The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of the Religious Right (Part 2)
By Jim Peron
Fundamentalist politics died in the 1920s because its two most successful crusades were dismal failures. E.J. Dionne, Jr, in his "Why Americans Hate Politics", tells the story:
Fundamentalism was plunged into crisis by its two great public crusades of the teens and twenties, the wars against evolution and alcohol. Ironically, both wars initially appeared successful. Prohibition was enacted into law, passed with the support of the culturally "advanced" as well as the culturally "backward." Much support for Prohibition came from "enlightened" liberal social reformers of the upper classes who bemoaned the damage liquor inflicted on the lower orders (and who, conveniently, were often Roman Catholics, whom both upper- and lower-class Protestants mistrusted). Prohibition, of course, proved to be a disaster and was forever after invoked by all who insisted that government efforts to regulate personal morality were doomed.
The Scopes "monkey trial" actually ended in the conviction of John T. Scopes for teaching evolution, another fundamentalist victory. But few victories better deserved to be called Pyrrhic. The fundamentalists' claims about evolution were held up for scorn throughout the nation. "Respected 'evangelicals' in the 1870s, by the 1920s they had become a laughingstock, ideological strangers in their own land," wrote George M. Marsden, a leading historian of evangelicalism. "The philosophical outlook that had graced America's finest academic institutions came to be generally regarded as merely bizarre."
By the end of these crusades the Fundamentalists, while the apparent winners, ultimately ended up the losers. They provided the horse on which American socialism rode into town. But once in town the socialists simply shot the horse and pretended they got there on their own steam. Fundamentalist Christians were the objects of derision and ridicule. The power they had accumulated had fled from them and was now residing with the children of the Populist era - men like F.D.R. While Bryan's political views were now dominant his religious views were archaic and antiquated. Laughed at and ridiculed the fundamentalist retreated into his camp meetings, revival tents and misnamed tabernacles.
From the late 1880's until the 1920's the fundamentalist Christian was on a crusade to make America moral. He had engaged the world and the world won. Now he was happy to hide his face behind the closed doors of his churches. Instead of joining crusades he wanted for the second coming of Christ. The American people had rejected him so now he rejected them and consigned them to damnation. All the fundamentalists wanted was to be left alone with their dogmas, their doctrines, their petty hatreds and their superstitions.
But they had set into motion a political ideology that was alien to the nation of Jefferson, Madison and Adams. They had created a Frankenstein who's monstrous visage, made in their own likeness, would come back to haunt them. They helped bring to American the idea that an all - powerful government had the right, nay the duty, to interfere, regulate, control and to harness every single aspect of human existence. Fundamentalist crusader Francis Willard had coined the slogan "Do Everything" to describe her political views. She meant the State should "do everything" that would create the good and just society. There was none of this concept of limited government for these crusaders. And all this worked fine until their political movement was taken over by secularists.
The fundamentalists retreated from the political field to lick their wounds. Their anti-evolution stand had made them laughing stocks and their beloved Prohibition created so many social problems that it was quickly repealed. They were viewed as both ignorant and malicious. Their "Do Everything" agenda however was picked up by the New Dealers. And Roosevelt knew that the appeals to religious values were highly successful when it came to expanding the scope and nature of government. The Gospels have always had two strains. The Fundamentalist picks up on the strain that condemns sin and requires man to live "morally". The Left wing of Christianity promotes the concept that you are your brother's keeper. Roosevelt didn't abandon Christianity as president. He merely embraced the "Social Gospel" aspect of the religion.
Many of the churches were embracing socialism as well - or at the very least actively renouncing capitalism. For instance the Council of Methodist Youth, in 1932, meet and pledged: "I surrender my life to Christ. I renounce the Capitalist system." The Methodist-Presbyterian Public Questions Committee explained why capitalism is fundamentally alien to Christian ethics. They said "capitalism falls short of achieving economic justice" because: "It is an 'acquisitive society,' based on self - interest and individualism. These attributes of capitalism are not acceptable from a Christian viewpoint." The Federal Council of Churches had similar sentiments in the 1930s: "The Christian conscience can be satisfied with nothing less than the complete substitution of motives or mutual helpfulness and goodwill for the motive of private gain..." What this meant was laid out by the Council three years earlier: "The Christian ideal calls for hearty support of a planned economic system in which maximum social values shall be brought. It demands that cooperation shall supplant competition as the fundamental method."
One set of Christian values merely replaced another set. What didn't change was the call for statism. The Fundamentalists had no qualms about big government which is why they were such eager allies to the Progressives. They didn't even oppose socialism per se but either. They wanted the State to address "social gospel" issues like "fairness" but they also wanted the state to wipe out sin. When they suffered their setbacks and fled the political scene their allies were left holding the fort alone and that meant more of an emphasis on the social gospel aspects of politics and less on the personal morality aspects.
Roosevelt himself tied his New Deal to the New Testament. He told America, in one of his famed radio addresses: "We call what we have been doing 'human security' and 'social justice'. In the last analysis all of those terms can be described by one word; and that is 'Christianity.'"
Morone wrote that "[t]he Social Gospel vision would dominate the next five decades, cresting in the 1960s. The New Deal, it seemed, had buried that cranky, narrow, prohibitionist mindset. Modern people took a tolerant view. But the focus on individual vice and virtue - given up as hopelessly old-fashioned at midcentury - would roar back. The Social Gospel preachers would, in turn, rediscover the prime lesson of American morals: you never really bury either side of our Puritan tradition."
So why did the Fundamentalist wing of the Progressives "roar back"?
Hiding from the world fundamentalists thought they were immune from the doctrines they helped set into motion. But they were not. The very monster they created turned on them. The political ideology which they put into place was now used as a tool against them. Five decades later it came back and this time the victim wasn't John Scopes or a bootlegger. It was Dr. Frankenstein himself: it was the fundamentalist Christian who was under attack by the very creature he created.
After their humiliating defeats in the minds of the public the fundamentalist Christian had disappeared from the public scene - politically speaking. He still engaged in his crusades and revival meetings. A few like Carl McIntyre and Bill James Hargis were beating the anti - communist drum. But in general fundamentalists were not political activists. Seeing the end of the world just around the corner, and realising that the world only could be saved by the return of Christ, they had no real incentive to get involved politically. As much as they wanted to be separated from the sinfulness of this world there was one area where they were vulnerable to worldly influences - government mandated public education.
The really good fundamentalist would avoid "Hollywood movies". He might even ban a television set from his home. His entire life revolved around his church. If he interacted with the world at all it was to witness to it. He did all in his power to exclude the world from his life. But there were very few Christian schools in America at the time. And compulsory education required that he send his child, for hours each day, to be inculcated with the values of a secular society.
Fundamentalists were not happy when, in accordance with the Constitutional separation of church and state, school prayer was declared unconstitutional. But while many people seem to think that the Religious Right arose as a response to issues like school prayer, gay rights and pornography this is simply not true. The good Christian saw those things as "of this world" and being separate from the world meant they were of little importance to him. They didn't like pornography but they didn't have to purchase it. They didn't like homosexuality but, of course, there were no homosexuals in the church. However, the typical fundamentalist had children and those children were inculcated daily with values the fundamentalist found repulsive.
In the fundamentalist world morality is a black and white issue. Sex, any kind and any way, is immoral if performed outside of marriage. Most fundamentalists were almost Catholic, but not quite, in their appraisal of sex. It might be pleasurable but it is reserved for marriage if not only for reproductive purposes. God said to "go forth and multiply" not "go forth and enjoy yourself". The amount of sex education that their children required (according to their moral code) was quite simple. Sex is sinful unless married. There is no need to talk about masturbation, its a sin. No need to discuss homosexuality, its a sin as well. No need to worry about contraception since reproduction was the only justification for sex. And they were convinced that contraception lowers the risk of sex and thus encourages sin. There was no need to discuss venereal diseases since if one followed God's law there would be no such diseases. In other words there is absolutely no place for sex education within public schools or anywhere else for that matter.
In the early 1960s the Sex Information Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) started lobbying for government sex education. Of course this meant that some parents would be forced to finance the propagation of beliefs they opposed. And worse yet it meant that their children might be forcibly subjected to those values. To make it even more controversial yet the sex education lobby tried to teach the subject without inculcating specific values. What was supposed to be value-free instead appeared to be valueless. Even non-fundamentalist parents were unhappy when they found that the courses concentrated on the mechanics of sexuality but seemed devoid of references to respect, love, affection or any of the other values that most people associate with caring sexuality. One opponent of sex education, who wasn't a fundamentalist, explained it this way:
"I was angry because no love attachment was mentioned anywhere. No closeness, no love, no marriage, nothing that depicted my values. I resented it that they took from my boys and my daughter that beautiful wedding night that their mother experienced, and I resented it because... because they didn't have to know all that they were told. It wasn't so much the information. It was the shift in values."
The issue of homosexuality aggravated the situation as well. The concept of homosexuality was completely foreign to the fundamentalist, in spite of it being engaged in by fundamentalist leaders like Billy James Hargis. Any mention of the subject would be seen as promotion. The only proper response to the issue was total and complete condemnation, preferably without an clarification on what it was. The fundamentalist believed that homosexuals are recruited. It is not an innate sexual orientation but a choice. And if the chooser doesn't know about the choice it is not one he can make. So ignorance is bliss in this case. Jim Townsend, a conservative activist, foolishly believed this mantra: "There were more homosexuals made in that sex-education classroom than would have ever been here today if they hadn't told them., 'If you haven't tried it, don't knock it; it's just an alternative lifestyle.' Well, they tried it and they didn't knock it, and a lot of them became homosexuals as a direct result of being taught that in the classroom. That's a fact."
The creation of various "values clarification programs" for the schools didn't help ameliorate this feeling of being under assault by secularists. For the fundamentalist values are already clear. There is no questioning such issues and there are no "sticky" issues. The black and white world that they wanted for their children was turning into a world of grays. As bad as this conflict was things became worse very quickly.
A fundamentalist housewife in St. Albans, West Virginia saw that the local Kanawha County school system was about to implement sex education. Now Kanawha County is not an urbane, cultured area. It is hardcore fundamentalist territory. The community is filled with the uneducated and lower classes. Many families were dirt poor and relied upon coal mining for their income. This house wife, Alice Moore, decided to investigate what would be taught to the children of these fundamentalist coal miners. When she went to the school authorities to complain about what she found she was rebuffed and told "there's absolutely nothing you do about it", meaning that she could not challenge the curriculum. Alice Moore disagreed and began speaking out to various church groups around the county. At the last minute she ran for a vacant seat on the school board and won a narrow victory over the incumbent.
Now on the inside Moore suddenly became an "expert" on these issues for the fundamentalist community. She could constantly harp on the issues that concerned her and she was a "news" item guaranteeing publicity for her cause. The school superintendent resigned and Moore was the champion of the fundamentalists who dominated the country. Moore sat quietly on the board, like a time bomb waiting to go off, until 1974 when hundreds of new textbooks were adopted. Various short stories used words offensive to fundamentalists. One book, according to Moore, "was written by a man who said, 'Thank God" he had gotten out of the South, because if he hadn't he'd still be blankety-blank Christian".
Two major fundamentalist opponents of the text books were Mel and Norma Gabler of Texas. And Moore brought them into the controversy. [Personal note to readers: Years ago I was a fundamentalist Christian. On one occasion I spent several hours riding through the wilderness of Utah with the Gablers. Also on that trip was Rev. Ezra Graley, who will come into the picture shortly. Graley ran as an independent for Governor of West Virginia and I was brought in full - time to work for him. So unlike most authors writing about this issue I did know these people.] The Gablers, had been analysing text books from a fundamentalist moral perspective for years, and were able to provide Moore with plenty of ammunition. It must be remembered that it doesn't take too much to upset a fundamentalist. Their view of the world is so cut and dried that any slight deviation is ammunition. Add to this the penchant of fundamentalists to take comments entirely out of context it wasn't difficult for Moore to stir up the passions, some of them violent, of her fellow fundamentalists.
Moore published pamphlets with short quotes illustrating her complaints. Ripped from context the remarks had their desired effects. Hard-line conservatives, fundamentalist ministers, and angry mothers joined Moore's campaign. The textbooks didn't make sense to these people. As William Martin, author of "With God on Our Side" wrote: "Since one aspect of a fearsome world is that absence of reliable road signs, the textbook critics assailed readings that smacked of moral relativity, that is, the belief that there are no definite right and wrong answers. Closely related was a distaste for symbolism, irony, satire, ambiguity, or role-playing, since all these invite interpretations that diverge from a literal reading of the text. In their view, schoolbooks - like the Bible - should have one meaning and one only, and it should be obvious to all. Cultivating a taste and talent for multiple interpretations can only increase the likelihood of thought and behaviour that call into question the settled and dependable nature of one's community and religion."
Moore was even upset that the famous story of Androcles and the Lion was called a fable. Her reasoning was that this taught children that stories might not be factual and that they could take this reasoning and apply it to the Bible. Since the story of the lion and Androcles was a fable then what about Daniel in the lion's den? "Now, then, let's discuss the story of Daniel and the lions' den, which every one of these children had heard from the time they'd just been little things. In the Bible, the lions didn't kill Daniel, because he was under the protection of the Lord. And they're saying, because the lion's don't act as they do in real life, we know it's a fable." For Moore the inclusion of the Androcles fable was an intentional plot to undermine the Bible: "Now, that kind of thing doesn't happen by accident. Their intent was obvious." In her view these books were worse than just being Godless, they were anti-God. "I'm not talking about ignoring Christianity; I'm talking about attacking Christianity."
Moore's crusade divided the county. Since the questions of compulsory schooling and state financing of education were not open for discussion the conflict was inevitable. One set of textbooks had to be used. If the fundamentalist were happy groups like the NAACP, the West Virginia Council of Churches and various "liberal" ministers would be unhappy. And if the other side was satisfied the fundamentalists would be furious. The conflict was the inevitable consequence of government schooling. The situation became quite literally explosive when the school board adopted the books over the protests of Moore and her friends.
At first angry fundamentalists stormed meetings of the board of education or picketed outside. They produced flyers which were distributed up and down each valley in the country. Even the most remote hillbilly was informed about what had happened. The fact that the flyers sometimes quoted texts which were not in use was of no importance. The protesters knew what they knew and nothing would sway them from that position. Their children were under attack and that was all that mattered. On the first day of classes some 20 percent of the student body was kept home by parents allied with Moore. Rev. Marvin Horn and Rev. Ezra Graley and several other fundamentalist ministers joined the boycott. Local miners unions stayed away from work in sympathy with the parents. Horn described the strike this way: "The common man don't know what to do except what he's done, and that's to go home and sit down."
The school board temporarily removed the texts and tried to form a new committee to review them. But Horn and others wanted the books permanently removed, and the school board fired, and insisted that the boycott continue until this happened. For several days the county was rocked by violence: two schools were firebombed, one was dynamited and several were vandalised, a news crew from CBS was attacked, a couple of people were shot and people shot at school buses or incapacitated them. Parents who violated the boycott were harassed. The school board itself narrowly missed being assassinated when 15 dynamite sticks went off by the gas meter of the building in which they were meeting just minutes after they had left the premises. At times the board cancelled classes in fear for the lives of students. Anti-text book protesters admitted that they seriously considered attacking buses with children in them to stop "people that was sending their kids to school, letting them learn out of books when they knew was wrong." Even ministers, on the wrong side of the fundamentalists, received death threats. Rev. Horn was later sentenced to prison for his participation in some terrorist activities.
One supporter of the protesters explained how they felt. He said mountaineer folk "don't like the central government because it disrupts their folk ways and has never, throughout their history, seriously come to their aid. They felt their children were being mentally kidnapped by people of a larger, dominant culture. They've always been pushed around. Outsiders have always come in and grabbed the land or siphoned the money from the mines, so they've never felt included or protected by the federal government or larger social entities. They had their own culture, and they wanted to keep it that way."
Right-wingers from around America joined in support with the parents of Kanawha County. Even if fundamentalists did not have to contend with sex education or controversial textbooks they assumed that they would be next. In some areas court - mandated busing irritated parents who wanted their children educated in their own neighbourhoods. Once again the fundamentalists had engaged the world in battle and the world won. The result of the battle, as with the earlier one, was that they again retreated further away from the world. This time thousands of private, fundamentalist schools across America were formed. If the school system was going to undermine their value system then fundamentalists would desert the school system.
But Rev. Jim Lewis, a supporter of the school books, noticed that the textbook crisis had created a new alliance in politics.
"It was being perceived by so many people in the country as some kind of crazy hillbilly battle, but it was much deeper than that. Right-wing politics and right-wing religion were coming together. Over and over, we saw people coming in from various organisations, with church ties connected to the right. Bob Dornan came in, as some sort of knight on a white horse to help solve the problems of Kanawha County. And the Heritage Foundation came in. Those groups came in with their banners and slogans and terms. It didn't take long before I realised that we were seeing a new wedding here, an important wedding of right-wing religion and right -wing politics. And it was speaking to the fear people had, and increasing that fear."
Fundamentalist Christianity was ready to make a political comeback. But it needed something to give it confidence and something to trigger it. And both were the result of the presidential campaign of Jimmy Carter, a born-again Baptist, but a left wing Democrat. Because of the Carter campaign "born-again" became a term that the media suddenly discovered. Carter was loved by the media, they shared his same left-wing agenda. The result was that he was given favourable press. Newsweek even called 1976 "The Year of the Evangelical." Fundamentalists around the country flocked to the Carter campaign. For many of them it was their first foray into real politics.
Watergate had brought Presidential politics to a new low - not to be surpassed until the Clinton administration. Many middle-Americans were receptive to talk about a new morality in Washington. Carter was elected and fundamentalists politics was suddenly in vogue. But the anger from the sex education and textbook debacles was still churning underneath the surface. The Religious Right was still trying to retreat from the world but the Carter campaign had given them some self-confidence which was needed after their series of losses on particular issues. Had the matter dropped here it is unlikely that a significant movement of the "Religious Right" would have resulted. But matters didn't drop here.
Carter's campaign bolstered the self-image of the fundamentalist but his administration also fuelled their anger again and got the Religious Right into gear. In 1978 the Internal Revenue Service announced that Christian schools which didn't meet government standards of racial integration would lose their tax-exempt status. Not only did local schools feel the brunt of the ruling but the main fundamentalist institution in America, Bob Jones University, was openly attacked.
While BJU had been a white's only school for decades they voluntarily changed this in 1971. But religious dogma prevented interracial dating and marriage, though it appears that either would be permitted if the students in question could provide written permission for such from their parents. The IRS said that meant that BJU was segregated and any segregated school was not a "charitable" institution and thus would be taxed. Now the retreating fundamentalists felt as if Big Brother was following them.
As a student at Hammond Baptist High School during the early 70s my principal was Robert Billings, Sr. Billings was an activist in the Christian school movement. And he was unhappy that Christian schools suffered as second - class institutions in America. For instance my high school could not qualify as a recognised high school. This was in spite of the fact that our students regularly tested better than students in the same grade in public institutions. My high school diploma was not recognised. I was required to take the GED examination just to have a legal high school diploma. Yet public school students were not required to take the test - if they had many of them probably would have failed it.
When I knew Billings he was not a political activist. His only concern was helping fundamentalists form their own schools. He, like most fundamentalists, was still in retreat mode. But when the IRS set their guns on fundamentalist schools he responded. Billings was called to Washington by Right-winger Paul Weyrich of the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress. Weyrich brought a very willing Billings on board. Billings then brought in various fundamentalist ministers to meet with Weyrich who tried to motivate them into political action. The ministers resisted saying their members were not interested in politics. Still stinging from the IRS attack the church leaders eventually formed Christian School Action with Billings as leader. One of the reluctant new recruits was Rev. Jerry Falwell who later founded the Moral Majority.
In Dade County Florida a badly-written gay rights ordinance was passed. The ordinance, for some reason, said that private schools could not discriminate against gay teachers. But public, tax-supported schools, were not covered by the same ordinance. The only people effected by the new law were the fundamentalists. A former beauty queen runner-up, Anita Bryant, went off the deep end. As a fundamentalist, Bryant, who sent her children to the local Christian academy, found the idea that "recruiting" homosexuals might use her school to attack her children too much. The fact that none of this is consistent with what we know about homosexuality was irrelevant. Bryant knew it was a sinful choice and that it was improper for the schools to be used by gay recruiters. Her campaign spiralled out of control and suddenly anti-gay fundamentalist groups were formed all across America. Jerry Falwell responded by organising the Moral Majority. The Religious Right, which was in its foetal stages for a decade of so, was forced into existence by Caesarean birth performed by the secular Left.
Fundamentalists didn't want to be involved in politics, not after their stinging defeat during the Bryan debacle. But each time they retreated from the world the secular Left would assault them again. Even when they withdrew from public schooling they found themselves under attack. Pushed into the corner, with their children at stake (as they saw it), they had no choice but to fight back. And fight back they did. Weyrich said:
"What galvanised the Christian community was not abortion, school prayer, or the ERA. I am living witness to that because I was trying to get those people interested in those issues and I utterly failed. What changed their mind was Jimmy Carter's intervention against the Christian schools, trying to deny them tax-exempt status on the basis of so-called de-facto segregation."
Christians felt that these issues could be dealt with privately but the IRS problem was something else. Weyrich said:
"They looked upon it as interference from the government and suddenly it dawned on them that they were not going to be able to be left alone to teach their children as they pleased. It was at that moment that conservatives made the linkage between their opposition to government interference and the interests of the evangelical movement, which now saw itself on the defensive and under attack by the government. That was what brought those people into the political process. It was not the other things."
The fundamentalist genie was out of the bottle. The political Left, once the ally of fundamentalism during the hey - day of William Jennings Bryan, had severed its connection. But the drive to reform and control was still there. The Left still had the moral fervour of the camp meeting revivalist and there was nothing to prevent them from continuing with their reform crusades. Over the next 50 years the crusades of the Left changed with the times, what didn't change was their love for government control. By the 1960s the Left started reforming the public schools and this brought them into direct conflict with their old allies in the fundamentalist movement. When the fundamentalists retreated the secular Left felt they had them on the run and pursued them. Eventually the fundamentalists were forced to fight back and the Religious Right was born.
It was an artificial movement born out of necessity. The fundamentalists, on a whole, were not sympathisers with free markets or limited government. Their attraction to the conservative movement was one of self-defence. But because conservatives did not have libertarian principles the Religious Right could not understand why they shouldn't be able to expand their agenda as well. After all, if the Left could impose its morality on Christians, then Christians surely had the right to impose their morality on the Left. What started as a movement to defend Christian schools quickly expanded. The new agenda supported censorship and demanded government regulation of the bedrooms of America.
Today the Left becomes hysterical at the mere mention of the Religious Right. But historically they were the ones who created it. Once allies they still share a similar outlook regarding the nature of the State. Both see it as an institution to reform and change the citizens of the country. Both desire a government that meddles in every aspect of human existence. Their differences are simply over what issues to consider and in what direction the meddling should take place. These similarities are not accidents since the two once worked closely together. But the fact that they are at each other's throats does not mean they hold opposing ideologies. Advocates of invasive government are forced into conflict with each other. Since each believes this is the proper function of the state they do not fight over invasive government as a principle but over the application of that principle. Both believe that government enforced morality is a requirement for their reformed society. Their conflicts are the inevitable result of their similar, not differing ideologies. Big Brotherism ultimately becomes a form of political cannibalism where allies end up eating away at each other.
Back to The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of the Religious Right, Part One
Jim Peron is the Executive Director of the Institute for Liberal Values, the editor of the book The Liberal Tide, and the author of the forthcoming book 'The Road Not Taken: Resolving the Crisis on the Roads.'
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