There’s a new manifesto from the religious right.
Laurie Goodstein, writing in today’s New York Times, describes it as “an effort to rejuvenate the political alliance of conservative Catholics and evangelicals that dominated the religious debate during the administration of President George W. Bush.”
Citing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s call to civil disobedience, 145 evangelical, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian leaders have signed a declaration saying they will not cooperate with laws that they say could be used to compel their institutions to participate in abortions, or to bless or in any way recognize same-sex couples.
Meanwhile, the terrible murders at Ft. Hood have become a site for posturing on all sides. Joseph Liebermann has described these events as domestic terrorism, setting the stage for Homeland Security Committee hearings that will surely involve little more than political theater. And Jacob Weisberg, writing in this week’s Newsweek, scolds the president for his alleged over moderation with regard to “the threat from America’s Islamist enemies,” describing the Ft. Hood speech as evidence of the same.
Weisberg’s last paragraph is especially telling. Because I both agree and disagree with it, I’ll quote it in full.
Obama is right to continue emphasizing the all-important distinction between religious views that are compatible with democratic pluralism and those that aren’t. As he deals with the fallout of the attack, he must continue to separate Islamic extremism from Islam as a whole. But his words at Fort Hood, while comforting, do not really come to grips with the problem. America does not face a threat from the perversion of faith in general. We face a threat from the perversion of one faith in particular. The president needs to dip into his reservoir of good will to remind mainstream Muslims of their special responsibility. If militant Islamism is a distortion of their moderate beliefs, only their beliefs can defeat it.
Weisberg is right in pointing out that some religious views are compatible with democratic pluralism and some aren’t. This is a point religious rightists were willing to make as well last year when the target was Jeremiah Wright. But I think Weisberg’s claim that “America does not face a threat from the perversion of faith in general” is wrong and also wrong headed. Americans are quite willing to tolerate “perversions” of Christianity and Judaism. Indeed the English speaking world has a long tradition of tolerating “perversions” of Christianity. In 1649, English parliamentarians murdered the British King in the name of religious freedom. But the regime they installed during the interregnum was hardly filled with sweetness and light. In the run-up to our own civil war, Americans were quite willing to tolerate the preaching of slavery from the nation’s pulpits, but the British experience is more telling. The Roundheads failed because they were bigots, and in their sectarianism they couldn’t agree sufficiently to govern or to disarm the violence that plagued their time.
The intransigence of the religious right in this country is displayed remarkably in the manifesto to which Goodstein alludes.
We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence.
The headline chosen for Goodstein’s piece is “Christian Leaders Unite on Political Issues.” I guess that’s because the group includes both Catholics and protestants. But the group is a rump Christian group that always gets more favorable media attention than it deserves.
It’s time for that to stop. The Christian right gives cover to the militant militia movement, just recently reviewed by The Southern Poverty Law Center. Anybody who thinks that modern Christian militancy has no potential for violence should remember the Oklahoma City bombing and the recent murder of Dr. George Tiller.
Indeed, in the world at large, the rise of militant Islam troubles me less than the rise of anti-modern religious bigotry generally.
