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There is no question that religion is an active force in American politics today. The organization known as the Christian Coalition claims that up to 35 percent of the votes that created the sea change in the Congress last November came from the religious right. Names like Pat Robertson, Ralph Reed and Jerry Falwell are as well known in political circles today as they are in religious circles. So powerful is this influence that candidates for the presidency, from the incumbent Democrat to the challenging Republicans, seem increasingly willing to dance to the tune of the religious right. So we hear much talk today about "family values" and other themes which appear to be of great importance to this major block in the electorate.
The appeal of the religious right rises, I believe, out of deep levels of frustration, anger and fear that are present in the body politic of this land today. Family life is, in fact, under stress. The divorce rate is rising. So is the out-of-wedlock pregnancy rate. The consumption of alcohol and the use of drugs also reveals an upward statistical chart among young Americans. All of these are symptoms of an underlying dis- ease present in this society.
Beyond those symptoms other economic realities press in upon us creating national anxiety. The wealth of America is expanding, but that expansion does not seem to embrace many middle-class citizens. Middle income families have not experienced a significant increase in their buying power in more than a decade. At the same time the costs of such things as education for their children, especially at the university level, and of medical care for the entire family, have skyrocketed. Families that feel they cannot provide for their children the necessary preparation for life, or are one medical crisis away from bankruptcy, live with high levels of stress. Two incomes are frequently required to keep a family at the same level that one income provided a generation ago.
The specter of job insecurity also haunts most middle-class Americans. The rally in the stock market has been fueled by corporate downsizing, creating what Wall Street loves to call "lean and mean" industries with great bottom-line expectations. The incredible rise in the value of technology stocks in particular reflects the fact that high tech equipment can do the work today that large numbers of human beings once did. The machines can do it better, more cheaply, and without expensive benefits.
World trade agreements and the existence of multi-national corporations also fuel this sense of job insecurity. In today's world of instant communications and global markets, manufacturing facilities can be transported with amazing swiftness to Korea, Mexico, Singapore or Brazil, where labor costs are significantly reduced. The combination of technology and the threatened mobility of whole plants are major depressants on middle-class wages and together they create the fear that lingers just below the level of consciousness in the life of the working American.
When stress is high and fear is rampant, people look for someone to blame. Targets are readily identified. Anger usually focuses on those movements which are presumed to have created the problems that the angry one is experiencing. Over the decades since the second World War, there has been a challenge to the status quo, first from racial minorities, then from women and now from gay and lesbian people. Each challenge has disturbed the complacent security of yesterday. There is also a perceived sense of corruption that permeates the national psyche. We hear it articulated when politicians speak of "welfare cheats who live like kings while working Americans pay high taxes to support them." It is effective, if not always honest, campaign oratory. Because "liberals" have historically supported a compassionate society in which the weak and poor are cared for with dignity and since they have also been in the vanguard of those movements which have incorporated heretofore alienated groups into the mainstream of the social order, the "liberals" are regularly identified as the enemy. Calculating political operators know exactly how to manipulate these feelings for their own gain.
A major source of security in yesterday's world was found in the religious values around which the whole society was organized. Those religious values were rooted in and grew out of the dominant religious system of our land, which was clearly identified as Christian. To achieve freedom and equality every emerging group, from blacks to women to gays, has had to challenge the stereotypes of themselves imposed by that religious system. Liberals and intellectuals tended to support those challenges which destabilized traditional religious convictions. Historically it must be recalled that Christians have quoted the Bible to provide them with a clear conscience and a pious justification for their support of slavery and segregation, their opposition to the full emancipation of women in both church and society, and their continuing oppression and victimization of gay and lesbian people.
As the tides of history have flowed, it is no longer socially acceptable to advocate slavery or segregation, but this latent racism can be and is expressed in opposition to quotas or affirmative action plans. It is not politic to oppose equal rights for women, but this visceral negativity toward the feminist agenda can be and is expressed in the emotional opposition to abortion and in the desire to punish unwed mothers. It is not reasonable to remove basic human rights from gay and lesbian people, but enormous hostility can be and is aroused over the issue of adding sexual orientation to the list of protected minorities. This homophobia is expressed in the irrational cry that such tactics have created "special privileges." In that form this concern has now reached the Supreme Court. So not surprisingly, the political right wing of America has joined forces with the religious right wing of America and around these fears and these issues they have organized themselves in the quest for political power.
Today this coalition threatens to impose its agenda on the whole nation; before our eyes it is flexing its political muscle. The political process is being bent to accommodate these concerns. It is a strange spectacle. I think I understand the issues. I certainly recognize the fears. I do not, however, appreciate the suppression of human freedom and the violation of human dignity that today flows into American politics from the religious right. Above all else I resent the fact that this narrow and ofttimes mean-spirited agenda has caused the word "Christian" to be filled with negative content.
I am embarrassed that the word "Christian," for example, has been applied publicly to that hostile negativity against women that creates the environment in which murder at family planning centers is actually encouraged. I am offended that homosexual people are still abused and even scapegoated by "Christian" groups, including certain bishops who seek to exacerbate the public ignorance in order to justify their own prejudices. I am angry when all- male gatherings of decoratively dressed ecclesiastics, in the name of an exclusively male deity called "Father," solemnly pronounce moral judgments concerning what a woman can and cannot do with her own body. I resent anyone who defines a woman, in the name of the Christian God, primarily in terms of her reproductive functions. I am angry when Christian words are used to justify violence against the poor and the weak under the euphemistic title of "necessary welfare reform." I am saddened when entities that are called "Christian Book Stores" have their shelves filled with material that not only is lacking in intellectual competence, but which also allows and even justifies hostility toward other religious groups. I am despairing when I observe that major themes in the books on the shelves of these stores define homosexual persons and women inside the prejudiced stereotypes of the past and even unwittingly encourage child abuse under the general rubric of justifying corporal punishment.
I regret that those same politicians who have identified themselves with this "Christian agenda" have also been a voice raised against this society's willingness to care for young mothers, a voice against immigrants, a voice against health care for the poor and even a voice against health care for children. I cringe when I see my Christ used this way and I want to scream to the public that this is not now, and never has been, an expression of the Christ I know, the Christ I serve and the Christ I worship.
If the Christ is to be part of today's political debate, then let it be the Christ who invited all to come to Him, as the words of the hymn say, "Just as I am, without one plea." Let it be the Christ who reached out to the marginalized of His world - the lepers, the Samaritans and the women - and enfolded them in His love and restored their human dignity. Let it be the Christ who broke open the barriers that separated the human family into tribal and warring factions, called in that time by the names Jews and Gentiles but a thousand other names throughout history.
If the name of our Christ continues to be misused in the political arenas, then those of us who are disciples of this Christ must be willing to enter those arenas to confront and to challenge that misuse. I, for one, do not intend to be silent should this anti-Christian charade continue. Human evil and human mean-spiritedness must be named for what they are. They can never be justified by an appeal to the name of Jesus Christ.
The time has come to call the sleepy, and frequently uninvolved, mainline Christians of this nation to rise and for the sake of the Christ we serve, as well as in the name of human decency, to say to this narrow right-wing religious agenda, "Enough! Enough!" This nation, with its deep and significant religious roots, must call its citizens to a nobler vision than this. It must no longer be possible for anyone to justify their distress, their hostility and even their greed for power by covering them over with the sweet name of Jesus.
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