News Intelligence Analysis
From the American Enterprise Institute
April 2000
What Role for Religious Conservatives?
Cal Thomas
TWO LEADERS OF THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT DEBATE
ENGAGEMENT VERSUS WITHDRAWAL FROM POLITICS
At the February 2000 national convention of the National Religious Broadcasters, Cal Thomas (the former Moral Majority vice president who is now one of the country's most widely circulated newspaper columnists) debated Jay Sekulow (Pat Robertson's attorney who heads the American Center for Law and Justice, which litigates for religious liberty) on religious political activism. An edited transcript follows.
SEKULOW: I like Cal Thomas. I don't like Blinded by Might, the book he's published with Ed Dobson arguing that the religious Right should unilaterally disarm and withdraw from politics. A lot of good has come out of political activism by religious people. We have not won every battle, but nowhere in Scripture are we called to be successful. We're called to be obedient. Engaging these issues is part of the price of our freedom.
I disagree with the idea that people like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, or countless others have engaged in battle inappropriately. There's nothing wrong with motivating literally millions of people to call their Congressmen to deal with important issues, even if the airways are used, even if direct mail is used. Ministries' using direct mail is not something evangelicals invented. Dr. Martin Luther King and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund headed by Thurgood Marshall in the 1940s and '50s produced perhaps the best fund-raising material I've ever seen.
If it weren't for the active involvement of Christians, many important issues would not be discussed. Most Americans don't understand the significance of these issues until we bring them up. I'll never forget the passionate debate brought about when Senator Rick Santorum showed exactly what a partial-birth abortion is.
One of my favorite theologians, Abraham Kuyper, was also a Prime Minister. He founded a university and edited a newspaper, and he said, "There is not one square inch of the entire creation about which Jesus Christ does not cry out, `This is mine, this belongs to me.'"
We have a cultural mandate. It's not that Kuyper or today's religious followers of politics are "blinded by might," as Cal's book title puts it. They are simply taking their cultural mandate seriously. Jesus commanded us to love our neighbor. Part of that love of neighbor is being engaged in these political issues.
In a Supreme Court case I had in 1993, the attorney general for the State of New York argued that religious advocacy has no benefit to the community at large--something very similar to what the Federal Communications Commission tried to argue recently to squash religious broadcasting. Justice Scalia observed during the oral arguments that it used to be thought in New York that religious advocacy and religious people--"Godfearing people" as he put it--were very important to the health of a society. Among other things, faithful citizens were less likely to mug me or rape my sister. If New York doesn't take that view anymore, asked Justice Scalia, "How's the new regime doing?"
The new regime, I submit, is not doing very well. Is the religious Right "blinded by might"? Absolutely not. Desiring change in our culture? Absolutely. By whatever ethical means necessary, we need to engage in this struggle.
THOMAS: Now it's time to hear from the heretic. During my five years with the Moral Majority, I was confident of the ability of people like us to organize ourselves into a political force that would restore righteousness in America.
Today, my tactics and priorities have changed. I am now convinced government lacks the power to bring about the changes we wish to see. For the last 20 years, and during earlier periods such as Prohibition, many have tried to reform culture from the top down, believing that unrighteous behavior was a matter of poor leadership.
Many blame President Clinton for our woes. Perhaps the problem is us, and he is merely our mirror image. As a nation, we worship the golden calf of materialism. We have easy divorce even among Christians, and other scandals.
Our society can't be improved apart from faith, which transforms from the inside. That improves the outside, but if believers try to clean up the outside without seeing to the inside, they are doomed to futility. My co-author and I are not calling for political pacifism. We can exercise our right to vote or not, and lobby. We must pray for those in authority, whether we like them or not. But something is out of balance. Too many of us give lip service to the gospel while spending most of our energies on politics.
Newt Gingrich kept the Contract with America but sadly violated contracts with two wives and now consorts openly with a woman to whom he is not married. Should we expect lawmakers who cannot impose morality on themselves to be successful in imposing it on the nation? Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world." Why then are so many intent on fixing the world? Much of it has to do with the illusion that access to authority figures is power, but as Glen Campbell sings, "There's a load of compromisin' on the road to that horizon." Political access becomes our goal. The gospel is held hostage to a political agenda.
I like what Jim Kennedy said in a sermon five days after Reagan was inaugurated. The sermon was titled, "Can Reagan Save America?" The text was Jeremiah 17:5, warning against the dangers of putting one's trust in men. He wrote, "I am afraid that some of us, though loudly proclaiming ourselves to be Christians, are at least partial humanists. That is, we trust Jesus Christ to save our souls, but we trust President Reagan to save our country." I would quote Jerry Falwell in a previous incarnation: "We have a message of redeeming grace through a crucified and risen Lord. Nowhere are we told to reform externals. We are not told to wage war against bootleggers, liquor stores, gamblers, murderers, prostitutes, racketeers, prejudiced persons, institutions, or any other existing evil as such."
SEKULOW: We as believers are required to be salt and light--antiseptics--in the wider culture. I'm a Jewish convert to Christianity. I know that a Christian like Dietrich Bonhoeffer preached the gospel, but he also believed with all his heart that what was happening to my relatives in Germany was so wrong that direct action needed to be taken. Reverend Martin Luther King asked for assistance, and justice, through politics, and by God's grace that's what he got.
That church where Dr. King preached for so many years in Montgomery is actually in the shadows of the state capital. Dr. King brought the people from the pews out to the street, demanding social justice with a vision inspired by his religious commitment. We can't surrender now.
THOMAS: You haven't heard me say a thing about surrender. If I were surrendering, I wouldn't be writing my newspaper column.
I was not aware that loving your neighbor means loving Republicans and loving the state. I reject that interpretation. When the church aligns itself with a political party or movement, it isn't the state that's corrupted, it's the church.
What happened to the liberal National and World Councils of Churches--which now give sermons on environmentalism--is happening to the conservative churches. We are an appendage of the Republican Party. We should say instead, We have no king but Jesus Christ.
SEKULOW: I'm not in favor of aligning with parties. I model our work at the American Center for Law and Justice after Democrat Thurgood Marshall, one of the best modern legal strategists.
Our job as Christians is to share the gospel and be a cultural preservative, if you will. I don't think those two things are mutually exclusive.
THOMAS: I don't think they're mutually exclusive either. I do think our primary objective is not to tinker with the kingdom of this world. It's the same with my motel room: I don't like the wallpaper, but I didn't call an interior decorator to redecorate, because I'm only staying for one night.
My great concern is what happens when the clergy descend from the pulpit. The clergy are ordained--the dictionary says that means "set apart"--to preach a different gospel from the gospel of cultural renewal.
Now if the gospel is preached, it can and often does renew culture. But trickle-down morality cannot work.
SEKULOW: I look for every opportunity God gives me in the courtroom to share the gospel. Believe it or not, I am good friends with the president of the American Civil Liberties Union, Nadine Strossen. My hope and prayer is one day she's going to call my office and not talk to me about whether some government policy is an establishment of religion, but say, "I've got a void in my life. How do I fill it?" So part of our work is relationship building. Again, the spheres are not separate.
THOMAS: Most of my friends are liberals and pagans, and I reel the same way about building relationships in order to show them something other than the stereotype of the know-nothing, uneducated, judgmental, anti-anti-anti.
Most of my liberal friends want to know, Why do you love me, why do you hang out with me? In our book, we've got interviews with Norman Lear and George McGovern. You ought to read what turned them off to the gospel early in their lives.
How we present the person of Christ is important. I do not accept the idea that because the Left does everything, we can go down to their level.
SEKULOW: I represent the activist on the street. I just had a case representing a woman who handed out pro-life literature in front of abortion clinics in Colorado. It's a crime there; you go to jail for seven months. That's how free our speech is today. I don't want people to think that her kind of one-on-one activism should stop.
Faith and politics are not separate. In our culture, this is no time to retreat. We may not like the legislative process, but someone's morality is always being legislated.
THOMAS: We've put too much faith in sending the right person to Washington. The political process is very limited in what it can do for our moral and spiritual problems.
Let's not be under any illusion that anything short of the regeneration of Americans will produce a changed America.
COPYRIGHT 2000 American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy
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