A Wolf In Sheep's Clothing

I remember so many things about my home church. Dunning Park Chapel is a Plymouth Brethren "assembly" of hard-working people in the motor city of Detroit.

Originally from England, the Plymouth Brethren left after breaking away from the state church and suffering years of religious persecution. They came to the United States seeking the freedom to worship and practice their faith as they saw fit. In sharp contrast to high-church Anglicanism, Plymouth Brethren congregations were characterized by simplicity, lay leadership, personal piety, and a great devotion to the Bible. Ritual, liturgy, and hierarchy were shunned in favor of plain services with wide participation.

There was a strong emphasis on the separation of church and state, and, as my mother once told me, there were no American flags in Plymouth Brethren congregations before World War II. In their earliest days, they were even pacifists. The Plymouth Brethren communities were genuinely countercultural, consciously rejecting many of the values of their surrounding culture on the basis of their steadfast biblical faith.

Much of that was still true as I was growing up in the 1950s and '60s. These were people for whom faith was at the center of life. Indeed, most of our family activity revolved around the church which my parents had helped to found. My father was always an elder in the church, and my mother would have been if women had been allowed to publicly exercise their gifts of leadership. Really, they were both lay pastors, he out front and she behind the scenes.

Many other families were also deeply involved, and that was the strength of the church. Personal faith and commitment were the highest priority and, despite the lack of professional ministry and a certain disdain for intellectual scholarship, the level of Bible knowledge was remarkably high. The people I grew up with in the church were mostly working class to middle class. They were drafters for Ford Motor Company or line workers for Detroit Edison or secretaries or housekeepers with a smattering of teachers and business people. They were all white, Midwestern, and very middle American.

While there are unique qualities about the Plymouth Brethren, these people are more or less typical of the 40 million conservative white evangelicals of "born again" status so often mentioned in the religious and secular media. They are not right-wing extremists and, in fact, are not particularly political at all. Rather, they are just ordinary working people who believe the Bible and are worried when their values are threatened or ignored.

THERE ARE A NUMBER of core values I received from my growing-up years in the church, values that we perceived to be at the heart of our Christian faith, values that are still with me. Jesus was at the absolute center of everything. He was our Savior and our Lord, and I remember countless sermons and conversations about what "the Lord" would have us be and do.

The Bible was the primary source of authority among us; Bible study and scripture memorization were highly prized. The walls of my father's basement study were lined with biblical commentaries and he, like many others, arose early in the morning to study the Bible before going off to work. The Bible taught us the Word of God, and we were hungry for that Word.

Out of our devotion to Jesus and the authority of the Bible in our lives came many commitments. For example, I remember a very definite resistance to materialism. I often heard how money would never make you happy but easily got in the way of "serving the Lord." The rich were never admired but rather were a little suspect spiritually.

Instead, the real heroes who were exalted in my church were the missionaries who gave up material comforts and financial success and even risked their lives to preach the gospel on foreign shores, or the itinerant preachers who traveled the circuit of our little churches to teach us the Bible and had no earthly rewards to show for it. These Bible teachers and preachers often stayed in our home and made a deep impression on me as a small boy. I've often thought that they would have been utterly repulsed by the materialism that later swept through the evangelical churches.

There was a very deep conviction in my church that we were to be different from the world because of our Christian faith. A great vigilance was maintained lest we become "too worldly." We were pilgrims and aliens, not the leading citizens and successful wielders of power. We loved our country but didn't think we had, or should have, much to do with running it. Power was as suspect as wealth.

The old hymn said it well, "This world is not my home, I'm just a-passing through." Our countercultural identity often expressed itself in unfortunate and ill-conceived legalisms (I got into trouble because I loved movies and dancing), but at the core of it, there was a central biblical truth.

While there was never anything so self-conscious as "social action," the church was always very supportive of the downtown mission for the "down and out." And any family in trouble because of unemployment or alcoholism or marital problems could find help and support from the church in which there was a genuine compassion for hurting people.

The early Plymouth Brethren pacifism had long since been displaced, and we prayed often for our young men in the service. But though we often got God and country all mixed up together, there was a sense that war was a horrible rather than a glamorous thing and that the nations of the world had let their own sin drive them into violence. After all, the Bible said the causes of war were covetousness and pride.

The family was foundational among us, marriage commitments were sacred, sexual morality was essential, and children were precious gifts from God. The declining morality of the culture was viewed as a serious threat.

TO THIS DAY, I treasure many of the values I was raised with in my little church. But we, like other kinds of churches, were tremendously affected by the values and assumptions of our surrounding culture. My church chose many of the wrong places to take its stand, and the result was spiritual compromise with the culture at fundamental points, while hanging on to vestiges of separation that had less and less meaning.

My own conflicts with the church came not over the centrality of Jesus or the authority of the Bible but over racism and war, during the days of the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. Over those questions, I believed we were acting like typical white Americans, not biblical Christians. In other words, we had become "worldly." The Cold War anti-communism of the postwar period that became such all-purveying propaganda in the 1950s took a heavy toll on the people of my church. Like most other Americans, we accepted the growing militarism that was overtaking the country.

The rising prosperity of the period also began to have a profound impact on attitudes in the church. The distinctive differences our faith made gradually eroded as we identified more and more with the postwar values of the American empire and the upward mobility of our middle-class neighbors.

But during the 1960s and '70s, a number of young people from the evangelical churches, including the Plymouth Brethren, began to challenge that cultural conformity and call for a more biblical faith. These "young evangelicals" began to recover the biblical foundations of social justice, compassion for the poor, warnings against militarism, and dangers of civil religion. And an alternative to the evangelical endorsement of the status quo began to emerge.

However, the evangelical fold was about to be invaded by a wolf in sheep's clothing. The forces of the political Far Right, which were gathering with renewed energy in response to the social crisis of the 1960s and early '70s, decided to target the evangelical constituency. In the mid-1970s, Richard Viguerie openly announced plans to aim his computers at the evangelical community, which he and other New Right operatives hoped would be fertile soil for their political ambitions. The first right-wing political move to recruit evangelicals in large numbers came during the 1976 election campaign (see "The Plan to Save America," Sojourners, April 1976). That first effort didn't' prove particularly successful, but it laid the ideological and financial groundwork for a much bigger push toward 1980.

THE FIRST STEP was for the veteran political activists from the New Right to make the crucial political alliance with a group of rising fundamentalist media stars--the television preachers. The TV preachers and the New Right activists found the relationship mutually advantageous, very lucrative, and extremely beneficial to the powerful ambitions of both groups.

From the beginning an appeal was made to conservative evangelical values, the fears and failures of liberalism were carefully exploited, and a new gospel was created--one that would provide religious sanction and support for an extreme right-wing political agenda.

For example, to the richest country in the history of the world, a new gospel of prosperity was proclaimed that saw wealth as a sign of God's favor and poverty as evidence of spiritual failure. Traditional evangelical frugality was replaced by the extravagant lifestyles of the TV preachers who claimed that God's children should have the best of everything and who ended up with far more than the people who supported them with their hard-earned dollars.

Similarly, to the most heavily armed nation in world history, a new gospel of strength was preached, extolling military might, proclaiming our nation's cause and even our nuclear weapons as righteous, while condemning all our adversaries as evil empires, communists, and terrorists. The Soviet threat became more important in evangelical sermons than the words of Jesus.

Legitimate evangelical concern for the family, for sexual integrity, and for the lives of unborn children were all exploited and twisted to gain support for restoring patriarchy, rolling back the progress women had made, and launching vicious attacks on homosexuals. Absurd linkages were made between the "moral issues" like abortion and family and the economic and military goals that form the heart of the real conservative political agenda. Somehow, support for the family got translated into support for the MX missile and cutting social programs for poor people.

Claiming to be the true inheritors of the evangelical tradition, the Religious Right has imposed an alien and false gospel on the evangelical community. In doing so the preachers and practitioners of the Religious Right are providing an invaluable service to the powers that be. The biblical gospel is a threat to the wealth, power, and violence of the American establishment, so it was replaced with an American gospel that sanctions the values of the system as it aggressively reasserts its power.

BY MAKING INROADS into the conservative evangelical churches, like the one I grew up in, the New Right political activists found fresh recruits for their cause. By tying their religious message to a very specific political agenda, the TV preachers have gained access to power and a media prominence only dreamed of before. The longtime political professionals of the Far Right seemed increasingly religious and deeply concerned about the real "moral issues" at stake.

The TV preachers also showed their great adaptability to working the backrooms of political power and influence. The fundamentalists' longtime religious exclusiveness and aversion to working with non-fundamentalists was suddenly transformed into a new ecumenism. The litmus test of fellowship was no longer biblical doctrine but rather adherence to the essentials of a right-wing political doctrine.

For example, Christian Voice is a New Right group which publishes an annual scorecard rating of every member of Congress on how they vote on "Christian" issues. According to the Christian Voice rating, the "correct" Christian positions have included support for the highest levels of military spending, including Star Wars, the MX missile, and chemical weapons; opposition to social programs for the poor; aid to the El Salvadoran military, the now-deposed Marcos government in the Philippines, and the contras seeking to overthrow the government of Nicaragua; support for anti-abortion legislation, tuition tax credits, and school prayer; opposition to economic sanctions against South Africa's apartheid regime; and opposition to the Nuclear Freeze and the Equal Rights Amendment.

Among those who have received 100 percent ratings from Christian Voice are former Rep. Richard Kelly (R-Fla.), who was convicted of taking a bribe in the Abscam scandal, and Rep. Dan Crane (R-Ill.), who was censured by the House for sleeping with a teenage congressional page. Among those who received zero ratings were Rep. Bill Gray and Rep. Bob Edgar--both clergy and Democrats from Pennsylvania. Fundamentalist and chief tobacco spokesperson Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) got 100 percent ratings, while evangelical Sen. Mark Hatfield (R-Ore.) got ratings of 20 to 30 percent.

Under the new leadership of the Religious Right, the body of Christ, a minority community of pilgrims and aliens, gives way to a "moral majority," a political force committed to turning the country back to the values of American capitalism, materialism, imperialism, and military superiority. In the name "conservative evangelical," the label "conservative" suddenly became much more important than "evangelical." It was easy to see that the message being preached was much more New Right than Christian. The TV preachers wanted us all to believe there was really no difference between the two.

THE TV PREACHERS not only became the promoters of a new American gospel, they also began to play increasingly specific roles for the new conservative government in Washington. Their annual National Religious Broadcasters Convention has virtually become the National Republican Broadcasters Convention, with the heads of state and party serving as keynote speakers and leading attractions.

A number of the TV preachers perform crucial roles as point men and stormtroopers for the Reagan administration on key issues. At a key point in the nuclear debate, Jerry Falwell went on the stump against the Nuclear Freeze. Before his
nationwide speaking tour and series of debates, he was briefed at the White House by the National Security Agency and by the president himself. When challenged on a national TV show about such access, Falwell replied, "Anyone can talk to the president."

Falwell's trips to South Africa and the Philippines played a similar role. In both cases he returned to the United States taking positions the administration held but was afraid to publicly assert for fear of the political fallout. The Reagan government couldn't afford to say that in South Africa and the Philippines the real issue was communism rather than apartheid or Marcos. But Falwell could and would say it and, in so doing, could test the waters by putting out the extreme conservative line to see how it would float. It sank, and along with it, Falwell's contribution income and political capital.

Pat Robertson is playing a similar role around U.S. support for the contras in Nicaragua. And now, with his possible presidential bid, Robertson becomes a very attractive religious stalking horse for the Far Right forces of the Republican Party.

The TV preachers are ideally suited for their political role. First, they give a religious and moral credibility to the right-wing political position. In so doing they have helped to narrow the range of discussion and dissent on key questions. Through effective religious oratory, extreme right-wing political views can be made to sound like the things that made this country great and the good old-fashioned values that most Americans believe.

Second, the TV preachers bring with them a built-in constituency, a genuinely grassroots network that the political Right has always lacked. The people I grew up with are now constantly subjected to the best state-of-the-art technology and techniques of persuasion through television, computers, and direct mail, as the political Far Right attempts to secure their support, money, and votes. In the name of evangelical values, my people are being sold on and recruited to a nationalist, exclusivist, materialist, militarist, and repressive world view that is decidedly un-evangelical.

The projection of power requires ideologists and apologists, culturally, politically, and, of course, religiously. In a calculated bargain, many TV preachers have made themselves available for that purpose.

An independent biblical vision is what the present U.S. government and its religious apologists are most afraid of. The job of the Religious Right is to try to discredit genuine religious dissent by always screaming "left-wing" or "communist." They do their job well as the highly rewarded chaplains of the American system.

THE GOSPEL OF THE political Right is not good news to the poor, to the marginalized and disenfranchised, to racial minorities and women, to the starving millions who suffer from the way the world is presently arranged. In other words, it is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is the gospel of American wealth and power, which is only good news to those on top.

The Bible warns against a close association with the powers that be and against those false prophets who make such alliances with earthly rulers. It is suspicious of any and all concentrations of power because of human sinfulness, and it is especially sensitive to the victims of the power systems.

But there is good news on the home front. Despite evangelical susceptibility to the gospel of the TV preachers, they have yet to win the day. Many evangelicals aren't so sure that their opposition to abortion should also include support for nuclear weapons. Or that Christians should strive for riches while so many are poor. Some are suspicious about getting so involved with political power and remember when the separation of church and state seemed more important.

Perhaps most importantly, some of the children of the evangelical churches have grown up and now work with the poor in the inner city, are trying to stop the arms race, are seeking to make peace in Central America, and are doing it all because of strong Christian faith. Some of their elders don't agree with them, but everyone knows their church's children are not communists.

The evangelical community is an equally natural constituency for a consistent political morality that stands up for truth and defends life wherever it is threatened. That kind of evangelical social conscience is a prophetic challenge to the selective and inconsistent moralities of both the Right and the Left and is especially sensitive to the poor and the oppressed who are so close to the heart of God. It rejects narrow nationalism in favor of the kind of international perspective that grows so naturally from our identity as the worldwide body of Christ. And an evangelical social conscience resists the dangerous impulses toward violence and war precisely because of the ministry of reconciliation we have been given as followers of the Prince of Peace.

The plans and purposes of the Religious Right are personal issues with me. There is a battle going on for the hearts and minds of the evangelical community. These are the people with whom I grew up, from whom I learned faith, and with whom I still identify. They are under attack by the most powerful political forces in the world. They are in danger of being literally devoured by wolves in sheep's clothing.

But I'm going to trust the faith that reared me. I'm going to believe that a simple and vibrant evangelical faith can resist the corruption of right-wing political power. I'm going to hope that, faced with the ultimate choice, evangelicals will choose to be biblical rather than to consort with worldly power.

Jim Wallis is editor-in-chief of Sojourners.