What's un-Christian about the Christian right - Cover Story

Washington Monthly, Dec, 1995 by Jonathan Rowe

There is something very strange about the Christian Coalition's "Contract With the American Family," released with much fanfare in May. The document says a lot about the usual conservative agenda--tax credits as rewards for doing right, abolishing the Department of Education, policing the Internet, and so on. But there's little of the thing you'd most expect to find. There's not one word that Jesus himself actually said.

In fact, the Contract does not start out from Scripture, but from election returns and polling data. "The message of the election was clear," the introduction says, boasting that the provisions of the Contract "enjoy support from 60 to 90 percent of the American people." This form of justification is not auspicious. I remember only one reference to a poll in the New Testament. It was when Pontius Pilate asked the people whether he should have mercy on Jesus. "Crucify him," they said, and so Pilate did. An agenda that purports to represent the "Christian" view, but is assembled with the public-opinion wizardry of focus groups and polls, should raise eyebrows from the start.

Christianity of the kind Jesus taught is more about going against the flow than with it, more about telling people what they need to hear, rather than what they want. A minister by the name of Henry Drummond amplified this point in a sermon called "The Greatest Thing in the World." Based on a passage in one of Paul's letters (I Corinthians 13), it is a pointed commentary on the essential Christian character. When it came to faith, eloquence, commitment, and sacrifice, Drummond pointed out, Paul was the exemplar. He had suffered stonings and deprivations, and had taken enormous risks. He spoke "with the tongues of men and angels"; he had the "faith to move mountains." Yet Paul thought he had still fallen far short of the mark. The traits that had come easiest to him, he came to see, were the least important. The most important thing, he said, is "agape," simple compassion for his fellow beings, which for him was more difficult.

Christianity is, first of all, about making radical demands upon oneself. If the Christian Right in America today were a movement informed by the radical and tough-minded Christianity of the Scriptures--the kind that puts neighbor ahead of self and "seeketh not her own"--it would be a cleansing wind. It would promote an atmosphere of responsibility and mutual obligation rather than entitlement and right. It would challenge Americans--rich as well as poor--to whine less and do more. It would express concern about the family by taking on not just government, but also the corporations that are laying off breadwinners and moving their jobs abroad. It would not flinch from bearing witness against the rule of lucre in Washington, and the polemical licentiousness and character assassination that poisons the atmosphere of public life.

At the grassroots level, some of the people drawn to the Christian Right have shown evidence of this spirit. But the higher up you go, the further away you get. At the top, with the so-called Christian Coalition, it's more of the same old Washington trip--take away the name, and you wouldn't see much difference from any other right-wing group-except the sanctimony that the name itself provides. We are left with a Christian Right that, in important respects, has a ways to go before it is worthy of that name.

I am not a theologian nor am I a Scripture scholar. But I do try to give some heed to these matters, and, in fact, I actually agree with the Christian Right on many things. I think the public schools should teach the basics and leave such things as sex education for the home. I think that corporations like Time Warner ought to be accountable for the crap they spew. And I agree that the best giving is voluntary and individual rather than coercive and bureaucratic. If Christianity is about anything, it is about putting yourself on the line.

And that is precisely where the Christian Right disappoints. To be sure, Christianity is not primarily a social doctrine. It demands, first and foremost, radical inner change. But a central part of this change--of saving yourself--is the need to get out of yourself, to care passionately for those in need. "Give," says Jesus, "and it shall be given unto you."

This spirit is something which has not been in great evidence within the Christian Coalition today. The Coalition's position on the Republican's family tax credit is a small but telling example. The proposal would give a $500-per-child tax credit to every family. When Democrats, and even some Republicans, suggested that the well-to-do are not in urgent need in this regard, and that the available funds should be focused on the more needy--generously defined as families earning less than, say, $95,000--the Coalition screamed murder. They actually wanted the credit extended to families with incomes as high as $200,000. Yes, the tax laws are hardly the final test, but they do reflect larger values.