Political Christianity:
Legislating Abortion, Sexuality, and the End of the World
Judging from the keen attention dedicated to the study and the inquiry into the relationship between Islam and politics, one would predictably assume that the intermingling between the two is exclusive to the religion of Islam. The reality is that all religious traditions are found to have informed policy matters to varying degrees. The nature of the relationship between policy and faith has never been that of complete isolation contrary to what many would like to admit. Political practitioners assert that religion has no bearing on policy making, while religious leaders keep on asserting themselves as essential players in public life. In his book, Eternal hostility, Fredrick Clarkson insists that political meddling is an easy case to make of all faiths. Mohamed Ayoob concurs in concluding that the interplay between Islam and politics was never an aberration to what the Western world’s highly celebrated principle of church and state separation. However, Ayoub vainly tried to prove that Islam was kept outside the institutions of governance. He also dismisses the idea that religion has oriented, informed and affected political decisions. As a student of political thought, I have come across countless cases where religion emerges as a significant factor in electoral decisions as well as in policy making matters. In this paper, I will focus my attention on the interplay between Christianity and politics in an effort to prove that religion has not exactly been much of a docile and easily tamed back seat rider in the Christian world. I will also articulate the idea that the separation of state and church only exists in the wishful minds of millions of Americans who long for an absolute constitutional democracy. I also seek to make the point that my intention is not to malign the relationship between religion and politics; it is rather an indictment of the fringe element that attributes itself to religion and whose purposes are anything but holy. History provides us with an abundance of examples where religious discourse, NOT religion, was odiously used to incite hatred, antagonism, promote division and perpetual conflict.
Theology meets theocracy
Much has been made of the stealthy and subtle tactics practiced by the Christian Right in crashing the political scene. In fact, these tactics have been refined for years by the Reconstructionist strand of the Christian Right by pundits like Gary North who proposed stealth tactics more than a quarter of a century ago in The Journal of Christian Reconstruction (1981), recommending permeation of governmental institution as a step in a series of calculated efforts to “smooth the transition to Christian political leadership” and that “Christians must begin to organize politically within the present party structure, and they must begin to infiltrate the existing institutional order.” Gary North’s notion of infiltrating the existing political structure when its 1992 “County Action Plan” for Pennsylvania advised that any derivative of the word Christ should never be mentioned in republican circles for it may hinder the strategy of gaining a foothold and becoming an insider within the local Republican Central Committee. North’s plan goes on to explain that such a tactic would help pave the way for the next step of recruiting conservative Christians to occupy vacant party posts or to run against soft peddling republicans or “closet liberals” as some like to call them. Whereas the Moral Majority led by Jerry Falwell, made no apologies about publicly parading its political agenda. He had gone on the records saying that delivering the white House and Congress to the Republican is something that his group will gladly take credit for.
The Christian fundamentalist[1] movement contains several strands that rally around common themes and issues, chief amongst them the electoral activism. Dogmatic religious movements often called the “Religious Right” substantially dominate the Republican Party in possibly as much as 30 of the 50 states. As part of an aggressive grassroots campaign, these groups have targeted electoral races from school boards to state legislatures to campaigns for the US Senate and House of Representatives. They helped elect dozens of hard-line ultraconservatives to the House of Representatives in 1994. In fact, In June 1994, a New York Times poll revealed that about 9 percent of a national sample identified themselves as part of the Christian Right. Gallup poll surveys conducted during the 70’s and 80’s concluded that 25 to 35 percent of the US voting population identified as Evangelical Christian, most of whom said to be politically active. This movement succeeds in mobilizing and targeting a growing self declared pious and righteous constituency of evangelical charismatic churchgoers who despise gays, oppose abortion, contest stem cell research, and settle for nothing less than hard core orthodoxy. The Reagan presidential campaign was so timely and was able to capitalize on a ripe political block ready for cultivation, and he did as indicated in 1980 presidential elections Exit polls.
Chip Berlet, expert on the religious right, argues that the goal of many leaders of this ultraconservative religious movement is imposing a theological agenda on a secular society. Berlet points to the movement’s call for ideological and material support to a form of government where the actions of leaders are seen as rewarded or sanctioned by God. The leaders claim they are carrying out God’s will and they justify their political allegiance as living according to God’s plan. Sara Goodwin, a researcher, explains that it is hard to miss the Christian right’s tireless work since the mid seventies with one goal in mind and that is to win state power and set the agenda for public policy.
Newspaper columnist Cal Thomas, a prominent activist in the theocratic right, suggested that houses of worship ought to be able to take over and run the welfare system. Expressing his Calvinist[2] attitude, Thomas argues that these theological institutions are better positioned to reach people’s souls and inculcate in them the need to behave responsibly and not rely on the government to bail them out when they engage in sinful behavior such as premarital sex and having kids out of wedlock. Thomas argues that secular policy makers are not giving people any incentives not to sin.
The theocratic right’s ideal is an authoritarian society where God’s biblical text is interpreted and implemented as law. They peddled the idea that people are basically sinful and that all social problems are caused by satanic conspiracies propagated by liberals, homosexuals, and feminists; all of whom must be confronted, and destabilized.
Shades of Political Christianity
The Christian Coalition is one of many right groups whose influential leader, Pat Robertson, had access to the movers and shakers in the world of politics and made the movement into a force to be reckoned with especially by political hopefuls. Robertson’s homophobia is common news as well as his repeated dabbling in conspiratorial theories that bordered with paranoia. Robertson does not bother observing any degree of political
correctness when holding whom he calls “drunkards, drug dealers, communists, atheists, and Satan worshipers, secular humanists, adulterers, and homosexuals” to be the epitome of all societal ills. He unapologetically subscribes to and pushes a heavy theocratic ideology that not only dismisses secularism but also shows open contempt to competing religious perspectives.
A more aggressive form of Protestant evangelicalism emerged in the 1970s, when such right-wing activists as Francis A. Schaeffer, founder of the L’Abri Fellowship in Switzerland challenged Christians to take control of a sinful secular society. Schaeffer influenced many of today’s theocratic right activists, including Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye, and John W. Whitehead, who have gone off in several theological and political directions, but all adhere to the notion that the scriptures have given authority over the earth to Christians, who thus owe it to God to seize the reins of secular society.
Reconstructionism is another brand that is led by right-wing Presbyterians who argue that secular law is always secondary to Biblical law. While the Reconstructionists represent only a small minority within Protestant theological circles, they have had tremendous influence on the theocratic right. Reconstructionism is a factor behind the increased violence in the anti-abortion movement, the nastiest of attacks on gays and lesbians, and the new wave of battles over alleged secular humanist influence in public schools. Some Reconstructionists even support the death penalty for adulterers, homosexuals, and badly behaved children.
One key theocratic group, the Coalition on Revival, has helped bring the idea of God given Christian rule over earth to a new height. Militant anti abortion activist Randall Terry proclaims that America should “function as a Christian nation” and that the world will lose its direction without the Bible acting as its compass, and that biblical scriptures should be the only mechanism for producing laws and structuring political institutions. Randall calls for the opposition to what he calls the “social moral evils” Like abortion, fornication, homosexuality, state encroachment of parental rights, and even state monetary policies like taxes and redistribution of income.
Paleoconservatism is another genre of Christian faith that offers its religious dogma to justify the ideological and political standing. A Paleontogist expresses her/his blatant contempt towards pro immigrant policies, votes against affirmative action, and criticizes foreign aid policies. Patrick Buchanan emerged as the leader of the paleoconservatives. Despite substantial differences among them, traditional neoconservatives like Midge Decter were concerned with a perceived deterioration of US culture, while the conventional conservatives were concerned almost exclusively with the economy. The paleoconservatives’ first policy supports isolationism or unilateralism in foreign affairs, coupled with a less reverent attitude toward an unregulated free market, economic Darwinism, and support for an aggressive domestic policy to implement the Right’s social policies, such as the criminalization of homosexuality and abortion.
Experts see that the Christian Right’s recent emphasis on grassroots organizing is a strategic choice that reveals the political temperament of the Christian right. Much of its activities come as a structured reaction to political grievances, frustrations, and failures. Case in point, the current Christian Right’s reported massive retooling and re-branding campaigns after the GOP loosing the White House and its weakened standing in both the Senate and the House.
The tools of Operation of Christian Theocracy
It was the Christian right’s well entrenched political mobilization tactics that twisted Bill Clinton arm into a “don’t ask, don’t tell” position after he had initially proposed allowing openly gay military personnel. It was also The Christian Right’s day to day political organizing that pressured legislators to drop a proposed amendment to the federal Education Bill that would require Home school teachers to be certified[1].
Professor Sara Diamond sees the obvious logic in how this success is reaped by the relentless organizing that the Christian Right does religiously (no pun intended here), and they are made possible by the network of institutions that the movement has built over several decades. Professor Diamond credits the Christian Right’s accomplishments to its lavishly funded Media and communication industrial complex that include a $2.5 billion per year religious broadcasting industry, several independent book publishing companies, dozens of independent regional monthly newspapers, several dozen state-based think tanks that do legislative lobbying, and an array of legal firms devoted exclusively to Christian Right causes. The viewing audience for Robertson’s weekday 700 Club program is estimated at one million. About a third of the program’s content is overtly political. Robertson used the 700 Club to lobby against gay rights, get out the vote for Republicans, and bash Hindus and Muslims.
The Christian Right has also engaged into some ideological scrambling in the form of calculated short term tactics to attract some unlikely allies to achieve its long term goals. Its family value message has been very effective in attracting allies and sympathizers form across the ideological and religious spectrum especially when it comes to messages that bash gays and other minorities and hold them responsible for the disintegration of traditional family institution or the contamination of what it deems “a pure culture”.
The Christian Right has also been very effective in cultivating support by pushing the idea that they are being prosecuted by a deviant secular society. Sacrifice and martyrdom are essential themes of the Christian faith. The religious persecution theme has a phenomenal power in keeping activists mobilized and eager to achieve their ultimate goal or changing history and chasing those doing “the devil’s bidding” out of public space. Juxtaposed to Al Qaeda and other fringe groups, one would have a hard time telling these ideologies apart. Their messages seem to be manufactured in the same ideology labs and served up by the same demagogues. They all call fro the banning of abortion; they all seem to think that the best place for women is at home raising kids. They all want to cleanse society of homosexuals. To that end, the religious right didn’t just rely on prayer but hit the ground running in organizing and mobilizing.
The Christian Coalition boasts a mailing list of a million members and about 1100 local chapters that spread out across the US. These chapters hold regular meeting but step up their efforts around election time. The coalition runs a massive vote drive in coordination with about 250, 000 sympathetic churches. 30 million voter guides are sent out to undercut mainstream media. The candidates are introduced and the issues are deftly framed in a way that is leading, and phrased in a potent language that produces the desired results.
Armageddon Politics
“World War III has started” While this may sound like some kind of cheap sensational first page headline from a struggling print publication trying to lift its sagging sales, the reality is that these are none other than the words of charismatic evangelical Christian Pastor John Hagee addressing an audience of 18,000 devout worshipers in Texas. They believe in the apocalyptic end of this world and in the state of Israel as God’s timepiece that must remain under Jewish rule for a biblical prophecy to be fulfilled. In fact, fifty million Christians believe that Christ will return to wage an international holy war and only those who accept him as their savior will be spared. Christian evangelicals who can’t wait for the return of Christ are tirelessly working to make sure the threshold of this return, as foretold in the scriptures, is met. To that end, Evangelical Christians have organized to affect US policy decisions at all levels especially during election season or when political campaigning operates at full throttle.
The Greek word “apokalypsis” is the linguistic equivalent of the word “revelation” and it refers to the uncovering of hidden knowledge concerning the future of humanity. In its common usage, the word “apocalypse” has come to mean the belief in imminence of a calamitous event known only to a select few. In Christianity there are competing apocalyptic prophetic traditions. The tradition also exists in Judaism and Islam. Believers can be passive or active in anticipation.
When Israel captured Jerusalem in the 1967 war; Dispensationalists[2] were certain that the end was near. L. Nelson Bell, editor of Christianity Today, wrote in July 1967: “for the first time in more than 2,000 years Jerusalem is now completely in the hands of the Jews, and that gives the student of the Bible a thrill and a renewed faith in the accuracy and validity of the Bible.” According to Evangelicals, that political incident meant that the clock counting down for the end of the world was ticking.
When John Hagee announced that his church was giving more than $1 million to Israel to help resettle Jews from the former Soviet Union in the West Bank and Jerusalem, he said to be fulfilling a biblical prophecy. When asked about the implication of giving money to a foreign government, Hagee boldly stated that he was a Bible scholar and a theologian and defiantly explained “from my perspective, the law of God transcends the law of the United States government and the U.S. State Department.”
Jerusalem carries an important significance in the mind Christians who are patiently waiting for Armageddon and call for the destruction of the Dome of the Rock, one of Islam’s holiest sites, in anticipation of the return of Jesus and the outbreak of an international holy war.
Professor Boyer stresses the importance of understanding the apocalyptic thinking because of the “shadowy but vital way that belief in biblical prophecy is helping mold grassroots attitudes toward current U.S. foreign policy,”
Apocalyptic ideology is the bedrock of the political ideology appropriately named Christian Zionism. The latter’s unfettered support to the state of Israel and its heavy lobbying for an American presence in the Middle East is but an attempt to set the stage for a biblical prophecy and should not be confused as an affinity for the Jews. Anti Jewish rhetoric is a familiar staple in Christian Right activism. The Christian Right is not interested in getting Israelis and Palestinian to the negotiating table. In fact, any chance of peace in inconsistent of their theological vision and would only retard and disrupt the keenly awaited cataclysmic ending of this world. Gershom Gorenberg explains that for Christian Zionists, “Jews are actors in a play where the final curtain forces them to either convert to Christianity or die in a blaze of fire sent by God”
Chip Berlet who has made a career out of researching the Christian Right argues that “Bush is very much into the apocalyptic and messianic thinking of militant Christian evangelicals” Others, like Frederick Clarkson, are skeptical about the candidness of Bush’s religious beliefs and interprets his invoking of God as a politically motivated language that is meant to appeal to a constituency that responds well to religious innuendo. All religion has been used as legitimizing tools and galvanizing instrument to justify positions and stands.
The Politics of Abortion
Often termed “abortion on demand” and likened to infanticides, the Christian Right makes abortion one of its hot button political issues and devotes a large sum of its money and manpower to make sure that it gets legislated in favor of pro life advocates. Some factions of the Christian Rights see no moral inhibition in bombing abortion clinics and targeting doctors who provide abortion as necessary to stop what they see as the killing of unborn children. The Army of God is an underground anti abortion manual whose anonymous writer extols the bombers and describes the bombing and the killing of abortion providers as a disruption of Satan’s work and a legitimate fight against “a godless civil authority”[3] that ought to be replaced by a godly society.
Anti abortion activists have employed every tool in their massive political lobbying arsenal to bring about the demise of the pro choice movement; the latter was no picnic either. The only thing that changed about this long drawn out battle can be summed up in that the Christian Right has learned to skillfully exploit progressive values to win the sympathy in the public opinion square which can be crucial in the incessant attempt to get the Supreme Court to reverse its 1973 landmark Roe V. Wade decision.[4]
In a 1996 declaration put out by the Christian Coalition and appropriately titled “The America We Seek” the arguments against abortion ranged from it being a contributing factor to the marginalization of fatherhood in America to a direct attack on the court decision as being anti constitutional and therefore illegal. The declaration, as in every argument mounted by the Christian Right contains the ever reoccurring theme of religious persecution of Christians and antithetical to biblical truth.
Adele Stan, Journalist and editorial consultant, who has followed the religious Right very closely and documented all the entrapment ploys that the latter has deceitfully orchestrated in order to challenge Planned Parenthood and strip it from its government funding. Planned Parenthood is portrayed to be covering for an adult committing statutory rape in one scenario, and depicted as a racist organization bent on reducing and cleansing the black race in a different scenario.
Rod Parsley, one of the right-wing pastors whose endorsement to embattled presidential candidate John McCain was later rejected compared Planned Parenthood to Nazis in an edition of his television show.
The Christian Right is wise enough not to evoke morality when taking on adversaries, the moral argument is no longer the weapon of choice to appeal to people’s emotions and prejudices. In her December 2008 Wall Street Journal article, journalist Stephanie Simon described the Right’s campaign to deprive Planned Parenthood of government funding as the new lobbying effort that “focuses more on economic than moral concerns,” The Christian Right is shelving the moral argument and playing the economic one; the latter seen to hold more sway in these depressing economic times.
Anti Homosexuals Politics
The anti gay message was known to fall on deaf ears when framed in moral terms. In fact, bashing gays on moral grounds proved to be counter productive. The Christian Right sought to package it in terms that appealed to people of different political persuasions. The results were often a bolstering of an agenda that flew in the face of the equal human rights reasoning led by the gay and lesbian movement.
Rev. Pat Robertson was blunt and unequivocal when laid out the ultimate mission of the Christian coalition and stated that it was mainly to “build the most powerful political force in American politics.” The Coalition sought to model its structure after that of grassroots political organization that has provided leadership with proven results. The Coalition recruited field organizers and constructed different lobbying wings in different states, as well as launched massive media outreach programs around polarizing issues, namely abortion and homosexuality
An early videotape distributed by the Christian Coalition used homosexual scenes to illustrate the moral decline of America; opposition to homosexuality has always been a commitment of the Christian Coalition. However, it was the 1990 political battle over a gay rights initiative in Broward County, Florida, that moved the anti-homosexual agenda to prominence within the organization. In its literature, the Christian Coalition took credit for “leading the charge and winning a major political victory.” No mention was made of this being a moral victory.
Republican strategist, Carl Rove, capitalized on a fervent anti gay sentiment to help make sure that the republicans swept the white house and both houses of congress in 2004. Gay bashing proved to work effectively for electoral purposes. James carvel quipped in commenting on Republican’s campaign tactics that people were being told that they will be protected from “the terrorist in Tekrit and the homos in Hollywood.” The Christian Right mobilized heavily and was able to introduce gay marriage bans to referenda in eleven crucial swing states
Rick Warren, who delivered the invocation speech on President Obama’s inauguration ceremony, has been a regular name in the news for championing the battle against AIDS in Africa. According to Max Blumenthal, an investigation into Warren’s involvement in Africa revealed that he was working in cahoots with right-wing clergymen who have sidelined science-based approaches to combating AIDS in favor of abstinence-only education. The 200 million dollar public money that was slatted for t anti AIDS campaign in Africa was dispensed according to the wishes of the Christian Coalition in the sense that it only allowed money to be pent on abstinence. One of Rick Warren’s men on the ground in Uganda have included burning condoms in the name of Jesus and arranging the publication of names of homosexuals in cooperative local newspapers while lobbying for the criminalization and the imprisonment of Homosexuals. Succumbing to the demands of the American presence in Uganda that is bankrolling the fight against AIDS, Ugandan high ranking officials started arresting gay activists and slapping them with harsh prison sentences. This was a stark and lurid example of intermingling between state and church gone across sovereign borders.
Conclusion
We need to have an honest debate about the intersection of politics and religion. Most Americans who value their freedoms and abhor religious interventionism have a hard time reconciling the highest political office and a president who openly declares that people who voted him were only acting upon a preordained divine will. This was not Bush’s first religious epiphany. In fact, he expressed the same feeling when he was governor of Texas. Then, Bush publicly told his staff that his election as Governor was “a divine plan that supersedes all human plans.”
Given that the United States is at war with Al Qaeda, this may not be the most propitious time to be dragging God into the conflict. But that is what Bush has done when he declared that “God is not neutral” in the war on terrorism and that God take sides. The President of the USA, supposedly a secular state, said that he was just “carrying out God’s will”; an indication that God had taken the side of America
Americans are often told that Muslims resent America’s freedom of speech, and their ability to rule where Church and State stay in their respective corners. Americans are also told that Muslims have attacked America because the United States shows the rest of the world how to officially separate religion from politics and that policy decisions are informed by logic and reason. Yet, the President of the United States has publicly stated that God is not neutral and takes sides.
Surina Khan astutely remarks that if the Christian Right had its way, the results will be subversive to the American tradition of pluralism and will tear down the walls of separation between church and state.
The theocratic movement in its various colors and shapes and regardless of its religious persuasion has been hard at work trying to integrate its value system into the political system; an equal opportunity, recruiter of sorts. The problem is this is often done with a deliberate attempt to push lies, half truths, and hyperboles about others whose values do not line up with the power at be . Scapegoating and religious vigilante are exactly the type of acts that ought to be condemned, outlawed, and prosecuted.
Foot Notes:
1- Yes, there is such thing as Christian Fundamentalism; Islam is not the only religion that preaches the return to the fundamentals
2- In reference to John Calvin’s Christian doctrine
3- The term Political Christianity is here fashioned after the long standing journalistic practice “political Islam
4- Effort led mainly by Mike Ferris and the Home School Legal Defense Association
5- A Christian theological view of history
6- As quoted by Ann Bower
7- Roe V. Wade
8- Effort led mainly by Mike Ferris and the Home School Legal Defense Association
9- A Christian theological view of history
10- As quoted by Ann Bower
11- Roe V. Wade
Bibliography :
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Berlet, Chip and Margaret Quigley. “Theocracy and White Supremacy: Behind the Cultural War to Restore Traditional Values.” The Public Eye Magazine 20 (2006).
Bower, Ann. “Army of God: Still on the March.” The Body Politic (December 1995).
Boyer, Paul. “John Darby Meets Saddam Hussein: Foreign Policy and Bible Prophecy.” Chronicle of Higher Education (February 2003): B10-B11.
Diamond, Sara. “Spiritual Warfare: The Politics of the Christian Right” South End Press (1989).
Gorenberg, Gershom. “Unorthodox Alliance: Israeli and Jewish Interests Are Better Served by Keeping a Polite Distance from the Christian Right.” Washington Post ( October 2002): A37.
Ireland, Doug. “Back to the Future: GOP Revives Anti Gay Marriage Campaign.” The Public Eye Magazine 20 (2006).
Masalha, Nur. “The Bible and Israel: Invented Traditions, Archeology and Post Colonialism in Israel- Palestine.” Zed Books (2007).
Stan, Adele. “New Tactics and Coalitions Take Aim at Planned Parenthood.” The Public Eye Magazine 24 (2009).
Wagner, Donald. “Evangelicals and Israel: Theological Roots of a Political Alliance.” Christian Century (November 1998): 1020–26.
Surina Khan, Calculated Compassion October 1998 Published by political research Associates, page 3
