by John W. Dean
During the 1980s and early 1990s the news media frequently turned to Weyrich for the conservative Catholic view of the religious right, and with typical authoritarian aggressiveness, mixed with much self-righteousness, he minced no words in denouncing conservatives who failed to live up to his standards.[43] In 1995 the New York Times listed Weyrich in the top twenty-five individuals of the conservative “attack machine,” which it described as “specialists in bare-knuckle attacks on political opponents.”[44] But his most significant influence on conservatism was the role he played in bringing fundamentalist Protestants and conservative Catholics into the political arena. These Christian conservatives almost by definition are right-wing authoritarians.[*] Unhappy in the late 1970s, when the Heritage Foundation’s financial backers did not wish to get into social issues, Weyrich turned his organizing skills and energy to drawing Christian conservatives into the movement. He remains active in that effort to this day, and the Heritage Foundation later joined the fold.
The Religious Right: The Great Army of Authoritarian Followers
“The Christian Right,” one scholar observed, “owe[s] its existence to two Catholics and a Jew. Richard Viguerie, Paul Weyrich and Howard Phillips…. They believed that…there were many socio-moral issues that could serve as the basis for an organized conservative movement”; accordingly, in 1979, they “persuaded Jerry Falwell, a popular fundamentalist Baptist preacher from Lynchburg, Virginia, to lead an organization they named the ‘Moral Majority.’”[45] This was the birth of the modern religious right. It had not escaped the notice of Viguerie, Weyrich, and Phillips that in 1976 long-dormant Christian fundamentalists had been attracted to the presidential campaign of born-again presidential candidate Jimmy Carter, and their vote helped the former Georgia governor defeat the incumbent president, Gerald Ford. After having their beliefs ridiculed during the 1925 trial of John Scopes for teaching evolution in the classroom in violation of a law fundamentalists had persuaded the Tennessee legislature to adopt, they had withdrawn from any and all political activity. Jimmy Carter’s evangelicalism kindled the interest of many of these fundamentalists, who like Carter called themselves evangelicals.
Following Carter’s election as president, the news media, struggling to understand the evangelical phenomenon, began blurring Christian fundamentalists with evangelicals, with neither group happy to be lumped in with the other. Considerable confusion still exists about the terms “Christian fundamentalist” and “evangelical Christian,” and even those who fall within these ranks use the terms loosely, and often interchangeably. In fact, not until the reelection of the second evangelical president did even religion scholars fully sort the matter out.[46] In December 2004, after George Bush’s success the nonpartisan National Journal decided it was time to clarify a confusion that had gone on far too long, and they were successful in distinguishing the two, as explained below.
Fundamentalist Christians retreated from politics and much of modern life after the Scopes trial in 1925, but their children, when they reached adulthood in the early 1940s, wanted to return to a more active public existence. This new generation called themselves “neoevangelicals,” and in 1942, they founded the National Association of Evangelicals, dropping the “neo.”[*] Unlike their parents, who “practiced extreme forms of separation, refusing to cooperate in common ventures with others who did not believe as they did,” the evangelicals “were bridge builders and were more willing to give some credit to, and treat with charity, those with whom they disagree.” The evangelicals, however, continued to share their parents’ tenets of faith. “Both believed in a literal interpretation of the Bible and hold that Christians must individually accept Christ and be born again, according to Christ’s words in John 3:5–8: ‘Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and [of] Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of flesh is flesh; and that which is born of Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.’”[47] Thus, in a broad sense, the term “fundamentalist” covers evangelicals, but evangelicals in fact distinguish themselves from fundamentalists, and vice verse. (Except as noted, I have distinguished them. I use the term “conservative Christians” or “Christian conservatives” to cover both Protestants and Catholics.)
By 1978 increasingly politically active evangelicals had grown disenchanted with Jimmy Carter, whom they had helped put in office. They did not like his progressive Democrat policies, in general, but, in particular, they were offended by a proposal by the Internal Revenue Service to deny tax-deductible status to all private schools, including private Christian ones. Carter’s apparent acceptance of the IRS proposal caused uproar within the evangelical community. Reverend Tim LaHaye, the best-selling Christian author and one of the founders of the Moral Majority, met with Carter at the White House to discuss the measure, along with other concerns conservative Christians had about his progressive policies. Following their meeting, LaHaye reportedly left the Oval Office, lowered his head, and prayed: “God, we have got to get this man out of the White House and get someone in here who will be aggressive about bringing back traditional moral values.”[48] That is exactly what conservative Christians did. They worked like bees—literally millions of them devoted themselves to this task—and by 1981 they had significantly helped to put Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office.
Today evangelicals comprise the core of the religious right, and white Protestant evangelicals, depending on the poll, range from a quarter to a third of the electorate. A Zogby poll reported that conservative Christians account for an astounding 58 percent of all Republicans.[49] In 2000, 68 percent of white Protestant evangelicals voted for Bush and Cheney. In 2004 that statistic rose to 78 percent.[50] But it is not at the presidential level that conservative Christians have their greatest impact. “The religious right’s power lies in the lower parts of the Republican machinery, in precinct meetings and the like,” the Economist reported.[51] Without the support of Christian conservatives Republicans cannot even get nominated to local, state, and national offices, because they have become the filter through which all Republicans must pass today. Christian conservatives have a virtual lock on state and local Republican politics, and have totally outmaneuvered their opposition. “In American politics,” wrote Joel Rogers of the University of Wisconsin, “who controls the states controls the nation. The right understands this, and for a generation has waged an unrelenting war to take over state government in America. It has succeeded, in large part because it hasn’t faced any serious progressive counter effort.”[52]
Who are these people? In 2004 the Pew Trust sponsored a two-day seminar for leading journalists, calling the gathering “Toward an Understanding of Religion and American Public Life.” Religion historian Mark Noll, an evangelical who has authored several books on the subject, led a discussion about contemporary evangelicals. He explained their core religious beliefs, and noted that these religious commitments by themselves have not resulted in a cohesive, institutionally compact, or clearly demarcated group of Christians. There is, in reality, a large network of churches, voluntary societies, books and periodicals, and personal connections, as well as varying levels of belief and practice that fall under the evangelical label.[53] Noll pointed out that although certain Supreme Court rulings had caused evangelicals to become increasingly politically active, Roe v. Wade had been the tipping point. Before Roe, evangelicals were no more political than Billy Graham, thus either apolitical or unobtrusively political, and not active in politics. After Roe, self-appointed leaders within the evangelical movement became militant activists. “Baptists [ministers] Jerry Falwell and Timothy LaHaye, and the lay psychologist James Dobson, entered politics with a vengeance during the 1970s and 1980s,” said Noll. They “created the new religious right and have made conservative evangelical support so important for the Republican Party since the campaigns of Ronald Reagan.” Pat Robertson’s 1988 presidential campaign, albeit unsuccessful in even coming close to getting the
Republican nomination, further politicized a large segment of the evangelical community, Noll added.
Noll candidly acknowledged the authoritarian nature of evangelicals. Speaking as an evangelical and a historian of evangelicalism, he noted its incompatibly with the give-and-take of politics because of the rigidity of its beliefs. Noll said he wants evangelicals to learn “new ways of being present in the public space without believing that [they] have to dominate the public space” (emphasis in original transcript). Evangelical Christianity, he explained, is an intolerant religion, unable to say “your religion is fine with you; my religion is fine with me.” Rather “evangelical religion is offensive. It claims forthrightly that there is one, and only one, way to God,” and that is their way. The world has evolved, and Noll realized that evangelicals, so far, have not.[54]
Several attendees at the Pew conference referred to the work of a University of North Carolina sociologist, Christian Smith, who has studied how rank-and-file evangelicals think. One conferee said of Smith’s work that it showed that the rank-and-file is “a lot nicer than their leaders!”[55] Smith’s work supports the notion that the religious right’s political thinking and behavior may be less than uniform, and that the leaders of the Christian right do not necessarily speak for evangelicals as a whole.[56] While this may be true of the segment of the population investigated by Smith and his collaborators, their sample appears unrepresentative.[57] In the end, I found that the observations of Mark Noll—who deals with a wide array of evangelical brothers and sisters, day in and day out—as well as those of politically attuned observers such as Cal Thomas, a conservative syndicated columnist and Fox News commentator, and former president Jimmy Carter seemed more insightful and revelatory. All of these individuals have been critical of Christians in politics while remaining true to their faiths.[*]
Cal Thomas, a conservative Christian who once served as vice president of communications for Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, has joined journalist and evangelical minister Ed Dobson in making “a strong case for the church to lay down its impotent weapons of political activism.”[58] Based on his experience at the heart of Christian right politics, Thomas said he believes that all the evangelical energy now devoted to politics could be better directed toward living and sharing the gospel. He has concluded that neither “our individual or collective cultural problems can be altered exclusively, or even mainly, through the political process.” Thomas found that “the marriage of religion and politics almost always compromises the gospel,” for “[p]olitics is all about compromise.” The conflation of church and state has resulted in the church’s getting “its theological pocket picked.” “Whenever the church cozies up to political power,” he continued, “it loses sight of its all-important mission to change the world from the inside-out.”[59]
Not surprisingly, Thomas does not approve of the political tactics employed by Christian conservatives. For example, when fund-raising, “they identify an enemy: homosexuals, abortionists, Democrats, or ‘liberals’ in general,” he explained. Then, these enemies are accused, falsely, of being out to “get us” or “impose their morality on the rest of us or destroy the country.” An action plan is offered—“We will oppose the enemies and ensure that they do not take over America”—and a plea for funds follows.[60] The focus is inevitably negative, and often the claims are outrageous, such as Pat Robertson’s claim that God wanted him “to help usher in the Second Coming.” Robertson denied making such a statement, and when Thomas produced a copy of the fund-raising letter in question, he was immediately vilified. Thomas noted that Robertson and others “must constantly have enemies, conspiracies, and opponents as well as play the role of righteous victim in order to get people to send in money.” Understandably, Thomas is troubled by the irony that the Bible calls on Christians to love their enemies, “whether they be homosexuals, abortionists, Democrats, or liberals.”[61]
Former president Jimmy Carter speaks with unique insight about mixing politics and religion. In Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis, Carter wrote that this nation’s leaders once “extolled state and local autonomy, attempted to control deficit spending, avoided foreign adventurism, minimized long-term peacekeeping commitments, preserved the separation of church and state, and protected civil liberties and personal privacy.” However, today’s leaders—he does not mention Christian conservatives because it is obvious to whom he is referring—have placed far more divisive issues at the center of their platform: “abortion, the death penalty, science versus religion, women’s rights, the separation of religion and politics, homosexuality.” These debates, he noted, have divided the nation and threatened America’s traditional values. Carter said he believes the most important factor in that divisiveness is that “fundamentalists have become increasingly influential in both religion and government, and have managed to change the nuance and subtleties of historic debate into black-and-white rigidities and the personal derogation of those who dare to disagree.” He added, “Narrowly defined theological beliefs have been adopted as the rigid agenda of a political party.”[62]
The former president went on to describe religious fundamentalists based on his personal observations and experiences. (Carter appeared to use the term “fundamentalists” as including highly conservative evangelicals.) He said that, invariably, “fundamentalist movements are led by authoritarian males who consider themselves to be superior to others and, within religious groups, have an overwhelming commitment to subjugate women and to dominate their fellow believers.” He found that these people believe the past is better than the present; they draw clear distinctions between themselves, as true believers, and others; they are “militant in fighting against any challenges to their beliefs”; and they are “often angry” and sometimes resort “to verbal or even physical abuse against those who interfere with the implementation of their agenda.” Carter summarized the characteristics of fundamentalism as “rigidity, domination, and exclusion,”[63] a description that would apply equally to the authoritarian personalities introduced in the last chapter.
While neoconservatives are not religious fundamentalists, Carter said he believes that they hold related views. He had observed firsthand how neoconservatives evolved from criticizing his foreign policy—when he attempted to “impose liberalization and democratization” on other countries—to embracing his goals but to achieving them by employing very different means. Carter sought to spread democracy through diplomacy, while the neoconservatives “now seem to embrace aggressive and unilateral intervention in foreign affairs, especially to advance U.S. military and political influence in the Middle East.”[64]
A long-tenured Sunday school teacher, Carter also adroitly uses his King James Bible to show how conservative Christians quote selectively from scripture to attack homosexuals and women, to oppose the separation of church and state, and to support other issues on their political agenda. Carter demonstrated that the Bible actually supports a much kinder, more loving, and more progressive ethos, but in the end, he said, he believes Bible quoting in politics is fruitless. “There is no need to argue about such matters, because it is human nature to be both selective and subjective in deriving the most convenient meaning by careful choices from the 30,400 or so biblical verses.”[65]
Former senator John Danforth of Missouri (who served from 1976 until 1995) is an ordained Episcopal minister and a partisan Republican, and has made points similar to those of Jimmy Carter. Danforth has been called a “right-wing zealot in moderate’s clothing.”[66] Certainly he was to the right of Goldwater on the issue of abortion when they were colleagues in the Senate. Danforth cosponsored a proposed amendment to the Constitution that would guarantee legal protection to unborn children and overturn Roe v. Wade. Even he believes that conservative Christians have crossed the line.
Danforth wrote an op-ed for the New York Times in response to the insistence of Christian conservatives that the federal government intervene to save the life of Terri Schiavo. Speaking on be
half of mainstream Christians, Danforth observed, “When, on television, we see a person in a persistent vegetative state, one who will never recover, we believe that allowing the natural and merciful end to her ordeal is more loving than imposing government power to keep her hooked up to a feeding tube.” He went on to describe in some detail (a selection of his statements are quoted and bulleted below) how conservative Christians operate and the impact they are having at the national level:
[C]onservative Christians have presented themselves as representing the one authentic Christian perspective on politics…[when] equally devout [mainstream] Christians come to very different conclusions.
Many conservative Christians approach politics with a certainty that they know God’s truth, and that they can advance the kingdom of God through governmental action. So they have developed a political agenda that they believe advances God’s kingdom.
In the [past] decade…American politics has been characterized by two phenomena: the increased activism of the Christian right, especially in the Republican Party, and the collapse of bipartisan collegiality. [It is not] a stretch to suggest a relationship between the two.