Piety and Politics, edited Richard John Neuhaus and Michael Cromartie
Dunlap, John R.
In May 1983, at the invitation of the liberal theologian Harvey Cox, the Reverend Jerry Falwell came to speak at the Harvard Divinity School. On the podium Falwell was greeted by an audience of...
...For all that, at least four principal themes emerge...
...A social corollary to that belief is what Grant Wacker calls the Evangelicals' "pastoral concern that tradition should still have a place in the modern world"--especially traditional expectations of moral behavior...
...most fall between 1980 and 1985...
...a truly Christian involvement in public affairs implies a moral obligation to be well informed in responsible discourse...
...If the Evangelicals hope to bring a lasting influence to bear on what Pastor Neuhaus calls "the naked public square," they will have to do more than be adept at forging coalitions, at capitalizing on electronic media, and at crystallizing disgruntlements...
...a plurality (30 percent) is Roman Catholic, and half the members are Mormon, Jewish, mainline Protestant, or non-affiliated...
...Speaking for the Evangelicals, Carl F H. Henry decries "the burgeoning secular mindset in American society," which confuses human rights with human wants and which flouts "the values traditionally considered normative in American society...
...And George Weigel, a Roman Catholic, remarks on a "shared perception that the systematic effort to strip American public policy discourse of any relationship to the religiously based values of the American people portends disaster for the American experiment...
...A third principal theme is that the separation of church and state, which almost everyone favors, is not the same as the separation of religion and politics, which the secularists favor selectively...
...Two generations after the humiliating 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, American Fundamentalists and Evangelicals are out in force again, and they aren't about to be put off, as before, by the ridicule and condescension of city-slicking divines...
...But politics—and here is a fourth theme recurring through much of this splendid anthology—turns on prudential judgment, which can vary widely under the broad umbrella of such biblical principles as justice and freedom...
...Echoing Jacques Ellul, Joseph Sobran writes that in the religion of secular humanism (the semi-official religion of the Fourth Estate, by the way) there is no authority above man himself, so that "the state becomes a de facto god...
...A second recurring theme is best expressed by Nathan Glazer, who regards the Evangelical resurgence as a "defensive offensive...
...he earned the grudging attention of his liberal audience with an instant parry: "Students, please understand that my speaking here tonight should in no way be construed as an endorsement of the Harvard Divinity School...
...The late Harvard sociologist Talcott Parsons called it "America's fourth faith," and the Evangelicals resent the hell out of seeing that faith imposed on their kids in the public schools...
...Norman Lear has become "an odd matchmaker for Catholics and Evangelicals...
...12.95 paper John R. Dunlap 44 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1988 a number of essays throughout the collection (notably those by Pastor Neuhaus, A. James Reichley, Ronald Nash, Lloyd Billingsley, Nathan Glazer, Grant Wacker, and George Weigel) are distinctly pointed and informative, it may go without saying that the several entries, taken together, reflect quite a lot of confusion and uncertainty within and about the Evangelical movement...
...With all their diversity, however, the Evangelicals have enough in common to be distinguished as a "transdenominational community" (in Marsden's phrase) connected by a shared belief in the Bible as the infallible Word of God...
...The Evangelical entry into politics is thus a "defensive offensive" against idolatry...
...erhaps the Evangelicals' most val- 1 uable contribution to the public arena so far is the light they have cast on the disproportionate influence (and the essentially reactionary nature) of solemn busybodies like the American Civil Liberties Union, Planned Parenthood, Common Cause, the National Organization for Women, the leadership of the National Education Association—and, of course, Norman Lear's eternally vigilant People for the American Way...
...Falwell's boast calls up Martin Marty's shrewd observation that the Evangelicals are a "cognitive minority" giving voice to the sentiments of a "sociocultural majority...
...Part Two makes room for ten prominent Evangelical writers to "speak for themselves...
...None of the twenty-six essays and scholarly excerpts collected in this anthology is dated later than 1986, and only three are that late...
...A recent study by the sociologists Wade Clark Roof and William McKinney John R. Dunlap teaches English at Santa Clara University...
...Piety and Politics is an attempt by Lutheran Pastor Richard John Neuhaus and Michael Cromartie (a researcher for the Ethics and Public Policy Center) to trace the general contours of the Evangelical resurgence in American politics...
...Part One offers four scholarly views of the movement's "background and origins...
...Somewhat unnerved, Professor Cox took the microphone and begged the students to "understand that my presence here tonight should in no way be understood as an endorsement of what Falwell represents...
...By the 1970s, according to Glazer, liberalism had gone too far by imposing on the whole country "the views and beliefs of the cosmopolitan elite" regarding abortion, school prayer, support for religious schools, and public standards of conduct...
...But Falwell was up to the occasion...
...Part Three has twelve entries that make up a representative survey of "what others say...
...Liberals who fret over the "divisiveness" of recent Evangelical forays into politics are wont to forget America's long tradition of mixing politics and religion: abolition, the temperancemovement, the civil rights movement, various anti-war movements, the recent sanctuary movement...
...The term "Evangelical" is not necessarily synonymous with terms like "New Christian Right," and very little of the New Christian Right is composed of the wacko theocrats harped on by hostile commentators in the media...
...A liberal such as Sidney Blumenthal, who dwells in this collection on the anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic past of American Fundamentalists, is also wont to ignore the ecumenical spirit evinced by most contemporary Evangelicals in playing coalition politics...
...But the book is intended not so much to be a timely chronicle as to cast a backdrop against which to measure the particular shifts and changes of a perplexing, sometimes contradictory socio-religious phenomenon...
...As Lloyd Billingsley asserts in a stinging critique of the radical-left Sojourners, good intentions don't suffice...
...American Mainline Religion) reports that the old mainstream of liberal Protestantism is in steep decline (less than 9 percent of the population and still falling) while moderate and conservative Protestants (including black Protestants, most of whom are "cultural conservatives") have swelled in numbers to just over 50 percent of the population, with the proportion of conservative Evangelicals growing the fastest...
...In a selection on "Religious Belief and the Constitutional Order," William J. Bennett remarks that the Founders "envisioned a federal government neutral between religions in particular, but sympathetic with religion in general...
...The practice among church historians like George Marsden and Dean Curry is to use the broad term "Evangelical" to encompass a movement that ranges from the radical-left Sojourners (Jim Wallis) to Reform Evangelicals (Billy Graham) to soft-line Fundamentalists (Jerry Falwell) to hard-line Fundamentalist separatists (Bob Jones) to radical-right Reconstructionist theocrats (Gary North...
...Regarding public policy, in other words, the Evangelicals cut across the spectrum...
...rr he first is that the movement is in-1 deed perplexing—beginning with the labels used to identify it...
...Although PIETY AND POLITICS: EVANGELICALS AND FUNDAMENTALISTS CONFRONT THE WORLD Edited by Richard John Neuhaus and Michael Cromartie/Ethics and Public Policy Center-University Press of America/$23.95...
...Mencken would have tipped his hat to Falwell for that one...
...Jerry Falwell likes to point out, for example, that the composition of the infelicitously named Moral Majority (lately rechristened as the Liberty Federation) is only 20 percent Evangelical-Fundamentalist...
...To the dismay of liberal churchmen and the secular elite, many of these increasing numbers of Evangelicals—bright, sassy, and up on antinomies of secularism—have acquired an unseemly interest in politics...
...So there are no hot scoops, nor even much anticipation, regarding recent developments in the movement: the Bakker scandal, the upheaval in the Southern Baptist Convention, Jerry Falwell's public resignation from the political arena, the infighting among the Christian Reconstructionists, and so forth...
...That mindset also goes by the name secular humanism—or "secular humanism," if you prefer the quotation marks required of secular journalists when they pooh-pooh the Evangelicals' alleged bogeys...
...The editors impose some preliminary order on their unwieldy topic by dividing the collection into three parts...
...Religion "deepens politics" by offering "a sense of purpose and a frame of reference for the THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1988 45 claims that transcend everyday politics...
...The Evangelicals have a good case against the hedonism, the subjectivism, the utilitarian individualism, and the weird therapeutic ethos fostered by America's secularizing energumens...
...They will have to become adept at argument...
...On the podium Falwell was greeted by an audience of jeering undergraduates who chanted "Hitler, Falwell, go to hell...
Vol. 21 • March 1988 • No. 3
