Who's afraid of the religious right? - Symposium - Column

National Review, Dec 27, 1993 by Jacob Neusner

A YEAR AGO, Governor Kirk Fordice of Mississippi scandalized bien-pensant opinion by saying that this is a Christian country. The contretemps took wing when a fellow governor suggested that he should have used the more inclusive phrase "JudaeoChristian," and Mr. Fordice declined to do so. He explained-eloquently and, to my mind, convincingly-- that he was defending Christians at that moment because at that moment "Christians were under severe attack." He would have risen to the defense of Judaism and Jewish culture had they been under attack.

His point was completely constructive: "The less we emphasize the Christian religion, the further we fall into the abyss of poor character and chaos in the United States of America." Amen, brother! Had he said the Buddhist, Judaic, or Muslim religion, he would have been just as right. We cannot build a decent society on secular foundations. Islam knows that; Judaism knows that; why should Christians say any less?

Commentators, meanwhile, had begun examining-- in some cases, exhuming--the remarks that other conservative Christians had made over the years in which a division between Christians and others, or even between some Christians and other Christians, was assumed or explicitly stated. Thus Reform Judaism quoted the Reverend Pat Robertson, who, in 1980 at a staff meeting of the Christian Broadcasting Network, described Jews as "spiritually deaf and spiritually blind" but liable to be "brought in as offerings to the Lord"---or, in plain language, persuaded that Jesus is the Messiah. And the supposition, always latent in the media, that conservative Christians are exclusivist both religiously and politically was up and running.

To get one obvious point out of the way first: Mr. Robertson's desire to convert Jews to Christian belief, while it may offend some Jews, can hardly be described as exclusionary. It makes an absolute claim about where religious truth lies, but it does not assume that outsiders cannot see the light. Quite the contrary.

But if we assume that most Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and so on will not convert to Christianity, does that mean that no political alliance is possible? Or is it rather the case that when it comes to the kinds of moral values expressed in politics, evangelical Christians have more in common with conservative Jews, conservative blacks, and the so-called "white ethnic" Roman Catholics, than any of these groups has with the secularists who seem to dominate American public life?

Certainly, conservative Jews cannot look to their secular brethren as allies. As a leading conservative Judaic figure, Dennis Prager, writes: "Most American Jews derive their values not from Judaism but from the dominant secular liberal culture. Thus, many Jews believe that all they need to do in order to formulate a Jewish position is: 1) Note that 'Judaism teaches compassion.' 2) Take the liberal position, which is the one that always seems to be the most compassionate. 3) Label that position 'Jewish.'"

IT WOULD BE nice, therefore, if Jewish conservatives could look to the Christian Right (both Catholic and Protestant) for inspiration and support. For the many conservatives who practice Judaism, Christianity should be not an enemy (we are not out shopping for salvation somewhere else) but an ally and friend.

First, we all believe that, made in God's image and after God's likeness, all humanity possesses inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of a happy life. We equally believe that, absent such a foundation in faith, the conviction of the sanctity of human life is likely to give way to a view of humanity as negotiable, a view that speaks of "ethnic cleansing" or "extermination" (comparing human beings to dirt or vermin, as in the Serbian and German instances in our times) or describes a fetus as a blob of protoplasm.

Second, we look to religion for the source of wisdom and conscience to sustain this society. For we see national purpose in no other place. Communism once animated lives but was shown to be a monstrous fraud. Nazism and Fascism hide out in caves in Idaho. Science tells us how to accomplish our goals, but who is to help us identify our task and frame our vocation? We who believe in God have our answer, and that is why we pray for guidance and acknowledge help when it comes.

Third, we believe religion really is a native category for Americans. The First Amendment--protecting religion from government, as much as guaranteeing freedom from religions that the citizen has not voluntarily chosen--presented religion with the greatest gift any political document has ever conceived: definitive status as a fact of life.

Furthermore, all studies of the relationship between religion and political action--from Gerhard Lenski's 1960 classic, The Religious Factor, through the annual studies by Professor Andrew Greeley's National Opinion Research Center--have pointed to a single conclusion, which is that religion is a principal variable in explaining the choices people make. It follows that while we keep church apart from state, we cannot hope to keep religion out of politics. It is sheer fantasy to suppose that the way people worship on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday has no bearing on how they vote on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. To exclude religious argument from the political sphere for instance, Catholic arguments on abortion or evangelical Protestant concerns about pornography-would be to exclude whole ethnic communities from political influence. All in the name of "diversity."