Evangelicalism and the Decline of American Politics

This 2017 study by Jan G. Linn offers a history of evangelicalism in American politics since Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority in 1979 and a theory of why the influence of evangelicalism has been so destructive to our political process. 

It could be fairly stated that Jerry Falwell is the man who put Lynchburg, Virginia, where Jan and I were both born, on the national map.  Jan grew up in Falwell’s neighborhood.  At one point I lived in the same neighborhood as Falwell’s Thomas Road Baptist Church.  So, as Jan says in the prologue to his book, “This is Personal.”

Jan Linn graduated from E. C. Glass High School in Lynchburg in 1963, the year before I did.  I knew who he was because he was a well-known football player for the E. C. Glass Hilltoppers (Lynchburg is known as the “City of Seven Hills” or the “Hill City”).  I did not know him personally, but in my junior year I sat diagonally behind him in Mr. Racer’s Economics class.  Mr. Racer was a Republican who often railed against President John F. Kennedy in class.  Jan would raise his hand and argue with Mr. Racer. I can’t remember now the substance of those arguments, but I was struck that he would speak up and challenge the teacher.  Though I never personally said anything, as the daughter of a staunch Democratic father, I secretly admired and sympathized with Jan, even though I didn’t necessarily understand the issues being debated. 

As Jan recounts in the book, he was raised as an evangelical himself, and he went on to become a Disciples of Christ minister.  I also was raised as an evangelical (though I went to a different church) and went on to become a college English professor and a Unitarian Universalist.  Somehow Jan and I both ended up in Minnesota.  He founded a ministry near the Twin Cities and I taught at St. Cloud State University (about an hour or so away from Minneapolis) for almost 30 years.  It wasn’t until we were both retired that a fellow E. C. Glass classmate put us in touch with each other.  Since then we’ve met a couple of times with our spouses and enjoyed some good conversations about growing up in Lynchburg, religion, politics, and, of course, Jerry Falwell.

This is the second of his books I’ve read.  It is well-researched and documented, well-argued, and well-written with clarity, sharp intellect, and passion.  See his publication record here: https://www.thriftbooks.com/a/jan-g-linn/583872/ Jan also regularly comments on religion and politics in his blog: https://linnposts.com/

Evangelicalism and the Decline of American Politics, not only provides a history of the evangelical movement that Jerry Falwell started, but also an overview of different definitions of evangelicalism, an analysis of our current political dysfunction, and a theory of how evangelicalism, or what Jan calls “partisan evangelicalism,” has contributed to that dysfunction. 

In short, conservative evangelicals hold fast to a rigid Bible-based, authoritarian world-view, based on divine command, which cannot be questioned or compromised without falling into iniquity.  The Bible is their supreme source of knowledge; any other source of knowledge, such as science or rational thought, is flawed by human imperfection.  Whenever any other source of knowledge, no matter how fact-based, empirically supported, or logical, contradicts the Bible, it is dismissed as misguided.  There simply is no room for compromise or critical thinking.  Bible-based beliefs are absolute.  When this kind of absolutism finds its way into politics, then all hope of conclusions and solutions democratically arrived at by a diverse populace of different religions, philosophies, and world-views is completely lost.  For partisan, conservative evangelicals, a deal with a non-evangelical is a deal with the devil.  Thus, we have obstructionism, stalemate, and a break-down of democratic civic processes of decision-making and problem-solving. 

Ironically, this kind of narrow, rigid evangelicalism is not shared by the majority of Americans.  There are liberal Christian evangelicals such as the followers of Jim Wallis of Sojourners magazine, non-evangelical Christians, believers in other religions, believers in no religion, all of whom are American citizens with voting rights.  However, the conservative evangelicals, who don’t necessarily believe in separation of church and state and who place the Bible above the Constitution, have strategically taken over some of our political institutions, both locally, statewide, and nationally.  The Republican party can hardly make a move without approval from its evangelical base. 

Jan calls for a return of evangelicalism to the tradition of Christian scholarship, the message of the Bible (as opposed to literal absolutism), the Christian contemplative tradition, spiritual humility, and the words of Jesus Christ to love our neighbors and even our enemies.

As one sees today the twisted ways in which evangelical voters defend the likes of Donald Trump, there seems little room for hope that such a return can happen.  Perhaps the evangelical mind-set will have to be out-numbered and out-voted by the reasonable Moderate Majority as opposed to the absolutist Moral Majority.

Meanwhile, it is gratifying to know that Lynchburg, Virginia, produced an intelligent, sensible, humane Christian, who believes in the Constitution and separation of church and state as well as the Bible and the Christian message.

The Ironic Christian's Companion: Finding the Marks of God's Grace in the World

In the last post (March 25) I made reference to this 1999 work by my friend Patrick Henry.  Previously I did a series of posts on Breaking the Spell by Daniel Dennett (Sept. 2013 – June 2014), by turns admiring, questioning, and protesting his work.  My biggest beef with Dennett is his lack of appreciation for the power of imagination, symbolic truth, and what Coleridge called “poetic faith.”

Although it was published seven years earlier, Henry’s book is the best answer I’ve read, from a Christian perspective, to Dennett’s often arrogant atheism.

The word “ironic” refers to some kind of discrepancy in language, in experience or in thought.  An “ironic” statement may mean the opposite of what it says.  (Sarcasm is a type of linguistic irony with an edge of hostility.)  An “ironic” situation involves a confluence of events that don’t seem to go together, with sometimes comic, sometimes tragic, effect.  An “ironic” thought, similarly, brings together ideas that one would not normally expect to coincide.

Openness to, even appreciation for, the unexpected is central to Henry’s version of Christianity.

Whereas Dennett dismisses anything that does not pass a verifiable scientific or demonstrably rational test as delusion and insists on the most literal, fundamentalist understanding of religion, Henry locates his faith in the unverifiable, indemonstrable, dizzying realm of uncertainty, and understands religion in figurative, symbolic, imaginative terms.

The sub-title of his book offers a clue as to what the reader is in for.  It is not a “treatise” or “study,” but a field guide, like Petersen’s field guide to wild birds.  The phrase “finding the marks of God’s grace in the world” even has a poetic rhythm to it.  This will not be a “defense” of or “argument” for religion.  Instead, we are invited on an experiential field trip into the wilderness of faith, a wilderness with as many hazards as beautiful birds and scenery, where there is as much danger of getting lost as promise of being saved.

Furthermore, while this field trip has a beginning, middle, and an end, don’t expect them to occur in that order.  Thus, while there is progression in the overall structure from the felt sense of uncertainty to the equally felt sense of Christian faith, this field guide wanders by a kind of association from the uncertainty of “little brown jobs” (birds that cannot be identified), through cosmic time and space, unexpected calls to attention, Keats’ concept of “negative capability,” human connections and interdependence, post-modernist decentering, the non-linearity of grace and faith, to trust in the universe. 

The “ironic Christian” is an uncertain, independent, imaginative, and ecumenical thinker, as well as believer.

Patrick Henry is a religious scholar who taught at Swarthmore College for 17 years.  Most recently he served as executive director of the Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research at St. John’s Abbey and University in Collegeville, MN.  A thoroughgoing academic, he is able to cite theological, scientific, philosophical, psychological, and sociological sources with proficiency; however, his style is personal, down-to-earth, and emotionally appealing, lending itself not only to esoteric Biblical and literary references but also to popular culture, including such children’s literature as Alice in Wonderland and Dr. Seuss.

In an age in which Christianity has come to be dominated by the literal, fundamentalist, narrow, evangelical, conservative brand, Henry seeks to break Christianity open in order to broaden its reach and enlarge its appeal—to save faith by testing it.  In the process, he opens Christianity wide enough to let non-Christians in.

“Once upon a time,” he writes, “the term ‘Christian’ meant wider horizons, a larger heart, minds set free, room to move around.  But these days ‘Christian’ sounds pinched, squeezed, narrow.  Many people who identify themselves, as Christians seem to have leapfrogged over life, short-circuited the adventure.  When 'Christian' appears in a headline, the story will probably be about lines drawn, not about boundaries expanded.” (p. 8)

The final message of the book is the same for both conservative Christians and atheists alike:

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamed of in your philosophy.”  (Hamlet, Act I, scene 5, ll. 167-8)

"Bartleby the Scrivener"

Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener” (1853) is one of those tantalizing stories that invite multiple fascinating interpretations:

Bartleby is an eccentric individualist who refuses to conform to social norms.  Society wins.

Bartleby is a mentally ill homeless man who becomes one of society’s disposables.

Bartleby is H D Thoreau, passively resisting authority and paying the price.

Bartleby represents all the victims of greedy capitalism.

Bartleby is a victim of the mindless, mechanical work of industrial society.

Bartleby represents natural human rights (to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?) in conflict with the property rights of capitalist, industrial society.

Bartleby is a Christ-figure or, at least, “one of the least of these” that Christians are commanded to treat as if they were Christ.  His fate illustrates the incompatibility of capitalist, industrial society and Christian values.

Bartleby is the trial sent by God to test the state of the lawyer’s soul as one of the Elect or one of the damned.

Bartleby represents the dehumanization of those caught in the capitalist machine.

Bartleby is a projection of the lawyer’s own dehumanization and his powerlessness to save himself.

Bartleby represents the extreme exercise of free will, allowing him complete freedom, though it leads to his death.

Bartleby represents the universal human condition of the individual in conflict with society.

 

Well, some are more fascinating than others.

 It’s important to note that the full title of the story is “Bartleby the Scrivener, A Story of Wall Street.”  It’s hard not to infer that Melville intends to comment on the financial center of capitalism.  Nor is it unreasonable to expect the reader to interpret it as such.  The first-person narrator, the lawyer, has found himself a safe, comfortable, and lucrative niche protecting the property rights of capitalists on Wall Street.  The lawyer’s office is tucked between two walls, one white, transparent and well lit and the other black, opaque, and dark.  Bartleby spends much of his time staring out the second blank wall.  Is Melville suggesting that the work of Wall Street walls us off from each other? That the capitalists enjoy the view of a bright wall while the workers’ outlook is dark? That the lawyer is comfortably located between the two, earning a good living in service of the capitalists supported by the labor of his office workers.  Do the walls represent the divisions between economic classes in a capitalist society? 

And what of the work that the office workers perform?  A scrivener is a human Xerox machine, literally copying documents by hand and then laboriously checking the copies for accuracy as the lawyer reads the original aloud.  This mechanical, mindless work is paralleled by the predictable behavior of the workers, who themselves seem somehow “programmed.”  The elderly Turkey is mild-mannered and productive in the morning but turns erratic, and error-prone in the afternoon.  The young Nippers, on the other hand, is restless and nervous in the morning but settles down in the afternoon.  Does their robotic behavior reflect the mind-numbing nature of industrial work under capitalism?

Into this Pavlovian world enters Bartleby, who starts out as a reliable copier but refuses to participate in the checking of the documents, simply replying “I prefer not to” when called to work by the lawyer.  He then begins to reply in the same manner when asked to run an errand.  Eventually, he refuses to work at all and simply stares at the window at the dark, blank wall.  Unlike the lawyer, who fits comfortably into the world of Wall Street, Bartleby asserts his free will in the extreme, using “passive resistance” to defy the lawyer and his world. 

The lawyer, to his credit, tries every means of persuasion to win Bartleby’s cooperation before finally firing him.  Bartleby, however, refuses to leave the premises.  It seems he has been living there all along.  Rather than resort to calling the police or forcibly removing Bartleby himself, the lawyer takes the extreme measure of moving his office to another site.  But, this action, similar perhaps to Pilate washing his hands of final judgment on Jesus Christ, merely enables the lawyer to avoid taking any responsibility for the man.  When the new occupant of the lawyer’s old office space shows up to insist “you are responsible for the man you left there,” the lawyer, like Peter denying Christ, responds, “the man you allude to is nothing to me…no relation or apprentice of mine that you should hold me responsible for him.”

If these comparisons to Christ seem to be a bit of a stretch, consider that, at one point when the lawyer is debating what to do about Bartleby, he overhears a conversation, which he believes at first is about his indecision but then realizes is actually about the mayoral election being held that day.  In Melville’s day, “election” would have a religious as well as a political meaning.  In the Calvinist theology in which Melville was steeped (http://philosopedia.org/index.php/Herman_Melville) one was predestined to be one of Elect (preordained by God for salvation) or one of the damned.  Is Bartleby a test of the state of the lawyer’s soul?  Is the lawyer one of the Elect or is he damned?  According to Matthew 25: 31-42 Christ will return on Judgment Day and determine who goes to heaven and who to hell based on whether one has treated those in need as if they were Christ himself. 

In the end the lawyer visits Bartleby in prison, where he is found facing a “high wall” among “murderers and thieves.”  Is it significant that Christ was crucified between two thieves?  Is it significant that when the lawyer returns to find Bartleby dead he makes a reference to him being at rest “With kings and counselors” (Job 3:14)? 

For all the compassion that the lawyer feels toward Bartleby, in the end he does not take responsibility for this “least of these” (Matthew 25: 40).  From a realistic perspective, we might say that the lawyer went far beyond what was reasonable to expect by not calling the police on Bartleby or throwing him out forcibly.  Yet, from a Christian perspective, we might say the lawyer utterly failed to meet the test that Christ set for salvation.  Is Melville questioning whether a capitalist society can also be a Christian society?  Or is he questioning whether Christian ethics is realistic and reasonable in the human realm?

If the lawyer, who seems to allow circumstances to determine his actions,  represents the Calvinist belief in predestination (absence of free will), does Bartleby represent the Transcendentalist belief in free will and individual responsibility?  If so, do the two characters represent the extremes to which the two positions can be taken?  Is it fair to condemn the lawyer for failing to meet Christ’s high standard for salvation?  Is it fair to glorify Bartleby for his (selfish?) insistence on individual “preference”?  Is Melville, like Hawthorne (see previous posts Oct. 2012 & May 2013), using Puritan Calvinism to critique romantic Transcendentalism and vice versa? 

For that matter, is Bartleby truly a victim of capitalism or society in general?  Or is he a victim of his own willfulness? 

I find myself intrigued, though, by the idea of Bartleby as a projection of the narrator’s own psyche.  To what extent has the narrator been dehumanized by his acquiescence to his social and economic circumstances? To what extent is it dehumanizing to deny the power of free will to individuals?  Does Bartleby represent the lawyer’s own dehumanization on one hand and his repressed desire to rebel and assert himself on the other?  If Bartleby is a fantastic version of the lawyer’s own psyche, does he take such an extreme form because the lawyer himself is so extremely passive, non-confrontational, and powerless? 

In any case, the story raises profound questions regarding social organization, material vs. spiritual well-being, religion, individualism, ethics, and our responsibility to each other as fellow human beings.

Letter to a Christian Nation

Did you ever read a book you mostly agreed with but still didn’t like? That would be my reaction to Sam Harris’ 2006 Letter to a Christian Nation.

Let’s start with the worst part, and the part I most disagreed with. Harris not only attacks Christians throughout, even moderate and liberal Christians, he launches into a three-page diatribe against Muslims in which he claims that “most Muslims are utterly deranged by their religious faith” (his italics).

His extreme anti-religious stance is as arrogant in its atheism and as intolerant of religious faith as any of the believers he attacks for their arrogance and intolerance.

Harris asserts that atheism is not a dogma: “It is time that Christians like yourselves stop pretending that a rational rejection of your faith entails the blind embrace of atheism as dogma” (his italics). He then turns around and defines atheism as “simply an admission of the obvious.” Sorry, but that sounds pretty dogmatic to me.

He claims to rely solely on reason, evidence, and logic: “The conflict between science and religion is reducible to a simple fact of human cognition and discourse: either a person has good reasons for what he believes or he does not.” (I assume women are included as persons here, but Harris’ use of the generic “he” only reinforces male dominance.) He goes on to say that “…faith is nothing more than the license religious people give each other to keep believing when reasons fail.”

The problem is that reason, evidence, and logic don’t answer all questions or account for all human experience. They don’t fully account for ethics, values, human empathy or other moral feelings, and they certainly don’t account for the origin of the universe, which, as Harris admits elsewhere, remains a mystery to this day. When reasons fail, we still have to make ethical choices and we do so on the basis of our experience, the values we hold dear despite the lack of evidence to support them fully, and our feelings of human concern. Likewise we value aesthetic experience and beauty, not on the basis of reason, logic, and evidence, but on the basis of human sensibility. Are we to suspend making any moral or aesthetic choices because reasons fail?

In the same way, do we suspend all belief because reasons fail? When reason, logic, and evidence fail to support atheism fully (for as Harris says we simply do not know about the origin of the universe), does Harris suspend his belief in atheism? Hardly.

And I would really like to see him base his love life on nothing but reason, logic, and evidence.  Maybe religion is akin to romantic love.  In addition to common sense, they both require some chemistry, some tenderness, some imagination, and a strong appreciation for the mystery of it all.  Throw in enough compatibility and commitment and you have a life-long relationship, whether it be with a significant other or with a faith community that shares your world view.

For someone who claims to be guided strictly by rationality, Harris’ own logic is inexcusably sloppy at times. He repeatedly falls into the fallacy of simplistic either-or thinking, as in the “fact” that “either a person has good reasons for what he believes or he does not,” when “good” is a relative term that may mean different things to different people and when “reasons” may encompass one’s experience, intuition, values, and feelings.

Elsewhere, Harris states “Either the Bible is an ordinary book written by mortals or it isn’t.” Is it possible for the Bible to be an extraordinary book written by mortals, like other great works of literature? Considering the Bible is a collection of works by different authors from different sources, could it be a mixture of great literature, full of beauty, wisdom, and even symbolic truth, and “ordinary” writing full of both the mundane and the nonsensical? Harris’ simplistic language and chop-logic allows for no such complexity.

Next Harris reduces morality to the alleviation of suffering: “Religion allows peole to imagine that their concerns are moral when they are not—that is, when they have nothing to do with suffering or its alleviation.” As important as the alleviation of suffering is to human morality, surely that does not exhaust the topic. What of honesty and truth-telling? Equity and fairness? Hypocrisy? Taking turns? Sharing? Do these principles rise to the level of morality only when human suffering is involved? Again, in his zealous enthusiasm to attack religion, Harris repeatedly oversimplifies and overstates.

I completely agree with Harris on the issues of abortion and stem cell research. I abhor the religious absolutism that would let a woman suffer and even die rather than abort a fetus and that would let countless fully conscious humans suffer from disease rather than seek treatment and cures through stem cell research. Yet, when Harris equates a human fetus with a skin cell as equally potential human beings, he has once again let his anti-religious zealotry get the better of balanced rationality.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in his references to intelligent design. He begins by saying that “nature offers no compelling evidence for an intelligent designer and countless examples of unintelligent design.” Note the subtle shift from “designer” to “design,” as if they were the same thing. And is “compelling evidence” a matter of fact or a matter of interpretation and opinion?

Later, Harris gives numerous examples of what he calls “unintelligent design” in nature. Yet the underlying assumption of his argument is that every imperfection is evidence of unintelligence, as if intelligence were always infallibly perfect.

Despite numerous scientifically and rationally based theories of intelligent design in the universe, Harris rejects out of hand any form of rational science that does not support his own atheistic convictions. (See for example the work of Paul Davies, David Deutsch, and Bernard Haisch, as well as the process theology of Alfred North Whitehead. And see Brian Greene and Michio Kaku if you want your mind blown by scientific theories of the universe just as seemingly fantastical as the concept of God.)

Harris may be right that the universe and everything in it are nothing more than material phenomena, at most epiphenomena dependent on physical reality, but just because the material is all we can observe, measure, and quantify does not mean that that is all that exists. In the end, we do not know. Maybe someday we will. Meanwhile, it may be the better part of wisdom to keep an open mind.

After reading this post one might ask what is left for me to agree with. Well, most of Harris’ specific attacks on religion are directed at the most unreasoning, literal-minded, hard-hearted tenets of fundamentalist and absolutist believers. I have no quarrel with his rejection of mindless, uncompassionate, and downright inhumane religious belief and action, but (1) he extends his attack to all believers, leaving little room for complexity, subtlety, and even the rationality of belief, and (2) his own zealotry blinds him to his own irrational, arrogant, and intolerant attitudes.