Over at Faith in Public Life.org, is a reprint of an article from the Lower Hudson Journal News, written by Gary Stern, reporting on a speech by Michael Cromartie of The Ethics and Public Policy Center to a group of evangelicals. A couple things in the article jumped out at me. The first quote is one I have used in private conversations regarding the political activity of right-wing Christians, now echoed by one of those very persons:
"Evangelicals must be careful that in their pursuit of political victories they not lose their very soul," [Cromartie] said.
Indeed, such caution is long overdue; coming from as prominent a leader of the movement as Cromartie is heartening because it is the exact caution all Christians must have as they enter the political arena.
Another point that jumped out at me was Cromartie's dismissal of Jerry Falwell as "leader" of the evangelical movement. He claimed that only Tim Russert listened to and took Falwell seriously. While this statement is certainly hyperbole, it does make an important point, one the recent NAE meeting in Minneapolis highlighted, i.e., that older "leaders" of the movement, themselves rarely clergy (Richard Viguerie, the founder and namer of "The Moral Majority", James Dobson, and Timothy LaHaye - among the movers and shakers behind the scenes of the Christian Right - are none of them clergy; Pat Robertson surrendered his credentials when he sought the Presidential nomination in 1988), are being replaced by a younger generation motivated by a broader concern than just abortion and the so-called culture wars. Including torture, climate change, social and racial justice among a list of evangelical political priorities shows the movement is not so much going away as it is changing with the times.
The press, however, is a bit behind the curve, as it were. Kevin Phillips book from this past summer, American Theocracy and Chris Hedges' American Fascists both work under the same premise - that the Christian right has an agenda that is a danger to American democratic and republican virtues and values.
Well, duh, as the kids would say.
That alarm has been sounded for over a quarter century, and only now are people starting to take notice? I would cry if not for laughing so hard because, at the very moment the movement is changing, becoming more complex, less amenable to simple, and simplistic, rhetoric and party political pressure, suddenly, "The Christians are coming!" is all the rage. Had people taken these folks seriously a generation ago, we might have saved ourselves a whole lot of trouble in the mean time, but they were ignored or lampooned (it is easy to do, after all), and they built whole networks of political power, some of which, like The Christian Coalition, were quite effective for a time (the Christian Coalition, like its many predecessors, is dying a silent but long delayed death after its brief year or two in the sun after the 1994 elections).
I insist that Hedges and Phillips have come to the party just a bit too late to be taken seriously; I also think that the fact Dobson, et al.'s spurning by the NAE is a sign (if any more were needed) that the Christian Right, as we have known it since roughly 1979 or so, is dead, and a new, much more complex politically active evangelical community, no longer single-issue, no longer reliably partisan, is in the works. One wonders when the press will get on that bandwagon?
