How the Religious Right Betrays the Gospel and Endangers the Countr

Over the years I have written a number of essays exposing the liberal heresy. By and large, these have been well received by conservatives. My experience has been, however, that such readers are not so receptive when I point out the errors on the right.(1) There is, however, little virtue in writing essays that simply list the sins of the theological left. Pointing the finger at others rather than ourselves can only be self-serving and hypocritical. By the word "ourselves," I mean those who believe the Bible is the Word of God, that Jesus is the only Son of God, that he was born of a virgin and bodily raised, that marriage is for one man and one woman, and that it is best, under most circumstances, for a woman to carry her baby to term. That is what I believe as a Christian. But having said that, I believe that a number of evangelicals have failed to see the sins of the Religious Right, above all, how they have betrayed the gospel, and because of that, put the country at risk. Let me explain.

From the beginning, the Religious Right has consistently used its religious authority to promote something other than the Kingdom of God. For example, in 1948, Carl McIntire, leader of the American and International Council of Churches, declared that the United States should use its atomic bombs to destroy the Soviet Union before the Soviets had such weapons. From a "realist" or as a war-monger, such comments might be understandable. His statements, however, were made as a Christian. He claimed that "Almighty God holds us responsible,"(2) responsible if the United States did not incinerate millions of Russians. And, in 1968, the Rev. Billy Graham backed Richard Nixon's election and the War in Vietnam, making sure that Nixon sat in the VIP section in one of his crusades, in clear sight of the cameras.(3) In other words, Billy Graham lent his religious prestige to a particular war policy in direct violation of Jesus' command to turn the other cheek. One could understand how Graham, as a private citizen having to make sense of a brutal world, could support a war. In this instance, however, he was acting in his capacity as a religious authority, and as such, he disgraced the Christian gospel by linking it to war.(4) Jerry Falwell once said his support of Ronald Reagan, leading to Reagan's election, was his "finest hour,"(5) as if the election of a political candidate was more important than the establishment of the Kingdom of God.

Further, in the recent interviews of Senators Obama and McCain by Rick Warren, John McCain was asked if he believed in evil. He replied that Osama bin Laden was evil itself, and that he knew where he was and how to get him. This militant reply, apparently implying an invasion of Pakistan, was enthusiastically applauded by the evangelical audience as if they knew nothing of Jesus' command to take the plank out of one's own eye rather than removing the mote in the eye of another. Of course Osama bin Laden is a threat to the country. This obvious fact requires no real insight. As a potential leader of the country, it is important for Senator McCain to defend America against external threats. But Christian Americans best respond, not with enthusiastic applause, but with self-examination as to our own sins,(6) and when the carefully weighed facts warrant, with force carried out with determination, sorrow, and regret. That is not how many on the Religious Right respond. By and large, they rush to war. When George Bush was elected president, they were elated, and then, with little forethought, they supported his invasion of Iraq.

When non-Christian American citizens see Christians promoting violence, not just as citizens, but in their capacity as religious people, and when Muslims see a president who presents himself as an evangelical attacking a Islamic nation, the impression is given that the Christian religion is about bombs and killing rather than Christ dying for our sins. This betrays the gospel. It would be best if American presidents did not, as did President Bush, wear their religion on their sleeves. Then, when we go to war, it will not be seen as a Christian crusade, supported by American Christians. As it is, the "Christian" lust for war makes it more difficult to convert both non-Christian Americans and Muslims to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Why this incessant fear of America's enemies, why these constant cries for war from the Religious Right, and why this relentless drive to expand America's war machine? America now has some 700 plus bases world-wide, a military budget virtually equal to the rest of the world's combined, but still, the Religious Right wants more.

There is a reason for this. The Religious Right prizes America above the Kingdom of God, and since America is a kingdom of this world, subject to the terrors of history, they live in constant fear and anxiety for themselves and their nation. We have more to fear, however, from a righteous God and from our own sins than from any earthly enemy. Senator McCain mentioned only Osama bin Laden as evil. He did not mention America's sins, and most likely, this omission was not noticed by his evangelical audience. Failing to see one's own evils, however, does not increase a nation's security. It weakens it.

In my view, that has what has happened under President George W. Bush. He could not have been elected without the critical support of the Religious Right. The evangelical right was convinced that a praying, evangelical president would bring blessings to America. Now, eight years later, my evangelical friends say nothing of President Bush, and they are right not to. The blessings did not rain down. The very opposite happened. Convinced that America was right, that it was a beacon of light to the world, that democracy and free markets were the solution to everything, that they had the right to invade other countries with the flimsiest excuses, and more aware of the sins of other nations than their own, the administration embarked upon a war policy, a tax policy, and a fiscal policy that is bankrupting the nation, lowering American prestige world-wide, and killing Americans along with hundreds of thousands of others in wars that apparently have not diminished terrorism, but actually strengthened it.(7) This is what happens when a nation cannot see its own failings, and this self-righteous posture is encouraged and abetted by the Religious Right.

For the last seventy or eighty years, the Religious Right has consistently, relentlessly, if not at times hysterically, denounced, and even called for the annihilation of, the evil people they see threatening our country. Rather than take the plank out of their own eyes and the eyes of their wealthy, right-wing, powerful, political friends, the leaders of the Religious Right have attacked an unending stream of enemies -- the communists, the socialists, the Jews, the integrationists, the Catholics, the secular humanists, the globalists, the homosexuals, the abortionists, the intellectuals, the universities, the terrorists, and the Muslims,(8) while ever so rarely denouncing the sins of the rich and powerful who wine and dine them, fund their religious and political campaigns, give them political access, and promise (but scarcely deliver)(9) to carry out their social and religious agenda.

Apparently, from the point of view of the Religious Right, the rich and powerful on the political right are sinless. In fact, the leaders of the Religious Right are rather like the rich and powerful themselves. Some of them preside over worldly empires that gross millions. They claim to be Christian, and it is this public claim in conjunction with their empires that distorts the witness to the one who endured poverty, public humiliation, and death for the sake of a Kingdom not of this world.

Even more, the political agenda of the Religious Right rests on an assumption that betrays the gospel. A number of them seem to believe that getting Christians in positions of power and passing Christian laws is going to make America a Christian nation. Nothing could be further from the Truth. It is the gospel that makes people Christians, and once converted, they form churches where they seek to live by Christian norms. The whole of Scripture makes this clear; the law cannot make anyone or anything Christian.

Further, for civil law to be effective, it must be backed by force, that is, coercion. Jesus does not convert by coercion. He "rules" the human heart from the cross, by the aching and heart-breaking reality of his dying in our stead. His Kingdom is not advanced by a political agenda that imposes a particular vision of society upon a recalcitrant public. Christians can be involved in politics, not in hopes of making the society Christian, but perhaps, more just or humane. For example, the notion that our common humanity is diminished by abortions on demand is a strong argument. How a society promotes life, whether by allowing the church to freely preach the gospel, or by civil laws, or both, is a more delicate matter. The worst argument, an argument promoted by some Christian organizations, is that America can only be great if biblical law is imposed by force. That betrays the gospel.

Without being aware of it, the Religious Right has made an idol out of the United States of America. Because of this idolatry, they confuse the church created by one who turned the other cheek and died for all, with a nation that began with a violent revolution and was expanded by bloodshed. Since they confuse the two, they attribute to the nation qualities that belong only to the church; that is, a nation that is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.

The Religious Right is dismayed that the United States is "no longer" a holy nation, as if our country ever was or could be a holy nation.(10) Since they believe America to be both capitalist and democratic, they believe that democracy and capitalism are catholic, that is, universals that can be applied to all nations everywhere. They are willing to occupy other nations to turn them into democratic, capitalist countries. The War in Iraq is an example. Perhaps the invasion could have been justified on the basis of power politics. I don't think so, but for the Religious Right, continued occupation was justified as bringing democracy and free markets to Iraq, as if these were universals. They also think that Scripture, that is, aspects of the apostolic witness, can be applied to the United States of America, and that this country would be better off if Scripture were so applied.

There are, of course, norms in Scripture that can be applied. But not all Christian norms are applicable. For example, the Christian Right wants public school teachers to lead prayers in the classroom. When most Americans were Christian, such a thing was possible. But now, to whom would the students pray? If teachers lead prayers to a generic god-in-general, it teaches students that all roads lead to the same god, a heresy of the Episcopal Church, but not one I support. If they have prayers for each of the deities or philosophies represented by their students, they teach the same heresy, as if all ultimates were equally valid. If they lead Christian prayers only, against the wishes of certain students and their parents, they betray the gospel by imposing Christian norms by force. Let Scripture be applied to the churches directly, and if there are portions of Scripture that can be applied to the nation, and there are, let it be so on the basis of the common good and not imposed as "Christian."

I have learned a lesson over the last few years. I have seen a determined minority take control of the Episcopal Church and subvert it to an agenda that substitutes the millennium goals for the preaching of the Good News.(11) I work with evangelicals. They are good people who truly love God. My evangelical friends are not extremists. They are, however, sympathetic to the Religious Right and vote Republican. In my view, many good-hearted evangelicals are not aware of the potential dangers that lie before them. From President Nixon onward, the Republican Party has used the Religious Right to win elections. Twenty-eight of the last forty years have seen Republican presidents. If the people of this country are not vigilant, extreme elements of the Religious Right will gain control of the Republican Party, and through them, the country. That is their agenda.(12) They will impose by force a heretical version of the Christian faith that will harm the country and betray the gospel. Among other things, they will persecute America's presumed internal enemies with the same fervor they prosecute wars abroad. Pat Robertson is a perfect example. He formed the Christian Coalition and used it to seek the presidency in 1988. He got millions of votes in the Republican primaries and spoke at the Republican National Convention. His agenda is not at all subtle. It is dominion theology. He simply believes that Christians, and only Christians, should rule the world and establish Old Testament law.(13) If dominion theology is imposed, it will be brutal. We need to be on guard.

"Be careful," Jesus warned them. "Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod." (Mark 8:15)

Endnotes

1. Over the years, the religious left has never really bothered to respond to my exposures of their heresies and idolatries. On the few occasions, however, when I addressed the sins of the religious and political right, I stirred up a hornet's nest of hostile remarks. These were essentially attacks on my person with little theological substance. All this convinces me that the Right has made a god out of America, and once their god is "attacked," they get angry. Blind patriotism, however, is not true patriotism. Only when a person recognizes both the good and the evil in a country can they be good citizens. I have lived in other countries, and this has helped me appreciate America. Although I "see through a glass darkly," I know America has great strengths, especially our freedoms. On the other hand, she has great weaknesses, above all, our foreign policy, which in the end, if the militarism is not curbed, may well be our undoing.
2. William Martin, With God on Our Side (New York: Broadway Books, 1996), p. 36. Similar statements have been attributed to Jerry Falwell. (Martin, p. 210.) The conclusions of this essay were worked out through many years of working with evangelicals, reading their literature, and seeking to appreciate their point of view. The book by Martin gives what I consider a fair assessment of the Religious Right.
3. Martin, p. 97.
4. After Graham read the Watergate tapes, he knew he had been used by a "man I never knew." Since then, thankfully, Graham was less willing to cloak sinful, political programs with the aura of religious legitimacy. (Martin, p. 146.)
5. Martin, p. 220.
6. On the evening of 9/11, President Bush stated, "America was targeted for attack because we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world." David Domke, God Willing? Political Fundamentalism in the White House, the "War on Terror," and the Echoing Press (Ann Arbor: Pluto Press, 2004), p. 102. The presence of American troops on Islamic soil (especially Saudi soil), the United States' preferential treatment of Israel vis-a-vis the Palestinians, and decades of Western political and military intervention in the oil-rich Middle East, are much more likely reasons for the attacks. In the wake of 9/11, however, self-critical, historical awareness was unthinkable, even for most Christians.
7. See the concise, clear summary of the Bush legacy in the Economist, October 4-10, 2008, p. 36. In the view of the authors, President Bush failed because of his ruthless partisanship, his iron commitment to presidential power, and his contemptuous treatment of congress.
8. God is sovereign, and members of the Religious Right are as apt to turn from wrong and seek the Lord as anyone else. For example, Billy Graham backed off of his political endorsements. Jerry Falwell repented of his segregationists attacks and opened his heart and church to blacks. James Robinson, one of the most charismatic speakers of the Religious Right and a strong supporter of Reagan, repented of the hard, mean, and cruel things he had said about Jimmy Carter. (Martin, pp. 156, 219, 236-7.)
9. One of the great heros of the Religious Right has been Ronald Reagan. Reagan was not all that religious, although he could talk the talk. He never really supported the social agenda of the Religious Right. His first Supreme Court nomination was Sandra Day O'Connor, a woman who supported abortion. For decades, Republican Presidents have used the Religious Right to get elected, but they have delivered very little on their two primary objectives, the end of abortion and prayer in schools.
10. The Religious Right will publish horrific pictures of babies being aborted, but not, as far as I know, images of children torn limb from limb in Iraq. Unlike the former images, the latter pictures would violate their sense of America as a just and righteous nation. Frankly, I am not able to bear looking at either set of images available on the internet.
11. In certain respects, the agenda of the Religious Right is not unlike that of the Episcopal Church, that is, a political agenda that replaces or subverts the gospel.
12. The Religious Right has made major inroads into the power structure of the Republican Party. The selection of Governor Sarah Palin as Senator John McCain's running mate testifies to their strength. According to Chris Hedges, the Religious Right now has a majority of seats in thirty-six percent of all Republican State committees, along with large minorities in the remaining states. Forty-five senators and 186 members of the House of Representatives earned approval ratings of 80 to 100 percent by the three most influential Right advocacy groups, the Christian Coalition, Eagle Forum, and Family Resource Council. Chris Hedges, American Fascists, The Christian Right and the War on America (New York: Free Press, 2006), pp. 22-23.
13. Here is Pat Robertson: "Although I agree that it is unwise for the organized church as an institution to get itself entwined with government as an institution, there is absolutely no way that government can operate successfully unless led by godly men and women operating under the laws of the God of Jacob." Pat Robertson, The New World Order (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1991), p. 227.