Mix political power with faith, and lose both (or, "my god's better than your god...")

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, faith, politics, exhortation

I don't know what it is, but this is the third book by someone who describes himself as an evangelical Christian, that I've encountered in recent weeks. Perhaps the people of God are wising up, that society is changing in ways that will severely restrict the freedom of faith that we have enjoyed in the U.S. for 23 decades. Now that Russian totalitarianism has been greatly curtailed (not eliminated), and even Chinese totalitarianism is slowly waning, new kinds of totalitarianism are rapid gaining strength.

Regardless of the ideology behind them, those strains of religion called "fundamentalist" and those political movements at both far right and far left, all are totalitarian in nature. They cannot tolerate dissent, nor argue the merits of key ideas or issues, so their primary methods are coercive; ad hominem character assassination is the just the beginning.

If you get nothing else from this little essay, please remember this: totalistic ideologies are all based on paranoid insecurity. The "Iron Curtain" and the Berlin Wall expressed the insecurity of the USSR; they were terrified of their people voting with their feet and emigrating, or even visiting places where different ideas were to be found. Even more so, every kind of "fundamentalist" religion in history has been insecure at its root; hedging its people 'round because the leaders were terrified their charges' minds would be corrupted.

The true motive behind such insecurity is shown in John 11:48, where the religious leaders, deciding they now had to kill not only Jesus but Lazarus, said, "Of we let Him do so [raise the dead], all will believe into Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation." They were afraid of losing their jobs and perquisites! Those most paranoid about protecting "their people" are those whose living depends on, or who have some vested interest in, the number of "their people."

Just so you know, I've been there, even done that. Maybe my conscience is extra-sharp, or maybe God just had mercy. I concluded long ago that people are more valuable than doctrines, and that caring for one another ("love God...love your neighbor") really is what pleases God (see Mark 12:31-34).

I have observed the "moral majority" (which was neither moral nor a majority) and now the "religious right" (another oxymoron, however you pun "right") all my adult life. I don't like what I see. Among all the preachers with "high visibility," the only one I halfway trust is Billy Graham, and he's been 'way too cozy with corrupt politicians to suit me. Where is there a prophet like Nathan who will speak to the king, and say, "You are the [sinful] man!"

I do not have the energy, opportunity, nor the scholarship to chronicle the ills of American religious totalitarianism. Fortunately, someone does: Randall Balmer has written Thy Kingdom Come, an Evangelical's Lament (how the Religious Right distorts the faith and threatens America). Although Dr. Balmer's social orientation is quite liberal (in my view; to him, I suppose I'm much too conservative!), his spiritual compass is right on target.

His long exhortation is in five parts, five chapters.

He first shows how American evangelicalism began as a counterculture movement, but by 1980 some leaders and groups had gained the ear of prominent folk, and thus became a force within American culture. The key tool is "selective literalism," in which some Bible passages are insisted on, but many others ignored. Some folks make no bones about picking "hot button" issues to make hay and keep their constituents stirred up. The most profitable hot issues have been abortion and homosexuality. Balmer, quoting a few other clear thinkers, declares, "I have no interest in making abortion illegal, I would like to make it unthinkable." Later in the book, he frequently points out that those who can't bear the suffering of an aborted fetus think nothing of the suffering of the "post-born" poor and oppressed.

Then he shows more clearly how evangelical groups such as the Baptists once functioned as a corporate prophet, decrying the corruption and idolatry all around them. Now, those who bear the title "Baptist" have polar opposites, taking a comfortable seat amidst the powerful, seeking to establish their narrow faith for all. In the process, we note the spectacle of people praying before "Roy's Rock" in Montgomery, AL; idolatry, plain and simple. Real Baptists would never make the graven image in the first place. Remember the brass serpent that God commanded Moses to make and display for the healing of the snake-bit Israelites? Several generations later, it was being idolized, and Gideon had it destroyed. Thank God for Gideon!

It is strange that America is still the nation with the largest proportion of Christian believers. Every other Western nation, ostensibly Christian in origin, has a state-supported religion, such as the Lutheran church in Germany. All those nations have huge proportions of atheists, compared to a relatively small number in America. What do we have that they don't have? The Bill of Rights, specifically Amendment 1, part of which forbids Congress from establishing any religion. The phrase we hear, "separation of church and state," comes from a letter by Jefferson. Do you want the First Amendment abrogated? After a rather short, seemingly salutary period, there would soon follow an oppressive theocracy that would make the religious wars of the Reformation period look puny.

The third item is the assault on education. I've known many people who home-schooled their children. Some, who had only the control of their children's beliefs in view, were not successful. Those who taught to a higher academic standard than the public schools offered, and perhaps included spiritual education as well, produced superior scholars. Their goal was not to produce hothouse flowers, alwas to be "protected" from the world, but secure young people who could stand their own in spite of the anti-faith orientation of the world.

It's a fact: I have made sure my son, who is in public school, knows more about evolution than his fellows. More generally, I want him to know science equally as well as he knows faith, so he can tell the difference, and not confuse them. I see "intelligent design" as a most unintelligent scheme to corrupt science education. So does Balmer...and he explains it exceptionally well.

The fourth chapter goes into Creationism more deeply. The removal of the word "creation" and its kin from the title of this set of beliefs is deceptive. "Intelligent design" is simply one way to define creation. I see very few on either side of the debate who can explain their point clearly. Allow me...

There is no "Theory of Evolution." Evolution is a fact, a process we see going on all the time. We see that all species vary over time, and we can easily discern that some species are more closely related to one another than are others. In historical times, humans have, by selective breeding, produced many dog breeds from the ancestral wolf, many cat breeds from an ancestral wildcat, and so forth for many species people found useful. But what is the mechanism, the machinery that we can tinker with to breed wolves into both dachshunds and mastiffs? What operation(s) in nature might be able to allow some members of a species to prosper in certain circumstances, and eventually produce a species best adapted to those circumstances? Darwin's title for his theory was "The origin of species by natural selection."

This is the theory, natural selection. It is based on two hypotheses: first, that members of a species vary from one another; and second, that those bearing certain characteristics are better able to survive and reproduce. Repeat over time, and a species will get more and more adapted to its environment. In Darwin's day, nothing was known about the mechanism by which variation arose. The theory had great explanatory power, but lacked details. Now we know some of those details. Genes were discovered decades after Darwin wrote. Minor variations arise in all genes; each of us bears about a hundred such minor differences that neither of our parents bore; we've mutated, all of us. Some variations are not so "minor," and decrease viability, while some increase it.

Over time, the more deleterious mutations vanish, and the more beneficial accumulate. Artificial selection, such as dog breeding, is the "intelligent design" of a dog breed, according to the whims or needs of humans doing the breeding. It is faster than natural selection, because we can choose to destroy every offspring that isn't on the track we desire; natural selection is slower, because it more subtly tilts the balance in favor of one over another. So natural selection needs a lot of time to operate.

The "young earth" doctrine seeks to remove the time necessary for natural selection to operate. Proclaim that the earth is but six or eight thousand years old, and there isn't time enough. Of course, there isn't time enough to domesticate dogs, cats, pigeons, or cattle either; even artificial selection requires twenty to thirty thousand years to produce a greyhound from a wolf. But the Bible does not support a young earth, in spite of much preaching to the contrary. But I'll get into that another time. Sufficient to say that the earth shows every sign of being several billion years old, and the universe three or four times as old. I know what I'm talking about, folks!

Ok, what is left? The fifth item is environmentalism, or rather, Rightist anti-environmentalism. Here, I'll start with a few verses:

1 Cor 3:17, "If anyone destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him; for the temple of God is holy, and such are you."

1 Cor 6:19, "... your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit ..."

Rev 11:18, "... Your wrath came, and the time ... to destroy those who destroy the earth."

Author Balmer, and I, find very distressing the "dominion theology" being bruited about these days. The fact is, the only place that God gave man dominion is in Genesis 1:26-28. That was before the fall. After that, the word is not used in that way, rather to Noah (Gen 9:2-3), God declared that all creatures would fear us. They have plenty to fear! This is no license to make them fear. The verses above are clear enough. Because of sin, we are by nature destroyers, and those who do not rein in their destructive impulses will eventually be destroyed by God.

The book ends with a call to "[take] the country back". I don't see that we shall. As I've said before, I only reluctantly accept the label "evangelical Christian," and only to make a distinction when one is needed. I much prefer Christian, nothing more. Particularly now that "evangelical," which refers to gospel preaching, refers nearly exclusively to preaching the gospel of initial salvation and forgiveness of sins. If you look at all the uses of the words "gospel" and "preach" in the New Testament, you'll find that the gospel includes exhortation to repent and receive Christ's life and forgiveness, no doubt, but also sanctification, transformation, renewing of the mind, conformation to Christ, eventually glorification, and to receive all these in the context of fellowship; the Bible knows nothing of "individual Christians."

Also, the effort to stamp out variations in religious expression are bound to fail; God is against them. His letters to the seven churches, found in Rev 2-3, are prophetic of the entire course of church history. Again, I'll leave out details for now. We see three movements that have passed away (The primitive, or "Ephesian" type; the officially persecuted "Smyrna" type; and the Imperially sanctioned "Pergamos" type), and four that will be in existence until Christ returns. These four types, termed Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea, are Catholic (Roman and Orthodox), Protestant denominational (including major pentecostal organizations), recovered local churches that "have but little power", and free groups, frequently charismatic or pentecostal in outlook. In all these four, Jesus speaks primarily to some who "overcome."

Regardless of their "tradition," in all Christian expressions there are some who love Him only. He does not do away with these groups or call his "overcomers" out, but shows that their fellowship is precious to Him because they love, they have been restored to the "first love" that the Ephesian expression lost.