January 10, 2013

Religion in the 2012 election

(The following is an abstract of a speech I recently gave to the local Democratic Party)
I have been asked to talk about the relationship between religion and electoral politics. Since the recent focus has been on the political power of conservative Christianity, I want to limit my inquiry to that concern.

This is not a new issue. In 1692 what government there was in Massachusetts was under the control of a judicial-religious oligarchy. Judges Hawthorne and Corwin worked hand and hand with The Rev. Cotton Mather in prosecuting women and men as witches. Puritans honored God, and ran the State. On June tenth 1692, Bridget Bishop was hanged, the first of twenty government authorized executions for witchcraft.

Even after the adoption of the Constitution and subsequent court cases defining the separation of church and state, this alliance continued. In the ante-bellum south the conservative wing of the Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterian churches split off, basically over the question of slavery. Religion in the slave states almost uniformly referred to the Bible as the God ordained justification for slavery. I have gone through sermons preached in the old south, and in my book published in 2001, The Resurrected Church, I compiled a list of texts from both the Old and New Testaments used in the support of slavery.

Herein also lies the religious justification for segregation. One remembers that the ku klux klan t adopted the cross as their primary symbol.

Now consider the issues recently supported by evangelicals.
Unfettered capitalism and free enterprise
American exceptionalism
Passionate support of both the military and our recent wars.
Unwavering support of Israel
Support of capital punishment
Restrictive immigration policies
Low tax rates, particularly for the most wealthy
…Just to name a few

And opposition to
Organized labor
Food stamps and other parts of the social safety net
Obama care and other forms of so-called “Socialized medicine”
Gun control
Government authorized foreign aid.

And then there are the sexual and gender issues which lie at the religious heart of evangelicals..
Abortion
Gay rights, including marriage, military service for gays etc.
Limited availability of birth control for all but married women—and in some cases not even for them.

Note that these are the same issues which are the ideological substance of the current Republican Party! But remember the Republican Party was founded when Henry Clay and Abraham Lincoln separated themselves from the old Whig Party over the issue of slavery in the states soon to be carved from the Louisiana Purchase. For many years thereafter Lincoln and his followers were called Black Republicans. It was the southern Democrats who were the champions of slavery, and then segregation. It was not until Nixon’s “southern strategy” that the Democrats lost their title as defenders of the white race. It took an entire generation to replace Democratic Senators like Bilbo with Republicans like Helms. And these same southern states were then and are now dominated by evangelical Christians. Their position hasn’t changed. The only change has been in their party of choice.

While evangelicals played a heavy-handed part in the devastating Republican primaries, basically in support of Rick Santorum, these sexual issues all but disappeared in the general campaign. Mitt Romney’s lurch to the center during the last weeks, all but seemed to abandon his far right religious constituency. My guess is he rightly assumed that their support was already secure, and that the center provided his only fertile ground. But why didn’t the Christian right scream in pain at its abandonment? What happened to its religious fervor?

It is even more complicated than that. Until recently, one of the orthodox Republican’s major fears was that these right-wing religionists would take over the GOP. Barry Goldwater once remarked,

Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know. I’ve tried to deal with them.

So what happened? One theory is that the evangelical’s power had already passed its “use-by” date.” They were already a diminishing contingent in American culture. Billy Graham and Pat Robertson were passé. Jerry Falwell had gone to his reward. The Moral Majority and its successors were no more. While all that may be true, in the red states, as well as in much of the rest of the county, very conservative Christians still constituted the base of the party.

Nevertheless they never left Romney. But one wonders why this strange amalgamation of facts created an ear shattering silence. I believe there is a reason for the silence. I find the clue in the candidacy of this committed Mormon. If most evangelical Christians were sure of anything, it was that Mormonism was a heresy—probably a non-Christian cult. Five years ago Amy Sullivan, editor of the of the Washington Monthly, wrote,

Moderate Republicans aren't the ones who could derail a Romney [2008 ] candidacy. His obstacle is the evangelical base--a voting bloc that now makes up 30 percent of the Republican electorate. It is hard to overestimate the importance of evangelicalism in the modern Republican Party, and it is nearly impossible to overemphasize the problem evangelicals have with Mormonism. Evangelicals don't have the same vague anti-LDS prejudice that some other Americans do. For them it's a doctrinal thing, based on very specific theological disputes. Romney's journalistic boosters either don't understand these doctrinal issues or try to sidestep them. But ignoring them won't make them go away. To evangelicals, Mormonism isn't just another religion. It’s a cult.
But there is no indication that Mitt was abandoned by the evangelicals for doctrinal reasons. They hung with him in spite of his “cultic” identity. You can draw your own conclusion from this phenomenon, but here is mine. For most evangelicals, religion may only be a screen behind which they hide. Their real commitment is to a radically conservative social philosophy. Religion may serve that purpose, but when push comes to shove, right-wing politics trumps religious fervor. The culture is far more important than any faith commitments. Their so-called religious preoccupation is a fraud!

One sees behind this pious screen a substantial dose of racism, classism, xenophobia, nationalism, a trust in guns and their accompanying violence—and a series of other convictions buried in right-wing causes. None of these things naturally flow from the Christian affirmation. These hard right sociological concerns, not Christian faith, may be at the core of the identity of many Christian fundamentalists. So what they knew to be a cultic candidate was simply put aside because he and his Party represented far more important commitments. What was the relationship between religion and politics on the last election? It really didn’t matter.

January 1, 2013

three areas of hope for 2013

There is a substantial difference between optimism and hope.
Optimism supposes that everything will turn out well. Hope is less certain, but finds possibilities in present events.
While these days there exists a solid coterie of pessimists who know that the sky is falling, I’ll leave the crepe hanging to the crepe hangers. Here are a three things in the religious world which are on my hope list for 2013.

1-Religion in America will decreasingly be dominated by
Christian fundamentalists, as the American people realize that fundamentalism does not define authentic Christian faith.

2-The millions of younger people who claim to be spiritual but not religious will begin to find new ways to make concrete that perception. This will mean new forms of church-like structures, without doctrinal barriers or ecclesial control. The survival of mainline Protestantism will depend on its exploration of these new forms. This will mean the painful act of giving up many of the old forms.

4-The growing movement in American Catholicism will flower into new forms of faith which will finally recognize the equal role of women, and will be increasingly free from conservative male-dominated control by the Vatican. This may mark the beginning of a new reformation now taking root in the US. This movement will discover new ways to be faithfully catholic.