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July 17, 2005
Whatever Happened to Fundamentalist Progressives?
by Public Theologian
One of the strangest features of the contemporary political landscape is the marriage of convenience between religious conservatives and traditional elements of the Republican Party. If you had lived a hundred years ago, for instance, you would have experienced a similar theology from the fundamentalists but the politics would have been very different. The great populist of the latter part of the 19th and first quarter of the 20th century, William Jennings Bryan, who most people remember as the fundamentalist prosecutor in the famous Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, had a long and successful political career during which he railed against the moneyed interests of his day and on behalf of the common working person.
According to the William Jennings Bryan Recognition Project,
Bryan is credited with early championing of the following: (1) graduated income tax (16th Amendment), (2) direct election of U.S. senators (17th Amendment), (3) women's suffrage (19th Amendment), (4) workmen's compensation, (5) minimum wage, (6) eight-hour workday, (7) Federal Trade Commission, (8) Federal Farm Loan Act, (9) government regulation of telephone/telegraph and food safety, (10) Department of Health, (11) Department of Labor, and (12) Department of Education.
Now from that list of liberal political accomplishments, one would imagine that Bryan was probably a godless atheist, right? In fact, he was anything but, which was why he was the prosecutor in charge of convicting Tennessee biology teacher John Scopes for teaching evolution against state law in the mid-1920’s. Bryan’s theology was hardly distinguishable from Jerry Falwell’s or Pat Robertson’s today. But his politics were very different.
The understanding of Jesus that Bryan brought to the public square was a Jesus who was concerned about fair wages, fair taxes, fair working conditions, and the good that the government could do for its citizens. Bryan was also a world-renowned champion of peace, using his position as Secretary of State in the Wilson administration as a platform for peacemaking , rather than saber rattling. But somewhere along the way, this message of concern for common people and for peace went by the boards amongst fundamentalists and was instead replaced by a Jesus who favored the powerful and who walked with potentates, and who thought that force was a legitimate means to achieve American public policy ends.
This is the Jesus of the contemporary Religious Right, who favors small government, low taxes, and who would be more likely to give you a lecture on self-reliance and pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps, than he would be to heal you or feed you with the little boy’s five loaves and two fishes. In short, this Jesus sounds like he just finished a summer internship at the Cato Institute.
How did this Jesus come to be? How is it that fundamentalism left its roots and created the Jesus that had no critical word for Wall Street but who instead embraced market economics as the path to the kingdom of God? Simply put, Christian fundamentalists sold their birthright for a mess of pottage in the late 1960s and early 1970s to traditional elements within the Republican Party who lacked a populist side, in exchange for the money and access to power that it craved in its attempt to reassert its long dormant political influence on the American public square. The so-called Rockefeller Republicans, who had previously been uninterested in sticking their noses in other people’s bed sheets, and who had instead been concerned about enhancing corporate profitability, had to give way to the fundamentalist obsession with America’s sex life. On the other hand, and here is my point, the fundamentalists, who had heretofore been the champions of the poor and middle-class, now had to embrace the agenda of Wall Street and Big Business in order to get what they wanted out of the deal.
The problem with this compromise is most acutely seen when it comes to the question of the morality of abortion, which is something about which the fundamentalists are deeply concerned. On the one hand, they are adamant that abortion is murder and insist that they will not stop their political crusade until the number of abortions in the United States reaches zero. On the other hand, they represent a political party that advocates a set of policies that keep both girls and boys ignorant about the ways to prevent unwanted pregnancies, thereby increasing them, and that promotes policies that would push a woman standing on the brink of poverty towards having an abortion. They support tax cuts for the rich, thus cutting the necessary funding for helping women who would seek an abortion in order to stay out of poverty, while at the same time they stand against laws which would raise the minimum wage, laws which would establish health care for all Americans, and laws which would provide our young people with an adequate education about human reproduction and birth-control options.
This is an all the more pressing issue now, inasmuch as the fundamentalists are flexing their political muscles in an attempt to force President Bush to nominate a Supreme Court justice who will overturn Roe vs Wade. And they may well be successful in this. But what kind of world is it that they will create for the women who they will force to bear these children, as well as for the unwanted children that they compel to be born? One would think that in preparation for such a world, the fundamentalists would be ramping up taxes and expanding social welfare programs to make ready for their New World Order in which the one million abortions that they will prohibit are translated into one million more live births. But here is where the fundamentalists’ compromise has them caught. Having made their deal with the devil of Wall Street in order to gain the political power necessary to overturn Roe, they cannot now break free in order to create the community services necessary to welcome another one million children into our society.
The horror that their worldview may be about to wreak on women who may be forced by these zealots to bear children against their will, may be only but the tip of the iceberg of the great social problems that will result from the birth of a million unwanted children each year. It is shameful that the very people who want to force this upon the rest of society have not made adequate provision for its consequences.
Posted by Public Theologian at July 17, 2005 11:10 PM
Comments
You know, these fundamentalists you speak of are the same ones who think it's okay to fry people in the electric chair. It seems like there isn't any real continuity to their beliefs. Why is it okay to ban abortion (because it's murder in their view) when it's not okay to ban the death penalty (when about 1 in 4 people executed is later found to be innocent). I feel like the christianity of these people is not the same christianity I practice. I can't honestly call myself a Christian if I'm not treating people with the same love and respect I'd expect from others or if I'm voting to cut aid to people who are in dire straits. That doesn't seem like something Jesus would do. I never heard Jesus say 'well, he brought it on himself. no fish and bread for that guy.' Yeah, you make a very good point. The politics of the religious right somehow don't fit with the teachings of Jesus at all.
Posted by: lori at July 18, 2005 08:11 AM
That's a great point, and one that progressives ought to cash in, so to speak.
How do so many conservative Christians make their conservatism mostly about conserving money for the wealthy, and expect to get through the eye of that needle?
Posted by: Paul M. Martin at July 18, 2005 07:26 PM
It seems to me that the fundamentalism of William Jennings Bryan incorporated the Jesus of the gospels and the Christ of Revelation. The present-day fundamentalist appears to have forgotten the Jesus of the gospels in favor of an exclusivist Revelation "Christ the Terminator", who, conveniently, supports the fundamentalist cause in all things.
Posted by: Geoff at July 19, 2005 02:12 AM
Finally, a christian saying what's needed to be said for so long. Make abortion unnecessary instead of illegal. Abortion existed when it was not legal; it will exist when it is illegal again. It just won't be as safe for the poor (the wealthy will simply fly to Sweden like they did before Roe vrs. Wade).
Posted by: brian at July 19, 2005 05:16 AM
Very good post. The interesting thing is, what modern American Christians are worried about, simply are not the same things Jesus cared about. Very interesting. One might even say they are no longer in the historic understanding of being Christian at all. That is a common charge aimed at progressives.
Please see the post "The least Jesus asks is not what the Religious Right asks" on http://www.religiousrightwatch.com/
Posted by: Monk-in-Training at July 19, 2005 01:29 PM
Outstanding post. Very educational.
I think of the Woman at the well. Jesus knew every controversial scintilla of her life, and yet He did not judge her, but instead offered her the living water of hope and grace.
Contemporary fundamentalists would have stripped her naked before the media and used her as an example of liberal decadence and compromise. However, Caiaphus and the Sanhedrin would be raised up as paragons of holiness and virtue. Judas Iscariot would be worshipped as a patriot by the current brood of vipers.
It is time to remind all Christians that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are the spoken truth of Jesus Christ's words, Revelation is an inspired vision. Be guided by the words with each step on the road as you look ahead, in hope, to the vision of the future.
Blessings!
Posted by: The American Prophet at July 20, 2005 08:51 AM
I'm afraid the characteristics of William Jennings Bryan listed here by Mr. Theologian are indicative of nothing more than the present lack of Faith in the Democratic Party.
Bryan was responsible for the great programs listed, none of which in their initial forms is contrary to the Conservative values which his party, the Democrats, did value, and which are today championed by the GOP.
The loss of Faith by the oldest political party in the world, the DNC, has led ultimately to their becoming a regional party and this nation having only one national party, which I regret.
I wish the democratic party of my ancestors was still around under the Jeffersonian ideals. In its stead, we were brought into the GOP under Theodore Roosevelt and have carried on the same traditions ever since.
Posted by: Ryan Bailey at July 21, 2005 09:09 PM
I would respectfully disagree with Mr. Bailey here.
I am an exceedingly liberal democrat. I am also an evangelical Christian -- but one who believes in the Christ who taught us the Beatitudes and to love one another, not the vicious and terrible Lord of the End Times espoused by the Religious Right.
I believe that there is still plenty of Faith left in the Democratic Party. I certainly have faith. There is Joe Lieberman's strong Jewish faith. There is my former roommate's strong Wiccan faith.
What the Democratic Party "lost" was the sort of Theocratic Fascism that comes with deciding that one and only one faith is the "right" faith, and that any expression not within certain parameters in unacceptable by the Party. That's the problem that the Republicans are facing today, one that will eventually bring an end to their reign.
You mention Jeffrersonian Ideals. Weren't those the ones that said that Church and State needed to remain separate entities, and that the Government should not choose or sponsor any particular religion in order that all of our religious beliefs remained equally protected?
Posted by: Timroff at July 22, 2005 05:19 AM
Thanks for the post and comments. While Bryan is a great example of the progressive fundamentalist in the early 20th century, the person who best represents the conservative Christian politician of the last 50 years is Jesse Helms (in fact, Jerry Falwell's Liberty University opened the Jesse Helms School of Government in 2004 to train "Soldiers for Christ" to enter the public arena).
As Ken Mehlman recently acknowledged, the Republican Party had a Southern Strategy based on racial divisions. What he did not say, but what is evident from Helms's writings and TV commentaries from the 50s and 60s, is that Southern racism was perpetrated by people who considered themselves deeply religious. So the Southern Strategy resulted in the Reopublican/conservative movement adopting much of the Christian fundamentalism inherent in Southern paternalism. Once that deal had been made, it was a slippery slope to incorporate all the other nationalistic, anti-Jesus messages that have become the foundation of the Religious Right.
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