Evangelicals and Political Power - An Introduction

Perhaps the best way to begin is to tell the story of my own personal political evolution. As I said in one of the earliest posts of this blog, I was born as a Black kid in a Black family in the United States during the tail end of the civil rights struggle. I was born into a polarized time of severe worldwide struggles, though it was nothing like the Great Depression or World War II. There was the Cold War to contend with, and things such as the space race, schoolroom duck-and-cover drills and the Vietnam War. There was also the generation gap, evidenced by the hippie movement, the antiwar protests, the rock music invasion, and the sudden awareness that America had a drug problem. There was the beginning of an awareness of the damage caused to the natural environment by human “progress.” And there was the civil rights struggle, evidenced by the speeches of Martin Luther King, the activities of Malcolm X, the Watts riots, the television footage of Black and Hispanic activists being arrested and savagely beaten by white police, and the press coverage of Rhodesian and South African apartheid.

If one was an average kid, however, one usually didn't appreciate the full significance of many of these events. I was a kid, though somewhat precocious. Yet I was still a kid. I remember nothing of the Cuban missile crisis; at the age I was at the time, I was far more preoccupied with monsters under my bed and learning to tie my shoes. I remember my parents dragging me and my brother out of bed to see the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show. I have only dim memories of when John F. Kennedy was shot; the only thing I can clearly recall is that my mom cried a lot, as she also did when Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were shot. But I distinctly remember the experience of racism – being ganged up on by white kids shouting “Nigger!”, constantly getting into fights, being taught by strict and hostile teachers. Once while my dad was stationed at Lowry Air Force Base in Colorado, the Denver Post ran a Sunday comic strip series illustrating various Bible stories. When the strip portrayed the story of Cain and Abel, the cartoonist made Cain black.

My parents had gone through significantly worse times than I when they were kids. As adults, they became solid Democrats, impressed by the idealism of the Kennedy administration, the signing of the 1964 Voting Rights Act by President Johnson, and the support of the civil rights movement by many Democrats. The Republicans had nothing to offer, having defined themselves around Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, Senator Jesse Helms, and other ultra-conservatives who seemed to want to preserve the old racist, segregated, “separate but unequal” order at all costs. Because I was precocious and a good reader, my parents talked with me on a fairly deep level about the things going on around us, and as a result I aligned myself solidly with the Democratic Party. In 1968 I was rooting for Hubert Humphrey, even though I was far too young to even think about voting. In 1972 I backed George McGovern.

The civil rights movement was the first major American movement of protest and agitation to arise after World War II. Originally, it was strictly about securing fair treatment and a better life for people of color, about stopping the savage persecution of people because of a difference of skin color or ethnic background. The movement saw significant successes in the period between 1950 and 1970. Those successes had two interesting consequences. First, there were people in this country who were not members of an ethnic minority, yet who considered themselves a minority because of the sexual lifestyle they had chosen to adopt. They too began to speak out in protest over what they called their own “marginalization,” their own “persecution.” There were also women who rose up to protest their own marginalization and exploitation at the hands of a society dominated by males.

Secondly, the nation had become sickened by American involvement in the Vietnam War. Historians now differ over the appropriateness of such an attitude; some say that with a little more persistence, the United States might have won, and that the reason America lost was because of betrayal of the military by the press. The argument of such historians is not without merit, in my opinion. Yet there was also the My Lai massacre, and the perception by many in the media and in the public at large that this was a war with no end, an inextricable mess. It was a war fought by an army of draftees, of 17- and 18-year old kids, many of whom could not afford college, many of whom came home in body bags. These kids began their own protest movement, a movement which swept across hundreds of college campuses and city streets and was broadcast live on network television news shows, a movement that experienced its own massacre at Kent State University in 1970.

These new protesters were drawn to the Democratic Party just as the original civil rights activists had been. The Democrats were seen as younger (because of John and Bobby Kennedy), more progressive, more idealist, more open to change and more honest; the Republicans were seen as rigid, reactionary friends of the rich and of big business, mere protectors of an established oppressive order. This was not lost on Democratic candidates for political office. From 1968 to the end of the Vietnam war, most Democrats ran for office on an antiwar platform. Even afterward, up to the end of the Cold War, the Democrats uniformly opposed any expansion of the American military, preferring to cut military spending in order to spend more money on social programs. As time passed, I became more aware of these things, though I missed the significance of much of this in 1968, since I was too young to appreciate it. All I knew at that time was that I was a Democrat.

I remained a Democrat even after I became a Christian at a Lutheran vacation Bible school. The pastor who taught us was a really nice man, but he was a true patriot, a member of the National Guard. When there was a Veterans' Day or Memorial Day weekend, he used to preach on Sundays in uniform, rather than wearing his vestments. The congregation was as patriotic as the pastor. I remember discussing politics with one of the ushers when I was in junior high school, and how he would admonish me that “it behooves us to support our leaders.” That was the first time I had ever heard the word “behoove”, and it always made me think of cows for some reason.

But in 1973, President Nixon negotiated a pullout of American troops from Vietnam. In 1975, Saigon fell. In 1975, Americans witnessed the frantic, terrified escape of Vietnamese refugees from the American embassy and the emigration of the “boat people,” as well as the ensuing massacres of civilians in Vietnam by the Communists, and of civilians in Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge – all brought to us by the same press and television news networks that brought us the My Lai massacre and the antiwar protests. Suddenly, the Communists didn't look so good, nor did being antiwar. Then the S.S. Mayaguez was seized by the Cambodians in international waters, and President Ford had to send the Marines to rescue the ship. When Jimmy Carter became President, he pursued a policy of non-confrontation with the Soviets, a policy of negotiation and goodwill and unilateral disarmament. The Soviet Union responded by building up their own military and by invading Afghanistan, where they used chemical weapons against the civilian population. It was during these years also that Alexander Solzhenitsyn came to the United States and began speaking and writing about what life was really like in the Soviet workers' “paradise.”

Events like these caused me to re-examine my Democratic affiliation. I came to believe that the idealism of the Democrats, while commendable in certain respects, was out of touch with reality in other respects. When I returned to the Lord after my Army tour, I found myself in opposition to Democratic positions regarding sexual morality. I knew that the Republicans had serious issues of their own, and were not entirely trustworthy. Yet I came to believe that the Republicans at least understood the dangerous world in which we lived, and were therefore better qualified to lead our nation. Or, to put it another way, if the Republicans did things that threatened the environment or civil rights, I could always sue them. But I would not be alive to sue the Soviets for anything if they took over the world. It seemed to me that Jimmy Carter was losing the Cold War – and this was not a war to lose. I believe even now that had he been elected to a second term, the United States would have lost.

The first official election vote I ever cast as an adult was therefore for Ronald Reagan. I had my reasons, but there were others who had their reasons for casting the same vote. I remember newspaper articles from that time describing pro-Reagan rallies at Baptist churches in my area, where “cheerleaders” would shout from the platform, “Are you a flag-waving American?!” I think – but I can't remember exactly – that the Rev. Jerry Falwell also began to distinguish himself as a major Christian leader around this time, and he solidly supported Reagan. Reagan also described himself as a Christian. In the context of the Cold War struggle against a godless Communist empire, it is understandable that so many evangelical Christians supported Reagan.

And Reagan did many good things as President. His greatest triumph was in restoring American prestige abroad, and in laying the foundation for winning the Cold War. The hijackings and kidnappings of Americans by Islamic extremists decreased dramatically from their height during the Carter years. Yet there were many progressive values held by the Democrats which were disregarded by Reagan. He was not a protector of the environment (does anyone remember Interior Secretary James Watt?), or of labor, or of the small victims of big business. He seems to truly have believed that there were no limits to economic growth; therefore, many of the energy concerns of former President Carter were swept aside. He was slow to recognize the legitimacy of the anti-apartheid protests in South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and the anti-Marcos protests in the Philippines. But the Reagan years saw the beginnings of a real marriage between American evangelical leaders and the Republican Party. This was a great boon to the Republicans, who recognized the strength of their new power base. Yet it was a strange marriage, in which the Republicans adopted traditional Republican positions and the evangelical leaders went about trying to legitimize the Republican positions as “Christian.”

Thus it was that one night in the 1980's, while I was still involved in the abusive church described in the posts http://thinsoc.blogspot.com/search?q=%22What+My+Old+Church+was+Like%22 of this blog, we had just ended a prayer meeting, and a young college woman in our group started handing out “Christian voter's guides.” I took one and read it, and discovered a statement that Christians should oppose an end to apartheid in South Africa. I think the reason was that slaves were to be obedient to their masters, or a reason like it. This, from an organization which was patriotic to the core, which probably celebrated every 4th of July with gusto! That wasn't the only experience I had with “Christian voter's guides” which legitimized many Republican positions as “Christian,” even though they could not be Biblically defended.

While the Cold War lasted, it seemed to me that the Soviet and Chinese communist empires were a cancer, and that our Republicans were a chemotherapy – curative, as long as one understood the side effects. And the therapy worked. In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed. America was the reigning superpower. Happy times were here to stay. And there seemed no further use for Republican chemotherapy, except that conservative media stars such as Rush Limbaugh, as well as many in the Religious Right, began to define our own Democratic Party as cancer and the Republicans as the necessary chemo. I can't remember when I discovered Rush. At first I thought he was an irritating loudmouth, but I began to be convinced by his assertions regarding the liberal bias of the mainstream media, as well as his praise for the Republican Party. Many prominent evangelicals were promoting the idea that through political action, we could restore the United States to the condition of being a “Christian nation.” These were the days of Ralph Reed, of Pat Robertson, of the “Christian Coalition,” of Bob Larson's radio show, and of James Dobson's “Focus on the Family.”

But around this time, I was also intensively studying Galatians. I was struck by such phrases as this: “...if there had been a law given which could make alive, most certainly righteousness would have been of the law.” Reading Galatians, I was struck by the thought that it was futile to try to make a nation into a “Christian nation” by passing “Christian” laws, since only those who had truly been born again could even begin to live like Christians. I was also taken by the New American Standard rendering of 1 Peter 1:1, “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who reside as aliens, scattered...” It began to dawn on me that perhaps God wanted American Christians to see themselves as resident aliens in a foreign country – as strangers and exiles, rather than as unquestioning patriots.

But when I began to express these views to my “brothers and sisters” in our cultic church, I encountered loud howls of disagreement from several of them. So I began to keep these things to myself. Also, I did find Bill Clinton to be repugnant as a President. (I still do, by the way. Although one of the aims of this blog is to discuss how the political Right has hijacked the evangelical church, the Democrats are not without sins to confess. And I am no friend of Madam Hillary – but I will have to tell my reasons some other day. They are not the reasons many would expect.) I voted for George Bush in 2000 and in 2004, motivated heavily by the rhetoric of key leaders in the Religious Right.

The exposure of our abusive church as an abusive church – really, a cult – in 2003 was an eye-opening experience for me. That experience changed my whole outlook, not only on that church, but on life in general. For years we had all been taught that authority figures are unquestioningly good, and are to be unquestioningly trusted. We had been fed a song-and-dance about the saintly goodness of our particular church leaders. And we had seen the song-and-dance completely blown away by the facts of abuse and dirty dealing under the color of religion. Once I saw that pattern of authority obtained by falsehood and then misused, I was able to recognize it in many other areas of life.

I became a questioner – not of the Bible, but of authority figures I had come to take for granted. There were triggers that brought on the questioning: anomalous acts by leaders, sudden burdens or increases of burdens placed on the backs of those being led, or of sudden unfair treatment of myself or others. The foot-dragging by some Republicans over renewal of the Voting Rights Act was such a trigger. The year 2005 was such a trigger, as I saw gas prices suddenly surge to over $3 a gallon where I lived. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was another trigger, as I saw the ineptitude of the Government's response and the resultant suffering on the part of the victims. I had already begun to question the Iraq war, since no weapons of mass destruction had ever been found, and all the reasons for the war began to appear to be fabricated. Yet even in 2005, I still considered myself a Republican.

The final straw came in 2006, when many Republican congressmen made opposition to illegal immigration into a huge issue. I was mailed a “Christian Voter's Guide” which was full of venom against the “criminal illegals who are coming here simply to break the law, to get involved in drugs and gangs,” etc. The pamphlet admonished me to support candidates who would keep our nation safe, “for the children's sake.” The pamphlet had been mailed by an outfit called the "Family, Faith and Freedom League." Of course, there was a picture of an unwashed Mexican crawling under a fence on the front, and a picture of innocent, apple-cheeked, blond children on the back. Now, I think both sides in this issue are guilty of wrongs. But that mailer was such a rotten, bigoted throwback, and seemed so clearly to summarize the Republican congressmen who wanted to “get tough on illegals” that I quit the Republican party that very month and switched to the “Decline to State” party. I also became, officially, an “evangelical expatriate.” Since then, I have moved farther and farther away from traditional Republicanism.

Yet there are many within the Republican Party who consider themselves evangelical Christians, and are in the party because of their faith. There are many who hear the rallying cry of their leaders urging them to vote for “Godly candidates who will uphold the Christian values on which this nation was founded.” These rallying cries have begun again in earnest this year, in 2008. It would therefore be instructive to examine the issues that are dear to these leaders, the issues which they consider important in restoring “Christian” values to the United States, as well as the issues which these leaders consider to be of lesser importance. It would also "behoove us" to understand why these leaders think the way they do, and to examine whether they actually have been effective in actually re-making the United States into a “Christian nation” by their efforts. That analysis will be the subject of my next post.