Syncretism in America

While living in Guatemala in the late 1970s, I came to know something of the religion of its indigenous peoples. In many respects, their religion is a fusion of Catholicism and the ancient Mayan religions. They will worship in their churches on Sunday, and then on other days, pay homage to their pagan deities at sacred spots among the hills and along the streams and lakes. A goodly portion of American Christianity exhibits similar characteristics, except in this case the religion is a fusion of Protestantism and Americanism, where Americanism in general entails the worship of a triumvirate -- Mammon the god of wealth, Mars the god of war, and Venus the goddess of love, with Mammon being the post powerful American god. In this essay I will consider one example of this religious syncretism, the response to 9/11 by Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, two of the most influential members of the Religious Right. At the time they had a following of millions, and therefore their thinking provides a glimpse into the syncretistic thinking and behavior of millions of Americans. Further, I have personally known partisans of the Religious Right for years, and the comments of Robertson and Falwell resonate with what I know personally.

Shortly after the tragedy of 9/11, both Robertson and Falwell appeared on the 700 Club, interpreting this event for their followers. As they spoke, it became obvious that they were claiming insight into the heart and mind of God. In other words, they were prophets, interpreting God's thoughts, feelings, and actions in regard to America. Here is a portion of what they had to say.

Falwell: What we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be miniscule if, in fact, God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.
Robertson: Well, Jerry, that's my feeling. I think we've just seen the antechamber to terror, we haven't begun to see what they can do to the major population.
Falwell: The ACLU has got to take a lot of blame for this. And I know I'll hear from them for this, but throwing God...successfully with the help of the federal court system...throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools, the abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked and when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad ... I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who try to secularize America ... I point the finger in their face and say you helped this happen.
Robertson: I totally concur, ...(1)

As prophets, these religious leaders recognize that God has lifted the curtain he had placed between America and the evil powers. They were aware of the "fact" that God had allowed himself to be thrown out of school. In their view, God is not mocked, and they know he has been mocked by the millions of abortions that have taken place in American. They know that God is mad, and they know what made him mad. Of course, the wrath of God is a significant biblical theme, but Robertson and Falwell know the causes of God being mad at this particular point in history. He is mad because of the abortionists, the feminists, and the gays. They are, in short, prophets, knowing God's feelings, his thoughts, and his actions, and interpreting contemporary events from the divine perspective.

Since I do not claim to be a prophet, I will not object to their insights by claiming immediate knowledge of the mind of God. I do, however, study Scripture and have direct knowledge of the sorts of people who follow the teachings of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. I have also read books on the Religious Right, a movement in America headed by, among others, Falwell and Robertson. So, on the basis of what I take to be common sense and study of the matter, I would like to offer the reader a few ideas for consideration.

It would seem to me that if God were mad at such groups as the the gays and the abortionists, it would have made more sense for Al Qaeda to have flown their planes into a gay bar or an abortion clinic. That would have produced some clarity, the same kind of clarity that occurred when Korah, Dathan, and Abiram rebelled against Moses and were struck dead by God (Numbers 16), or when David's son died because of David's adultery with Bathsheba (2 Samuel 12), or when Ananias and Sapphira were struck dead for lying to the apostles (Acts 5:1-11). In these examples, those who had offended were punished for their misdeeds, and therefore, if the gays, and abortionists, and the ACLU were to blame, it would make sense that they would have been the ones that God punished. For as Scripture says, "Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap" (Galatians 6:7). In this case, however, following Falwell and Robertson, God apparently decided not to punish the guilty. Rather, if anything, it appears that he may have lashed out at the two most prominent symbols of America's commercial and military might.

As a Christian, I do not believe in abortion or in practicing homosexuality, nor do I think God is indifferent to such things. We are, however, discussing 9/11, and the target was not the gays or the abortionists, but the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. But then, why would God allow them to be targeted? Perhaps we do not need to answer that question. Each day there are disasters all over the world, slaughters of all kinds, and we do not feel compelled to give them a prophetic interpretation. Why should we think that God is, in a special way, interested in the United States? Or, why wouldn't God be interested in all persons and countries equally? As disasters go, 9/11 was a terrible tragedy, but there are other terrible tragedies with far greater loss of life and destruction of property. One could think of what happened recently in Iraq, or the tsunami in Japan, or the mass starvation in North Korea, the recent civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala, the slaughters in Rwanda running over a million, or the ongoing devastation in Afghanistan. There are so many of these things that perhaps we should refrain from making prophetic judgments and simply ask ourselves, from a human point of view, why these disasters take place. Do we really know that God caused them? Or, perhaps God allows sinful human beings to sin freely, and the causes of various disasters, aside from natural cataclysms like the tsunami, are man made, and if that be true, one could perhaps use common sense and discover the causes for these various slaughters. Let us, for the moment, take that approach. Al Qaeda wanted to punish America, and rather than rushing off to blame the gays, the ACLU, and the abortionists, it might be wise to simply ask ourselves a reasonable question: Why did they do it? A little well-known historical background might be helpful.

Beginning early in the 20th century the Western Powers invaded the Middle East, parceled it out, started exploiting the oil, and in the 1940s carved out a new nation, Israel, which expelled hundreds of thousands of Muslims from their ancestral lands and crowded them into refugee camps where they can be found today. If Mexico had done such a thing to the Southwestern United States, had they set up a new nation there and armed it against retaliation, justifying their action by rightly pointing out that they had prior claim to the Southwest, you can be sure that Robertson and Falwell would insist on our invading Mexico to retrieve our territory, and failing that, would favor continued disruption of their commercial and military might. After all, Falwell and Robertson favored the invasion of Iraq for far lesser crimes. Be that as it may, a simple, obvious, logical, and sensible explanation is that Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden hated the West for what it had done to Muslim lands in the last 100 years and felt the need to retaliate. That seems a simple, rational explanation for what happened, and indeed, they not only attacked us, they told us why they did it. At one point, in one of his essays, Osama posed two questions, Why was Al Qaeda fighting America, and what did they want from America? Here is his answer, quoted from Steve Coll's book, The Bin Ladens,

The answer to the first question, he wrote, "is very simple: 1) Because you attacked us and continue to attack us." He listed the venues where he perceived these attacks: Palestine, Somalia, Chechnya, Kashmir, Lebanon. "You steal our wealth and our oil at paltry prices because of your international influences and military threats. The theft is indeed the biggest theft ever witnessed by mankind in the history of the world.”(2)

In regard to the second question, he wanted America to convert to Islam, and further,

to be a people of manners, principles, honor, and purity; to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling, and usury … You are a nation that exploits women like consumer products or advertising tools, calling upon customers to purchase them. … You then rant that you support the liberation of women.(3)

It may be possible that Osama bin Laden was mistaken, that America's military and commercial interests had really been a blessing to the Muslim peoples, that the Palestinians welcomed the dispossession of their land with open arms, that they enjoyed having foreigners billeting troops on their sacred lands, and that the exploitation of their oil was universally seen as just and fair. Be that as it may, it would have been helpful for Robertson and Falwell to have paid some attention to historical relations between Muslims and the West. Perhaps they could have persuaded us that the penetration by the West of Islamic lands was universally lauded by the Muslim peoples, and if there were a few malcontents, that their perverse attitudes had absolutely no foundation in fact.

This, of course, did not happen. A connection was made, a connection that Falwell and Robertson believed took place in the mind of God, linking 9/11 to the gays, the abortionists, running God out of schools, and the ACLU. But that raises a further question, Why in the world did they make the connections they made? Why couldn't they have looked reality in the face and actually seen what happened? Let's think about this for a moment, for these questions take us to the heart of the syncretistic religion of the Religious Right.

Who are Robertson and Falwell, financially speaking? I don't really know about Falwell, but Robertson's net worth has been estimated between 200 million and a billion dollars.(4) Both preside over multi-million dollar enterprises, fed by countless donations from their true believers. So, to begin with, we have to rule out any possibility that they would make a connection between 9/11 and America's commercial operations because, pure and simple, they, unlike Christ, are riding a wave of financial revenues. Therefore, the possibility that God might be "mad" at America's unrelenting worship of Mammon, made evident in the West's exploitation of Middle Eastern oil, was off the table. In fact, from the perspective of the New Testament and the teachings of Jesus, Falwell and Robertson appear like the rich young ruler who was unwilling to sell all that he had to give to the poor.

Second, the Religious Right likes war. They deplore the culture of death in regard to the unborn, but aside from that, the Religious Right loves war. When it comes to invading other countries, you can count on them virtually every time. So, being lovers of war, and paranoid about America's "enemies," they were never able to consider the possibility that God might be "mad" about America's relentless worship of the god of war. One aspect of this worship is that it is virtually impossible for the devotees of the American war machine to imagine that some of America's wars might be unnecessary. Could America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, actually slaughter large numbers of people for no good reason? That is unthinkable, and therefore, the possibility that 9/11 was in retaliation for America's unjustified hostile acts was also off the table.

They did, however, have something to say about abortions and the fact that many, many babies are aborted each year. Although it may well be that Scripture teaches that no one is alive until they can breathe, I do not believe that abortion is God's perfect will. Robertson and Falwell are adamant on this subject, although I don't think they are willing to do much beyond making it illegal. By and large, the Religious Right has little interest in allocating the resources to address this problem, such things as ready availability of birth control, free prenatal health care, increased financial aid to take care of very poor children, and so forth. I have direct knowledge of the welfare system, public and private, and I can tell you that it is extremely difficult to get people, including religious people, to take care of abandoned and abused babies. If abortion were illegal, there would be untold numbers of such babies. This is not an argument in favor of abortion. It is simply to say that if society decides to make abortion illegal, then society should take responsibility for the consequences.

But for the moment, let us leave that discussion aside and ask ourselves why Robertson and Falwell would be troubled by abortions and not troubled by war. There is a simple answer to this question. America is a powerful and warlike nation. Robertson and Falwell identify with America, with her power and wealth. They do not identify with the drug addict, the prostitute, or the destitute young women who abort their children. These people are "nobodies." Few of the young women who get abortions are both rich and powerful, and although Jesus observed that the prostitutes and the tax collectors were entering the Kingdom of God ahead of the righteous, Robertson and Falwell identify with the rich, the righteous, and the powerful. In their field, religion, they are powerful and rich. Therefore, when it comes to the culture of death that afflicts America at every level, they excoriate the weak, the desperate, and the poor, and leave aside the rich and powerful who go to war to extend the American Empire. It goes without saying that the weak, the poor, and the sinful are the ones that Jesus came to save.

And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples. And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?" But when he heard it, he said, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, 'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.' For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." (Matthew 9:10-13).

War, death, and wealth are America's gods, and there is one other that is quite powerful: sex. All of us are guilty when it comes to worship of the gods of wealth and power, but when it comes to sex, the Religious Right appears to be particularly sensitive. They must recognize that when it comes to sex "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God," at least all who reach the age of sexual awakening. Since all are guilty, Falwell and Robertson need to focus on a particular subset of the guilty, namely the gays. From the statistics I have read, gays make up about two to three percent of the population, and therefore, they are the perfect target for all the sexually sinful straight people who make up the vast majority of the population. Focusing on the gays allows the straights to feel good about themselves. You would think that the Religious Right would focus on fornication since that is the chief cause of the pregnancies that lead to abortions, and further, the amount of straight fornication that goes on is massive in comparison to the degree of homosexual fornication, and therefore, if sexual sin were the cause of 9/11, straight fornication would seem to be a more sensible target for opprobrium.

Actually considering reality, however, is not the issue here. The need is to pick out a group of people and demonize them by connecting them with a national tragedy via the mind of God. For those who believe that we are justified by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ who died for our sins to put us right with God, there is no need to demonize anyone, although there is the need to warn the church against false teachers who lead people astray. I must confess that I cannot help but think that portions of the Religious Right are like the scribes and Pharisees, apparently righteous on the outside but corrupt within. "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence" (Matthew 23:25). Be that as it may, the gays are an ideal target since most of the religious population can point the finger at them without appearing to point the finger at themselves. I think it would be more helpful to address the matter of fornication, and more fundamentally, the issue of lust which can be cast out in the name of Jesus. But that is not what is going on. What is happening is that we are all sinners and the people on the Religious Right instinctively know this. They have to deal with their sin, and they do so by projecting it on various groups such as the gays.

Out discussion so far has set forth the notion that the true gods of the Religious Right are Mammon and Mars, and although they don't openly worship Venus (though many do), they deal with sexual sin, not by the blood of the Lamb, but by attacking a subset of the American public, namely, the gays. This leaves only the feminists who, according to Robertson and Falwell, were responsible for 9/11.

Keeping in mind that Robertson and Falwell are about power, the feminists are a threat because they represent a revolt against male power. You can be sure that many on the right who read Ephesians 5 have not forgotten Paul's injunction, "Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord." Any man who wishes to apply this phrase to his marriage needs to first and foremost apply the phrase, "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her," a self-crucifixion that leaves no room for a man to impose himself on a woman. It is a self-sacrificial life, and it is very difficult. I describe this difficult path in my essay, A Call to Husbands. It would have been just as easy for Robertson and Falwell to blame 9/11 on the men of America who routinely beat, denigrate, harass, and exploit their wives and girlfriends. I've counseled many, many couples, and frankly, my impression of most marriages is that the woman is consistently going the second mile, well beyond the efforts of the husband. If, however, you wield considerable political and economic power as do Robertson and Falwell, and if you are male, it is only natural to go after the feminists first and foremost. In other words, the denigration of the feminists on the part of Robertson and Falwell is similar to the worship of Mammon and Mars in the sense that the common denominator of both is power -- pure, raw, unadulterated power.

Finally, the prophets, and this includes Jesus who uttered prophetic words, directed their prophecies, by and large, to the people of God. They called the people to repent and warned the people of the consequences of that lack of repentance. Jesus, for example, prophesized that a calamity would engulf Israel if Israel would not repent. Falwell and Robertson, however, are not directing their prophetic words to the people of God, or at least, they do not intend to do so. Falwell points his finger in the face of the "pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way." Whether these people belong to God, I will leave to God to decide, but Falwell and Robertson have clearly made up their minds. In their view, these people are evil. Attacking these people, however, allows Robertson and Falwell to enjoy the support of their followers who prefer hearing attacks on others than on themselves.

Further, as the prophets urged the people to repent, they often specifically addressed their prophetic words to the leaders of Israel, to those who wielded power, raw power, the power to kill them. Many of them were killed. Here are the words of Jesus, lamenting over the fate of Jerusalem. "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! See, your house is left to you desolate" (Matthew 23:37-38). And what of Jesus himself? He was a prophet and he died a prophet's death. Falwell may well hear from the ACLU, or he may not. You can be sure, however, that Falwell and Robertson will not be hearing from the rich and powerful. They support the rich and powerful. The powerful get elected with the support of the Religious Right, fight wars with their support, make money at the expense of the poor with their support, and therefore, you can be sure that money and power will continue to flow toward the leaders of the Religious Right for the foreseeable future.

There are, of course, people like myself who oppose Robertson and Falwell. I do not oppose them because they are not among the people of God. They belong to the visible church as do I. They claim Jesus as do I. Only God really knows the human heart. I do, however, believe they are syncretistic, along with major portions of American Christianity. I see this all around me. It is everywhere, and until the leadership of the churches preaches against Mars, Mammon, and Venus, we can expect a pitiful witness out of the North American Church.

Be that as it may, the church needs to repent. If the church were to repent, our national life would, in my mind, improve. That, however, will not happen when the leadership of the churches pursue the same goals as the rest of society. There will come a day, however, when all this will end. Someday the bridegroom will appear, and he will "present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish (Ephesians 5:27). Until then, the words of Jesus are surely relevant, "No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon" (Matthew 6:24 KJV).

Endnotes

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-CAcdta_8I.
2. Steve Coll, The Bin Ladens (New York: The Penguin Press, 2008), pp. 569-70.
3. Ibid, p. 570.
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Robertson#Business_interests.

The Rev. Robert J. Sanders, Ph.D.
June, 2012