A flawed vision of an American theocracy

Opinion article by Robert Parham, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 22, 2007. Robert Parham, an ordained Baptist minister, is executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics in Nashville.

With the Rev. Jerry Falwell now passed from the scene, Newt Gingrich wants America to believe the Moral Majority founder entrusted him to bear this witness.

In his Liberty University commencement address Saturday, Gingrich conflates the Bible and the Declaration of Independence. He fashions a civil religion, which is an inauthentic religion, in the search for power.

In Gingrich, the witness becomes the politician. The Christian God becomes a national deity. The Christian faith becomes the prevailing cultural ideology. The people of God become synonymous with the messianic American community.

That is a false faith, and dangerous.

Authentic religion from the best of the Christian tradition transcends every nation and sits in judgment of every culture.

Authentic religion advances the delivery of justice to the poor and marginalized instead of rallies to appoint conservative judges. It pursues peacemaking over self-righteous patriotism. It seeks the welfare of the minority neighbor over false claims of religious persecution of the majority.

Gingrich offered no such sense of authentic religion.

He invoked the name of God some 30 times in his commencement address, more times than a standard Sunday morning sermon.

But Gingrich didn't stop with quotes from Habakkuk, Matthew and Revelation — or with religious references to "serve Christ," "serve God" and "servant leader of God." He went on to play to the deepest fears of his desired congregants, invoking storm clouds of evil building as they did in the days of Nazism and Communism.

According to Gingrich, things are even worse now than before the Nazis and Iron Curtain fell.

For "the first time in our history," he claims, forces threatening America come not just from "without" but also from "within." Yet salvation awaits, with the rediscovery of God in America.

Contrary to both his articulated vision and his audience's aspiration, America is not a Christian nation where Christians are now persecuted. The Constitution did not establish a theocracy.

Gingrich appeals to a specific congregation of voters with a religious altar call he hopes will be powerful enough for them to look beyond the flawed messenger toward a message of reclaiming a new Moral Majority.

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