Fundamentalism in Comparative Perspective (12 page)

Read Fundamentalism in Comparative Perspective Online

Authors: Lawrence Kaplan

Tags: #Religion, #General, #Fundamentalism, #Comparative Religion, #Philosophy, #test

BOOK: Fundamentalism in Comparative Perspective
2.59Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
 
Page 50
Bob Jones's position encourage Christians to be politically active but insist on maintaining such a clear separation from apostasy that concerted political action is almost impossible.
One Moral Majoritarian described fundamentalists as a ''disciplined charging army" (Fitzgerald 1981). A political scientist called them "an army that meets every Sunday" (Buell 1983). It would be more accurate to see them as a motley crew of half-hearted volunteers being pressed into service just when the crops need planting, torn between joining battle with the enemy and returning to tend their farms.
Economic and Social Cleavages
Further sources of internal fragmentation derive from socioeconomic differences among conservative Protestants. Without wishing to countenance the a priori assumption of many social scientists that religious values are secondary to more concrete economic and social characteristics such as wealth and status, it is worth remembering that religious values compete with more mundane interests in the decision making of conservative Protestants. While it is certainly the case that conservative Protestants differ from their more liberal brethren in giving a higher priority to "biblical" positions, their interpretation of biblical injunctions and their willingness to act on such interpretations differ. In the period leading up to the Civil War, people with the same theology and ecclesiology developed fundamentally different attitudes toward the slavery issue, and conservative denominations divided into northern and southern branches. There may be no single secular issue likely to produce such an emotive or clear division within contemporary conservative Protestantism, but regional and status differences remain fissures which prevent conservative Protestants from thinking and acting as a coherent body. I have already mentioned the division on economic liberalism between what, for brevity, I will call North and South. Northern conservative Protestants are much more comfortable with doctrines of
laissez-faire
than are southerners, who profit considerably from government spending.
Another division concerns race. Although most conservative Prot-
 
Page 51
estants are less likely than liberals to be supporters of racial integration, they are divided between those who are willing to support segregationist independent schools and social action to maintain residential segregation, and those who openly reject segregationist views and actions.
Finally, there is the neglected but important issue of priorities. The large number of surveys mentioned in this work (and many others) show that religion is important as a source of political images and decisions. We know that religion matters; what is more difficult to know is its place in the hierarchy of concerns on which any person draws to make a political decision. It is likely that some of the differences in the conclusions of surveys which have tried to measure the importance of theology or denominational affiliation are a result of individuals reordering their priorities. Some reordering may be caused by the questions asked in surveys. The very fact of being asked about one thing rather than another may produce a temporary reassessment of concerns. But it also seems likely that issues vary in salience depending on what is going on in the immediate world of the respondent. We can imagine conservative Protestants arranged on an axis of orthodoxy and suppose that those at the orthodox end consistently give a higher priority to their religious beliefs and values than do those at the liberal end. But at any point on the axis, the relative importance of religiously rooted values will vary with the events that impinge on their lives. While we may assume that values have a certain enduring quality, it also seems clear that their salience varies in response to ''agenda-setting" events in the world. If abortion is a topical issue, something which is frequently addressed and debated in the media and which features in elections, it will remain high on the list of priorities for those people who have strong views on the subject. When abortion slides down the public agenda, it will also seem less pressing for many of those who have strong views, not because their views have changed but because there is pressure and opportunity to address other issues.
Clearly a section of enthusiasts will strive to keep public attention focused on their concerns, but they have to compete for attention with enthusiasts for other causes. Insofar as any particular group of moral entrepreneurs has only a limited ability to set political agen-
 
Page 52
das, there will be long periods when the issues around which conservative Protestants can unite are not very high on the lists of priorities even of conservative Protestants. To take an example from early 1987, the scandal over the sale of arms to Iran and the diversion of funds to the Nicaraguan Contras caused considerable media and public attention to focus on the honesty and competence of President Reagan and his officials. There was so much interest in "Iranscam" and so many powerful forces working to keep attention focused on the general competence of the Reagan administration that NCR lobbyists found themselves and their concerns marginalized. In very simple and practical terms, they could no longer get important people on the telephone. Even their sympathizers were engaged in other matters.
The same point can be made about many of the local elections in November 1986. In many areas, NCR activists found it impossible to make "pro-family" concerns topics of interested debate. Instead most people, even many conservative Protestants, were interested in the economy. Even if the absence of NCR issues on the local political agenda did not cause potential supporters to give a higher priority to economic interests or foreign policy concerns, it almost certainly caused many to hold back from the debate and from voting. This problem is well appreciated by new Christian right activists. Much of their time is taken up, not with mobilizing support for a certain position on an issue, but with trying to make something that concerns them into a public issue.
Liberal Reaction
The exaggerations of the cohesion and commitment of the supporters of the NCR, which were characteristic of many early responses to the NCR, were often accompanied by almost total neglect of the power and influence of various liberal groups. The NCR was sometimes described as if its opposition had already been eradicated. In particular, a point of chronology that has considerable implications for the future was neglected. The organizational infrastructure of the new right and the NCR were described in terms which suggested that their sophisticated fund-raising and opinion-formation techniques
 
Page 53
were novel. Far from this being the case, until the late 1970s the majority of ideological PACs were liberal. Had the accounts of the NCR's mobilization made more of the fact that many of the movement's techniques were borrowed (even if, like direct mailing, they were considerably improved in the borrowing) from liberal causes, it might have been obvious earlier that the NCR would not have a clear run.
Although as a very general proposition liberals are more fragmented than conservative Protestants, they can form effective organizations and campaign for their goals when they feel sufficiently moved to act. With hindsight it is easy to see that much of the NCR's success was due to the element of surprise. The resolution of the Texas textbook controversy, the defeat of the Arkansas and Louisiana "equal time for creation science" bills, and the rejection of Judge Robert Bark show how effective liberals can be once they realize that they can no longer assume their views will naturally triumph but must actively promote them. In the field of electioneering, the right-wing steamroller that removed McGovern, Bayh, Church, and other liberals appeared unstoppable; but those liberals who confronted negative campaigns head-on, rather than ignoring them as beneath contempt, won and, in some cases, improved their vote.
On the national stage, People for the American Way has become a highly efficient counter to the NCR. Having raised considerable sums of money, PAW is now in a position to counter the NCR with the same sophisticated technology, as an example will show. In September 1986, Pat Robertson staged a huge rally to test the waters for a presidential election campaign. As many as 216 conference halls throughout the country were booked and satellite time was leased to telecast the rally direct to around 200,000 potential supporters. The aim of this expensive operation was to bypass the conventional news media, which Robertson supposed would be unsympathetic to his ambitions. To counter this initiative, PAW booked a second satellite and offered free to any television station in the country that wanted it, a short program of film clips of Robertson saying the sorts of things that would have been acceptable to the narrower audiences for which they were originally intended but that were potentially damaging to his new image as aspiring presidential candidate. In many of
 
Page 54
the major markets, television stations took advantage of the free PAW material and inserted parts of it into their news reports of the Robertson rally. Although stations already sympathetic to Robertson's views ignored the PAW feed, many noncommitted stations, which might otherwise have given Robertson some excellent publicity (his intention), presented a less flattering picture of the candidate. What had been designed by Robertson's organization as a good publicity return on a considerable investment was countered by an action that had the three qualities hitherto primarily associated with the NCR: imagination, good organization, and heavy funding.
Initially begun with a short anti-NCR television commercial, PAW has grown in six years to a membership of around 250,000 and a budget of $7.6 million. A weekly radio commentary on church and state issues is provided free to radio stations around the country. Staff writers produce weekly opinion pieces offered free to local newspapers, many of which are only too happy to have the free, professionally produced copy. A list of well-known public figures who will speak against the NCR is maintained so that people with appropriate expertise can be rapidly mobilized to present a liberal view on whatever is topical.
A major problem for NCR leaders is the need to alternate between two rhetorics: one designed for the faithful audience of fundamentalists, the other directed at nonfundamentalist potential allies. In his 1984 reelection campaign, Representative Mark Siljander, an adviser to Christian Voice, sent a letter to some 400 conservative pastors in his district urging them to help defeat Jewish Michigan Democrat Howard Volpe and "send another Christian to Congress." Unfortunately for Siljander, one of the conservative pastors had moved on and been replaced by a more liberal man who made sure that PAW and the press saw this evidence of religious particularism. Whereas in the first years of the NCR such disclosures were haphazard, PAW now maintains a staff of researchers who assiduously monitor the writings and sermons of Falwell, Robertson, Swaggart, and others so that the views they would prefer to express only to the inner circle of the faithful are now given wide exposure.
In addition to closely monitoring NCR leaders in order to undermine their painstakingly calculated "presentations of self" (to use
 
Page 55
Erving Goffman's term), liberals have themselves become adept at skillful self-presentation. Alert to the damaging consequences of being seen as avowed secularists, PAW and similar organizations have stressed their support from Christians with impeccable conservative theological credentials. Three of the most prominent spokesmen in the campaign against the NCR are John Buchanan and James Dunn, both Baptist ministers, and Chuck Bergstrom, a respected conservative Lutheran clergyman. Such men have been able to argue that, far from promoting the Protestant cause, the NCR is debasing true religion. Instead of criticizing school prayer on secularist grounds, they can argue that public prayer in school trivializes their faith. With obvious conviction they can rest their case for the separation of church and state on the sentiments voiced by Justice Black in the majority opinion in the landmark
Engel
v.
Vitale
case:
It is neither sacrilegious nor antireligious to say that each separate government in this country should stay out of the business of writing or sanctioning school prayer and leave that purely religious function to the people themselves and to those [
to whom
] the people choose to look for religious guidance. (Abrahams 1983:90)
The Spectators
Most Americans are neither committed liberals nor committed conservatives. Insofar as we can tell from the complex mass of survey data and other sources of information, there is considerable ambiguity, both in responses to NCR issues and in feelings about NCR leaders and organizations. In the end, a major determinant of the very limited success of the NCR will be the ability of fundamentalists to present themselves as a legitimate minority. To create the social space required to maintain their subcultures and subsocieties, conservative Protestants will have to convince the general public and the social groups with power and influence that they have legitimate rights which are presently being infringed, and that such rights can be accepted without significant social instability. There are problems for both actors and audience with this performance.
For the conservative Protestant now claiming to be a member of a hard-done-by group, the problem is one of muting demands. The

Other books

The Roguish Miss Penn by Emily Hendrickson
Re-Wired by Greg Dragon
A Pair of Rogues by Patricia Wynn
22 Britannia Road by Amanda Hodgkinson
Other Shepards by Adele Griffin
Fatal Affair by Marie Force
Night Smoke by Nora Roberts