertson are rarely as tough as those they ask of politicians; yet these men are not only religious leaders but political leaders who head up organizations with explicit political agendas. Reporters and commentators are disinclined to address the outrageous contradictions between traditional Christian precepts and the words and actions of people like O'Connor and Robertson. Some media people don't want to offend the religious members of their audience; others just don't take either religion or legalistic Christians seriously enough to subject a man like Robertson to the sustained analytical attention that they would bring to a report on any politically active tycoon—and that is necessary to make the public at large sit up and take notice.