Not Time Yet for a Smile and a Haircut

Reading The Evangelical Crackup, David Kirkpatrick’s Times Magazine article in which he details the waning power of the religious right, stimulated sad memories. I was reminded of the bittersweet end of the Viet Nam War in 1975. Those of us who actively opposed the war were finally getting what we wanted, if not in the way we wanted it. But without “The War” to be against, we were left asking, “who are we?” Most eventually got a haircut and a job, and joined the middle class.
For many progressive Christians the fundamentalists on the religious right provide a powerful bogeyman to rally against. Here are people who are exclusionary in their approach, strident in their style, pessimistic in attitude, with tunnel vision in their choice of issues. Activists in the so-called Mainline Protestant churches have been vigorous in opposition to these fellow Christians because we see them as misrepresenting the faith. Politicians who share or support their views are driven by the interests of their constituents. In that context, their actions are reasonable. But Christians should be driven by God’s bias for justice and compassion.
Kirkpatrick cites the War in Iraq and a general weariness with politics from the pulpit as reasons why ultra-conservatives have been losing ground in the evangelical movement. Even the Southern Baptist Convention has begun to push back against the conservatives who have controlled it since the 1980s, electing a moderate president at its last convention. While the tradition evangelicals tended to see Christianity as a set of theological beliefs coupled with specific moral imperatives (mostly involving sex), the newer leaders are taking a broader approach, according to Kirkpatrick:
“Falwell, Dobson and their generation saw their political activism as essentially defensive, fighting to keep traditional moral codes …. But many younger evangelicals — and some old-timers — take a less fatalistic view. For them, the born-again experience of accepting Jesus is just the beginning. What follows is a long-term process of “spiritual formation” that involves applying his teachings in the here and now. … They talk more about a biblical imperative to … the betterment of their communities and the world. They support traditional charities but also public policies that address health care, race, poverty and the environment.”
Sounds pretty progressive. So you see what I mean about trading protest signs for haircuts? With enemies like these, who needs enemies?
But before we go too far in writing off the religious right, let’s remember the power they still wield in the popular media. Yes, Falwell is gone and much of his generation of clergy is aging, but Dr. Dobson and his Focus on the Family organization still dominates Christian radio. Despite the ascendancy of more moderate conservatives like Bill Hybels of the Willow Creek Association and Purpose Driven Life author Rick Warren, many evangelicals feel the movement is simply suffering a mild downturn--inevitable after riding so high for so long. Kirkpatrick writes, “Conservative Christian leaders in Washington acknowledge a ‘leftward drift’ among evangelicals, quoting Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council and the movement’s chief advocate in Washington. He (Perkins) told me he believed that Hybels and many of his admirers had, in effect, fallen away from orthodox evangelical theology. Perkins compared the phenomenon to the century-old division in American Protestantism between the liberal mainline and the orthodox evangelical churches. ‘It is almost like another split coming within the evangelicals,’ he said.”
What many of the conservative evangelicals resist admitting is that may of us on the left--Jim Wallis being a good example--consider ourselves evangelical in the original sense of the word: advocates of the good news of Jesus Christ. Maybe if we could agree on that definition, we could heal all the splits and march en masse to the salons and barber shops.