Commentary on the Religious Right

Republican electoral defeat leaves religious right largely intact

By JewsOnFirst.org, November 20, 2006

The Republican defeat was hardly an unmitigated disaster for the religious right. Christian nationalists will continue to pose an extreme danger to the First Amendment's guarantees regarding religion.

Right-wing Christians control many of the state Republican parties and dominate state Republican legislative majorities. Given the loss of opportunity on the federal level, there will probably be more, not fewer, state legislative attacks on science, gay rights and reproductive rights. Additionally, there will probably be an increase in state legislation deliberately breaching the separation of church and state in school and public life. Continue.

Religious Right May Be Fading, but Not the ‘Culture Wars’

Jim Wallis’s new book, “The Great Awakening,” carries the subtitle, “Reviving Faith and Politics in a Post-Religious Right America.” E. J. Dionne Jr.’s book, “Souled Out,” is subtitled “Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right.” The subtitle of David P. Gushee’s new book, “The Future of Faith in American Politics,” poses “The Public Witness of the Evangelical Center” against that of the religious right.

Sometimes stated outright and sometimes between the lines is the hope that the decline of the religious right will ease what Americans have come to know as the culture wars. Continue.

The passing of the Christian right

by John Whitehead, Liberty Magazine, January-February 2008. Whitehead is president of the Rutherford Institute.

"We are witnessing the end of an era. The deaths of Jerry Falwell (May 15, 2007) and Dr. D. James Kennedy (September 5, 2007) augured a decided downward shift in the Christian Right's steady march to power. Yet long before these men were laid to rest, the movement they helped energize had begun its steady decline," writes Whitehead. He argues that the Christian right should not identify with political power anyhow, but be "revolutionary" and "speak truth" to state institutions. Click here.

The New Establishment

How Evangelicals Became Part of Washington's Fabric

To the Bush haters of America, the young Monica Goodling is a footnote of this wretched era, one of the many Washington types that they'll be happy to get rid of come January 2009: Venal Vice President, Ex-Lobbyists Turned Regulators and, in Goodling's case, Young Evangelicals in High Places.

Until she appeared before the House Judiciary Committee this week to testify about her role in the Justice Department firing scandal, Goodling had been mocked on the Internet and on late-night TV as a certain type: one of a "bunch of hayseeds" staffing the administration, as HBO comedian Bill Maher called her.

Goodling graduated from Messiah College ("home of the Fighting Christies") and the law school at Regent University, founded by Pat Robertson ("a televangelist's diploma mill") -- both Maher's terms. Continue.

For more on Monica Goodling's role in the Justice Department firing scandal, please click here.

Is the Religious Right Finished? Yawn. Not Hardly

Nationally syndicated columnist Cal Thomas -- one time flack for Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority -- ought to know better. And my guess is that he probably does. He dangles the provocative question in his headline, but never really answers it in his column.

The occasion for Thomas's eyebrow raiser, was the recent closing of televangelist D. James Kennedy's political operation, the Center for Reclaiming America, and the related Center for Christian Statesmanship. Apparently they were closed for budgetary reasons, while Kennedy's main broadcasting operations are not in doubt. But for how long, is a good question. D. James Kennedy, 76, has been in and out of the hospital in recent months. I do not think that the closing of this particular small, Washington lobby and resource agency indicates that the religious right is finished -- but it is certainly one indication that the religious right is in for a period of reorganization and retrenchment as the founding generation of religious right leaders begin to pass from the scene. Continue

Cracks in the House of Rove

Like so many parties that go on past their proper bedtime, Karl Rove's Republican Party has lately begun to break out in fights, as neocon theorists, Goldwater-style libertarians, the corporations, and grassroots Christian fundamentalists come to the aggravating discovery that they're more defined by their differences than by what they hold in common. On climate change, government spending, stem-cell research, reproductive rights, and the Iraq war, to name just a few of the triggering issues, self-styled conservatives find themselves at loggerheads with other self-styled conservatives, each claiming the mantle of true conservatism for himself. As both symptom and diagnosis of this interesting—one might say promising—development, Andrew Sullivan's The Conservative Soul is as engaging as it is provocative. Continue.

The many forms of fundamentalism

Nearly a decade and a half ago, this condemnation of fundamentalism was issued: "The fundamentalist approach is dangerous, for it is attractive to people who look to the Bible for ready answers to the problems of life . . . instead of telling them that the Bible does not necessarily contain an immediate answer to each and every problem. . . . Fundamentalism actually invites people to a kind of intellectual suicide. It injects into life a false certitude, for it unwittingly confuses the divine substance of the biblical message with what are in fact its human limitations." This robust denunciation came from the Vatican, in a 1993 document entitled "The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church." Continue.

The Religious Right's Era Is Over

As I have traveled around the country, one line in my speeches always draws cheers: "The monologue of the Religious Right is over, and a new dialogue has now begun." We have now entered the post-Religious Right era. Though religion has had a negative image in the last few decades, the years ahead may be shaped by a dynamic and more progressive faith that will make needed social change more possible.

In the churches, a combination of deeper compassion and better theology has moved many pastors and congregations away from the partisan politics of the Religious Right. In politics, we are beginning to see a leveling of the playing field between the two parties on religion and "moral values," and the media are finally beginning to cover the many and diverse voices of faith. These are all big changes in American life, and the rest of the world is taking notice. Continue

Sorry, Jim Wallis: Rumors Of The Religious Right’s Death Are Greatly Exaggerated

Periodically, a self-appointed political pundit comes along and announces the death of the Religious Right. You can count on it happening every two or three years.

This time, moderate evangelical minister Jim Wallis is presiding at the Religious Right’s alleged funeral. Wallis, author of the popular book God’s Politics, asserted recently in Time magazine that America has entered a post-Religious Right era. He insisted that other religious voices will now dominate.

"[M]any Republicans have had it with the Religious Right," Wallis writes. "Both sides are asking how to connect faith and values with politics. People know now that God is neither a Republican nor a Democrat, and we are all learning that religion should not be in the pocket of any political party; it calls all of us to moral accountability." Continue

Christian evangelicals: Enablers of the wayward Republicans

Out of step with the American people, right wing religionists looked past GOP corruption. Next they'll probably be going local.

Top shelf conservative Christian evangelicals, GOP political leaders, and a host of right wing pundits, columnists, and radio and television talk show hosts have just about finished hashing out the whys and wherefores of Election 2006's "thumpin." Much post-election talk has centered on both the actions of the so-called "values voters," and what the election results might means for the future of the Christian right. Continue

Religious Freedom in America

WHEN JAMES MADISON agitated to make religious freedom fundamental to the United States Constitution, it was not from hostility to religion. It was from hostility to established religion, with its presumption of an authority in worldly affairs that only an elected government should exercise. The first freedom listed in the Bill of Rights tells us that Congress shall "make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" -- a rule that is just as important in its second half as in its first.

However, the free exercise of religion involves living by values that are not always endorsed by the secular state. In the long run, therefore, there are bound to be tensions between religious freedom and secular power, and these periodically come to the surface, especially in America, where the secular culture of the East Coast cities remains profoundly suspicious toward the forms of life that are rumored to exist beyond the Appalachians. Radical secularists are now using the "no establishment" clause to chase religion out of public life. In response backwoods evangelicals are using the "free exercise" clause to invite religion in. Book upon book, article upon article, has been thrown into the conflict between them, and the ordinary citizen, content to live by the Ten Commandments and expecting them to be quietly acknowledged from time to time by those who govern him, looks with some bewilderment on a battle that he had assumed to have ended in a compromise two centuries ago. Continue.

Good News About Evangelicals, Bad News for Bush

A new poll suggests that fully 60 percent of white evangelical voters now oppose sending more troops to Iraq. That can be nothing but good news for those who seek to take seriously the teachings of Jesus (though one wonders about the remaining 40 percent). Why the sudden turnabout – especially since white evangelicals overwhelmingly supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the progenitor of the Iraq deception, George W. Bush, during the presidential election the following year?

Anyone who seeks to apply generalizations to the internally diverse movement that is American evangelicalism will come away frustrated. Still, it may be instructive to speculate on this dramatic change of heart. Continue.

The GOP's Religious Litmus

Paul Waldman, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America and the author of the new book, Being Right is Not Enough: What Progressives Can Learn From Conservative Success, writes that the Republican base will reject candidates that do not pass its religious test. He writes: "The consequence is that for many evangelical conservatives, the question has become not whether a candidate is a Baptist or a Lutheran or a Methodist, but something both broader and more vague. What they want is not a statement of sectarian loyalty, but a general sense that the candidate shares with them a conservative religious Christianity. This can be communicated in somewhat subtle ways, but it must be communicated repeatedly." Click here.

Evangelical: Can the 'E-word' be saved?

Who's an evangelical? Until last year the answer seemed clear: Evangelical was the label of choice of Christians with conservative views on politics, economics and Biblical morality.

Now the word may be losing its moorings, sliding toward the same linguistic demise that "fundamentalist" met decades ago because it has been misunderstood, misappropriated and maligned. Continue.

God help us | Religion's role in America

By Dave Brown and Glen Hiemstra, Seattle Times, January 28, 2007 via Faith in Public Life

The airwaves, the blogosphere and the print media are awash with stories about conflict around the role of religion, now and in the future. As we turned the calendar page to a new year, the conflict showed no sign of cooling down. It is time to change the conversation in 2007. Continue.

A challenge for the ages: One country, many faiths

Extremists -- religious or not -- speak the loudest, but they don’t speak for all Americans. That much is clear. What’s not clear: How will this religiously diverse nation move forward into the new year? The founding documents are a good place to start.

I was sitting in an auditorium in Greeneville, Tenn., listening to two Sudanese boys, whom my wife and I had helped through college, recite the Pledge of Allegiance and take the oath of citizenship. Our Sudanese friends were Christian, but standing alongside them were Jews, Muslims, Hindus and who knows who else. All different. All about to become American citizens.

Two days later I was reading a prominent atheist's shrill tirade against all things religious when I was reminded of what a unique nation we are and what a tall order being a good citizen really is. Continue

False witness:Heaven help us for stereotyping Evangelicals

By Joseph Loconte and Michael Cromartie, The Houston Chronicle, November 18, 2006

It was in 1976 -- the "year of the evangelical," according to Newsweek -- that conservative Christians burst upon the political landscape. Critics have been warning about the theocratic takeover of America ever since. Thus the plaintive cry of a Cabinet member in the Carter administration: "I am beginning to fear that we could have an Ayatollah Khomeini in this country, but that he will not have a beard ... he will have a television program." Continue.

Hating the haters

Remind me, how is the Klan different from the GOP?

Sugg examines the intersections of Christian Identity and Christian Reconstruction, the former the "religion" of white supremacists, the latter also known as Dominionism. He writes:

Book review: Thy Kingdom Come by Randall Balmer

Within the stream of new books critiquing the Religious Right and its malign influence in public discourse and public policy, few are as readable or as well-reasoned as this relatively brief cri de coeur by Columbia University historian of religion Randall Balmer. Because Balmer knows his history so well, he is particularly grieved by all the ways in which today's U.S. evangelicals betray the vision of their 19th century forebears, who agitated for social reforms including abolition, women's suffrage, the rights of workers, and universal high-quality public education. Continue

*Rev. Peter Laarman is executive director of Progressive Christians Uniting and is based in Los Angeles. Their website is www.ProgressiveChristiansUniting.org. Laarman is also editor of "Getting on Message: Challenging the Christian Right from the Heart of the Gospel," reviewed here in May.

Jesus Is Not a Republican

Randall Balmer, a professor of American religious history at Barnard College and himself an Evangelical Christian, is author of the forthcoming book Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America: An Evangelical's Lament, from which this essay is excerpted. Continue

You can find an interview with Balmer and an excerpt from his book at National Public Radio. Click here BuzzFlash interview: Michelle Goldberg

Christian nationalism inside America's mega-churches

Michelle Goldberg took a close-up look at right-wing religion in America and has reemerged to tell others just what she found there - a hypnotic mix of Jesus, community, and ballot box activism. Her new book, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, explores the parallel universe that threatens our reality-based world, and indeed, could replace it. We can just hear Thomas Jefferson rolling over in his separation-of-church-and-state grave. Michelle Goldberg talked with BuzzFlash about Hitler, Scalia, Christian revisionist history, and Christian reconstructionism. Continue

Can the states establish a religion?

THE ESTABLISHMENT CLAUSE

In 2004, Supreme Court Justices Thomas and Scalia wrote opinions indicating their readiness to allow states to establish state religions. Thomas called for revisiting the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment and envisioned letting states confer authority on a particular religion. Honig, who practices law in Indianapolis (and is the artist behind Hypnocrites) wrote this article in 2004 for the Miami Herald. Since then, two right-wing justices have joined the Court. Please click here for the article, a PDF document.