Dismay: The Christian Right

The most publicly visible Christianity in the United States today is a hardened form of the earlier Christian paradigm. As in common usage, I will call it the “Christian right.” I trust that this is not dismissive name-calling or excessive stereotyping. I am simply seeking to name it, not to intensify a polarization that already exists.

It is called the “Christian right” because it is both theologically and politically conservative. Theologically, in harder or softer forms, the Christian right affirms biblical inerrancy and literal interpretation. Politically, it supports the political right with varying degrees of conviction.

The Christian right is found primarily among evangelical Christians, a broad and somewhat imprecise category that includes most fundamentalist, conservative evangelical, and Pentecostal Christians. Not all are part of the Christian right; there are important exceptions. But most — probably 80 percent or more — identify with the Christian right.

It is the most visible and vocal form of Christianity in America today. The evidence of its visibility is obvious. The Christian right dominates Christian radio and television. It includes almost all of the “megachurches,” mostly new congregations with ten thousand or more members. It receives the most media attention. And it is the most politically involved. Often and correctly called the electoral base of the political right as a whole, it is assiduously courted by the secular wing of the political right.

The issues for which the Christian right is most publicly and visibly known are familiar:

• It is against evolution. It campaigns for “intelligent design” in public school curriculums. Without the Christian right, there would be no controversy about the teaching of evolution. Interestingly, there is no such controversy in other historically Christian countries. It is an American phenomenon.
• It is against abortion. Its preferred term is “pro-life,” but this means primarily the beginning-of-life and end-of-life issues of abortion and euthanasia. For the most part, it does not apply a “pro-life” ethic to what happens during life. It generally approves of capital punishment and war and generally opposes the notion that government should provide a safety net that supports and nourishes life. That, it feels, should be left up to individuals and charities.
• It is against homosexuality, which it views as a sinful lifestyle choice. It strongly opposes what it sees as a pervasive “gay agenda” at work in our culture.
• It is known for its emphasis on “values,” but its values focus quite narrowly on questions related to sexuality, including gender. Abortion and homosexuality have just been mentioned. In addition, it favors teaching sexual abstinence in publicly funded programs, is ambivalent about  contraception because it might contribute to immorality, and protests against excessive sexuality in movies and television (but generally not against violence or consumerism). It is concerned about gender roles within the family and within the church, including whether or not women can be ordained as clergy.
• It supports the civic affirmation of Christianity (or of what it often calls “the Judeo-Christian tradition”), including prayer in public schools and Ten Commandments in public places.

Its political influence extends beyond these issues. In addition to its very visible and vocal advocacy of these causes, it generally supports the political right on other major matters. The stakes are high because of America’s role in the world and Christianity’s role in America.

We live in a time of the American Empire. To say that we are the empire of our time is no longer a left-wing claim, but an affirmation embraced by conservative advocates and architects or our imperial power. I add that empire is not necessarily about territorial expansion; we probably have no such ambitions. But empire is about  the use of superior military and political power to shape the world in one’s own interests, and to do so as unilaterally as possible.

Our cultural context raises an acute and urgent question: what does it mean to be a Christian and a citizen of the empire? It is, of course, an ancient question as well, central to the Bible, Jesus, and early Christianity.

The answer of the Christian right is clear: it supports American imperial policy and the use of armed force to enforce that policy. The demographic group providing the highest percentage of support for going to war in Iraq was white evangelicals (over 80 percent). They continue to be its largest group of supporters — in spite of the fact that Christian moral teaching, Catholic and Protestant, forbids starting a war and has done so for over sixteen hundred years. Before then, Christians were pacifists. Since then, Christian teaching has permitted going to war as a last resort of self-defense — but not preemptive war, a “right” that our government now claims.

Given this long tradition of Christian teaching of war, why were the streets of America not thronged with millions of Christians in the months leading up to the war saying, “We must not do this — it violates all Christian teaching about the conditions under which we may go to war”? The most persuasive answer is because of the imperial captivity of much of the church in the United States.

ON the environment, most of the leaders of the Christian right are either silent or advocates of a God-given human dominion over nature. The result is a neglect of environmental regulation, and often opposition. Many ridicule the evidence for global warming, thereby encouraging their followers to discount what scientists are saying about the problem.

On government and economic policy, most see government as at best “a necessary evil” and embrace the “smaller government, lower taxes” rhetoric of the secular political right. As a result, they support economic and tax policies that benefit the wealthiest among us. This is occurring in the context of a growing gap between the wealthy and the rest of our population over the last twenty-five years, especially the poor but also much of the middle class. Much of the Christian right supports an economic and tax policy sharply in contrast to the Bible’s passion for a more just distribution of God’s earth.

Again, I emphasize that this is not a description of evangelical Christianity as a whole, but of the Christian right in particular. Not all evangelicals see things this way. Indeed, all of the points I have just made are made by evangelical authors critical of much of what is happening within their own tradition.

Among them is Jim Wallis, author of the important best-seller God’s Politics. Near the beginning of that book, he poses a question: how did the religion of Jesus become pro-rich, pro-war, and only American? For Christians, it is a provocative question that should haunt us in what often seems to be a Christ-forgetting country.

The visibility of the Christian right has an additional consequence: many people outside of the church have a very unfavorable image of Christianity. Some examples from my own experience are:

• The majority of my students at Oregon State University grew up outside of the church, this state being one of the least “churched” areas on the country (and perhaps even number one on that list). Most of them have a very negative view of Christianity. In surveys, they regularly characterize Christians as anti-intellectual, literalistic, self-righteous, judgmental, and bigoted. It is not difficult to discern where they got this impression.
• Several midlife professionals have told me that they’re embarrassed to tell their colleagues at work that they go to church because of the assumptions they think their colleagues will make. As one of them said to me, “It’s such a conversation stopper.”
• My wife and I know many people who are on a religious journey, a spiritual path, but who think of Christianity as the last place they would look to find something of value.
• As a friend said to me, “The greatest obstacle to Christian evangelism in our time is Christian evangelists.”