Thoughts and Prayers: The Religion Thread

It’ll get fun really quick when schools get sued because the “under God” version of Pledge of Allegiance is promoting something against the closely held beliefs of atheists.

 

I have way more thoughts about this than I can type up in the middle of the work day. Suffice to say my experience as a former evangelical (using this in the American cultural sense) in the South (the nerve center of American evangelicalism) is drastically different that what you paint here. The overwhelming majority of my evangelical family and friends want to distinguish themselves as being in lockstep with right-wing politics and more than a few are actively dominionist in their thinking. That’s as charitable a summary as I can come up with right now.

 

I would think that's probably the case in my circle of evangelicals as well, but I'd be remiss in not noting that some of my big-box acquaintances are pretty doggone progressive (and their churches seem so, too). Perhaps @Alma's experience is more strongly of that bent.

 

I’ve had lots of experiences.

But I have a broader definition of “evangelical” too. Obviously there are right wingers who are evangelical. It’s that they’re defined as evangelical, and someone else is not *because* they’re not right wing, that I’d object to.

 

I certainly get that. It's an awkward (and often misleading) designation.

 

Blame Jerry Falwell.

Dr. Jerry Falwell - Biography | About Liberty | Liberty University

Falwell may be best known outside Lynchburg for his political activism. In June 1979, he organized the Moral Majority, a conservative political lobbying group that was pro-life, pro-family, pro-Israel and favored a strong national defense. The group chose California Governor Ronald Reagan as "their candidate" for the 1980 presidential election, registered millions of new voters and mobilized a sleeping giant — 80 million Americans committed to faith, family and Judeo-Christian values.

 

I don't blame him much more than I'd blame any number of people for getting to the weird place we're in, where the presumption is "Christian" is shorthand for "right-wing politics."

 

Alma, I just don't have the energy to do this dance today. I don't know where you live, but my experience living all my life in Florida, Georgia, Texas, and Alabama has taught me that there is no shortage and likely a majority of self professed "Evangelical Christians" who are great at talking the judgemental talk and very bad at walking the "Feed the poor, shelter the needy", do unto others as you would have them do unto you walk. There has always been a strain of blue-nosed "If you don't believe (as I do), yer gonna BURN!!!" here. It got worse along about "The Moral Majority", and now in the days of the "Prosperity Gospel", where Jesus's "It is easier for a camel to pass through a needle's eye than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven" is now being spun as being about a gate into Jerusalem called "The Needle's Eye" I don't see it as having changed much for the better.

There are good Christians in virtually every church, I'm certain. My lived experience here is that there are a high percentage of Southern Baptist Convention evangelicals, the most common denomination here by far, that are comfortable with embracing Trumpism, with all it's double talking, racist, and hateful sides being no real issue for them. I point you toward the recent SBC president who was run out of office for daring to point out that Trumpism and Christianity are not very compatible.

 

I don't accept that as correct. We have, however, come to a place where if you attach "Evangelical" to "Christian", there *is* that presumption. While this is unfair to the Evangelicals who are good and decent people of faith, there are countless examples of why that has happened. Stereotypes don't grow from nothing, there is generally a reason that they become that sort of shorthand.

 

Pre-Falwell and the Moral Majority there was a fairly unremarkable history of apolitical American non-denominational charismatic evangelism of the kind embodied by Billy Graham.

And there have always been plenty of 'left' activist Christians and churches, from interdenominational Riverside to Ebenezer Baptist. Many of the most radical of these were Catholic - Day, Merton, the Berrigans, and so on.

The current national prayer breakfast however, is almost entirely a production of the Fellowship / the Family, embodying a very specific and secretive strain of hard right political/evangelical Christianity.

 

There’s been no one on the left as demonic, hateful and willing to allow others to die as the evangelicals of this country. Falwell can burn in hell with Graham stubby cock in his ass. Swaggert, Bakker, Robertson beating off in the corner.. they were phonies and thieves from day 1. if there were a god Father coughlin would spend eternity nail to a cross with a spear through his urethra

 

Again: Evangelical is primarily an adjective, not a noun. Nowhere have I said right-wing types don’t fit the adjective. I’m saying there are tons of progressives who do too. Every Christian should, in theory.

The Catholic who shares the “good news” is an evangelical Christian.

The Moral Majority - not a fan - is far more distinct a thing.