The movement begun by Jerry Falwell in the 1970’s involved an active pressure to reinvigorate parts of the citizenry that normally kept away from politics. A noble aim. Falwell hoped that he could bring Evangelical families out from the farthest folds of politics into much more active roles. Civic engagement is a good thing. He did this by establishing the Moral Majority.
The Moral Majority was initially begun in response to congressional threats of revoking the tax-exempt status of several local churches. Rev. Falwell needed to create a way to challenge the political wrongs being done to churches. The method was to turn parishioners into the new Conservative base.
After taking on the battle of tax-exemption status, the Moral Majority began to revel in its new found political power. Political pressure continued on and caused several more issues to be pressed in the American political realm. These issues are the outlawing of abortion, the opposition to state recognition and acceptance of homosexuality, the opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment and Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, the enforcement of a traditional vision of family life, and the censorship of media outlets that promote an “anti-family” agenda. Oddly enough, these are all now in the WA State Republican Platform.
Their success was substantial. In the 1980 Presidential Election the Moral Majority is credited with providing 2/3 of the white evangelical vote to Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter.
The Moral Majority was officially dissolved in 1989 but is widely understood to live on in the Christian Coalition which has had battles of its own. Its successes are debatable but also quantifiable. Any organization that could distribute 70 Million Voter Guides in American Churches without sparking a media spectacle must have some ability to connect with church-goers.
While I think endorsing and supporting a candidate is a great way to influence politics, even via voters’ guide, some organizations’ campaign to create “moral law” in America is problematic.
It is the confining and constricting of people’s freedoms by way of morality that upsets people. You shouldn’t be able to force people to do something they don’t want to, if it doesn’t specifically interfere with another’s freedoms. But I suppose this line of logic could be used against democrats about poverty and social security programs.
There is the conservative belief that you shouldn’t take from one person to assist another. They shouldn’t have their economic freedoms because of another person’s poor choices or circumstances. The only difference in logic that potentially saves SSI and disability from becoming a double standard is that the violation of these economic freedoms is not for an individual’s Salvation but for a societal safety net that protects everyone from the problems that are associated with impoverished life. Not just providing food for the poor but also, protecting the majority of people not on any sort of state welfare from potentially worse crime rates should no welfare be given to the poorest sectors of society. If you don’t have food to eat, I might venture you’d steal it too.
The pressure towards creating moral laws becomes especially frightening as we see an increasing connection between these organizations and the Republican Party.
This is most notable when Joel Hunter was scheduled to assume presidency of the Christian Coalition on the first day of 2007. He hoped to expand the group to better represent Christ by focusing on issues such as poverty and the environment. He was told by current leadership that these issues were not core to the constituency. Instead of realigning his core values to the constituency’s he opted to decline the position.
Perhaps the GOP is slightly tighter with these organizations than most know. Next post, I hope to talk a little about this relationship and trying to figure out what the problems of an overly close knit relationship are and if anyone should really be worried.
Further Reading
A watchdog of the separation of church and state:
www.theocracywatch.org
Maybe you should assess the problem yourself in the WA State GOP platform:
www.wsrp.org/images/wa/2006_WSRP_Platform.pdf
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
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