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

Washington Monthly, Dec, 1995 by Jonathan Rowe

The Coalition's stance (or, rather, it's silence) is even more bizarre on Republican efforts to cut the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). The EITC was begun by the Reagan Administration to help lift from poverty those who work honestly for a living. If there is anyone the Christian Coalition should be championing, it's these people. "The federal government, through the tax code, has punished familes for working, saving, and for staying together," their Contract says. But when it comes time to save a tax provision that actually helps working families do these things, the Coalition is missing from the battle.

One could ask similar questions about medical care reform and a host of other issues. But the more basic matter is the willingness to bear the cross personally, to do the difficult, needful things. Commendably, the Coalition talks about voluntary service; at the local level, members no doubt do their part. But the national focus on bigger tax breaks for charitable contributions--do Christians really need a new bonus from the IRS in order to give?--rather than on service itself, is not exactly inspiring.

Nor is the selective condemnation of sin--the way they indulge the sins favored by certain conservative Republican constituencies. The Coalition is a tiger on lust, but it is strangely docile on its counterpart: greed. Jesus made no such distinction. He whipped the money changers from the Temple, condemned the charging of interest, and admonished the rich man to sell what he had and give the proceeds to the poor. "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle," said Jesus, "than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." Yet America's top executives now make 140 times what their average worker does, up from 40 times in 1972--quite a bit of baggage to carry through the Kingdom's gate. I also suspect the early Christians might have had some concerns about the Thai women being held in slave-like conditions so that American consumers can buy bargain T-shirts. The Christian Coalition certainly hasn't shown any concern.

And while it is so eager to blame the government for strains on the family, somehow it doesn't count when corporations cut pay and health benefits for those same families. Nor does the siege of commercial culture, which fills every nook and cranny of waking life with beguilements to hedonistic self-indulgence. To blame the decline of our culture on 1960s liberals and the National Endowment for the Arts, and to virtually ignore corporate commercial culture (except for a few convenient targets like Democrat-leaning Time Warner) invites the suspicion that moral principle is not their only consideration.

Could campaign contributions to favored allies be one of those considerations? "Gifts and bribes make even wise men blind to the truth and prevent them from being honest in their criticism," says Sirach in the Apocrypha. You'd think that the Coalition might have something to say about a politician like Senator Phil Gramm, who spends two hours a day on the phone raising money for himself when he could be raising money for people in need. Yet conspicuously absent from the Contract with the American Family is any reference to campaign reform or the corrupting influence of money in politics. The Christian Coalition becomes soft indeed before the one sin--the love of money--which Jesus said was the root of all the rest.