The Homosexual War against Christianity
By: Billy Rojas
Chapter 1
American Christianity in trouble
.
.
There should be no real question that the current condition of Christianity
in the United States is the result of far more than Evangelical ineptitude
and dysfunctional philosophy. There is a good deal of that, this is
unarguably true. But what will not be done here is to whitewash any of
the flaws in Evangelical Christian faith as many people have perceived
them.
Not because of some kind of animus against Christians but for the opposite
reason, to try to provide a useful critique that might inspire long overdue
reforms intended to remake and revitalize Biblical faith
.
Historically, Evangelical churches have been criticized repeatedly for
weakness
in understanding how the ills of society result from more than individual
sinfulness.
For example, injustices caused by defects in our system of law are
notorious for
giving Get-Out-of-Jail-Free cards to the wealthy who commit felony theft
at
grand scale while imprisoning the poor for misdemeanors.
.
Then there is the issue of failed schools that handicap some populations in
the
job market while, across town, superior schools prepare the young for
high-paying employment. And there is much that never seems to appear
on the radar of Evangelical believers.
.
Cutthroat business practices shut down productive factories for the sake of
inflated profit margins when products from cheap labor countries can be
imported
at lower costs, while ruining whole communities in America as if there
were
no social costs to think about, some of which are enormous. In short, the
many
negative consequences of laissez-faire capitalism are not even considered,
all the while as the free market is extolled as if it was perfect in every
way.
As if rapacious capitalism was the best we can do, as if Christian faith.
is inseparable from some version of "greed economics."
.
This is not a condemnation of the market, -actually there are several
markets
in America including a market for ideas- but recognition of the fact that
any theory of capitalist economics must take into account the weaknesses
of that system. The pretense that the market makes no mistakes is
an absurdity. Yet many -probably most- Evangelicals seem to have
unquestioned faith in markets regardless of market shortcomings.
And the market can be and often is incredibly irrational. The Nobel Prize
in economics was just awarded to Richard Thaler of the University of
Chicago
for developing a theory of behavioral economics that is predicated on the
fact
that the market is as much a matter of social psychology as anything else,
that, like any population of human beings there are emotional responses
to financial and other events which have nothing at all to do with rational
optimization. There are panics and times of euphoria based on speculative
frenzies, and there are any number of oddities like typical behavior on
Fridays as markets are closing, when there usually is a "dip;" this follows
from nothing rational at all. Moreover, rational optimization assumes
that choices are made on the basis of the best possible information.
But that is not what happens in real life; people make decisions on the
basis of the most recent information they have whether or not it is
optimal in any sense of the word.
.
Yes, the free market is the best economic system in the world; do we really
need to debate this issue since the fall of Soviet Communism in 1989?
But this is like saying that the American system of government is superior
to all others. It is reasonable to take this view; it certainly is my
opinion.
But only an idiot would say there isn't much -really a lot- of room for
improvement. Why aren't Evangelicals critical of the free market?
.
There is even more. As valid as it may be to insist upon personal
responsibility and individual salvation, if that is all you want to see,
then you will miss all kinds of other things you should see.
.
The predecessors of today's Evangelicals once criticized the Social Gospel
movement of the late 19th century and early 20th century. And, yes, its
emphasis
on social causes of evil went too far by unjustifiably minimizing
individual
responsibility. However, near complete rejection of the Social Gospel
message
does no-one the least good. And what about Christian conscience that tells
us
to demand a morally accountable market? Somehow Evangelicals don't seem
to get the point.
.
Heroes of Evangelical Christianity of the past are often heroes to me,
also,
from Jonathan Edwards to Charles Grannison Finney to German theologian
Karl Barth. But so is the greatest of Social Gospel reformers, a Baptist
named
Walter Rauschenbusch. It is inexplicable that Rauschenbusch isn't
universally
recognized for his contributions to Christian faith.
.
He didn't put it in these terms, but he knew exactly what Adam Smith said
in the 18th century at the time he wrote The Wealth of Nations. Which was
why Smith had written a companion volume that economic conservatives
almost never acknowledge, his Theory of Moral Sentiments.
.
Smith's point was that left to its own devices the market becomes amoral,
it does not care who gets hurt or how much damage is caused to the economy
for the sake of more and more money flowing to the top, in contemporary
idiom,
to the top 1%.
The market does NOT produce optimal outcomes without commitment to
morality on the part of traders and investors and CEOs of major
corporations.
Yet Evangelicals, more than any other Christians, are enamored of the
anti-moral libertarian principle of "each for himself and screw everyone
else as long as I get mine." This does not compute -and everyone who
is not an Evangelical has little difficulty in recognizing this hypocrisy
for what it is.
This is unfair to the genuine 'saints' among Evangelicals, of which there
are more than a few. This is to refer to people who give selflessly to help
others, who actually care what happens to the poor and unfortunate.
Including black people. Of all Christian groups, Evangelicals adopt
the most black children. None of this is being overlooked. However,
when is comes to seeing the "big picture," there is a serious problem.
..
Consider Biblical literalism, a viewpoint that was anything but dominant in
the early Church when many Christian leaders stressed allegorical
interpretation
of Biblical passages that make presumed empirical statements which, based
on
reasonable understanding of observable evidence, simply cannot be taken as
true in the sense of surface meaning. Was the world really created in six
days?
The idea is preposterous. As an aetiology, a narrative meant to convey
deeper
meaning, the Genesis story is memorable and inspirational. But to insist
that
it is scientifically true? How can any grown-up think any such thing?
And if this kind of thing was a problem in ancient Israel or classical era
Rome
it is a profound dilemma in our age of science. This doesn't stop some
people
from being creationists but you don't find many men or women who are
leaders
in society at large, in just about any professional field, who hold
creationist views. Creationism, for the educated classes, is a ticket to
ostracism; no-one who has
gone to a reputable college gives any credibility to people who accept the
"young Earth" theory or tells you that dinosaurs and humans once walked
side-by-side in the 6000 BC era.
But this is not the worst problem confronting Evangelical Christians, not
nearly.
.
Conservative churches also, certainly as a rule, have little interest in
America's
ethnic and racial minorities, groups that are growing larger every year,
not only in absolute numbers but as a percentage of the general population
such that the 89% white majority of ca.1970 has become approximately
a 67% majority today. And along with this shift has come a range of
values that are alien to traditional white Protestants, everything from
tastes in food to sense of moral right and wrong. That is, conservative
Christian faith is perceived as less and less relevant, hence has lost
more and more authority.
.
There have also been major changes in the arts -which is to say cultural
preferences in visual arts per se, but also preferences in movies, in
literature,
in theater, in music styles, in women's fashions, even in industrial
design.
Leaving aside pornography as prurient interest visual material which often
is utterly artless and crude, this still presents us with new tastes on the
part
of many people in erotic arts, or suggestive advertising art, or X-rated
humorous sexy art. About which Evangelical Christians have little or
nothing to say that resonates with the culture at large. And this has had
its own set of costs as non-Evangelicals go their own way, enjoying life
in ways they perceive as basically good whatever religious people may
say about such matters.
.
Controversy about evolution in the past -and continuing today- is merely
a
symptom of a much larger set of issues that Evangelicals have all-too-often
been unable to address effectively. Some churches, to be fair, have made
serious efforts to reach people who are culturally modern, in fact in some
cases -think of megachurches- they have been very successful, indeed.
But the trend has still been in the wrong direction.
.
Christians shoot themselves in the foot and sometimes cannot stop
shooting themselves in the foot. They like to shoot themselves in the foot.
This is one way to think about a variety of beliefs that increasing numbers
of Americans regard as dysfunctional. And at the same time, some beliefs
are being compromised away, beliefs that most Americans regard as vital
to the well-being of families, and high on the list is defense of normal
heterosexual sexuality
.
.
Defence of questionable views by conservative Christians was a major
reason
that the so-called "mainline"churches went their own way starting in the
1950s.
In fact, ever since the Scopes trial of 1925 the more sophisticated and
socially
conscious "wing" of Protestant religion started to distance itself from
sometimes
poorly educated anti-science Protestants, especially since one demographic
was
largely urban and northern and the other more southern than not and often
was rural. Effects of this cultural divide made a difference. But by the
fifties the
education gap had grown significantly and divergence between the two groups
accelerated, with even northern Baptists abandoning the spiritual ground
claimed by the Southern Baptist Convention in order to pursue souls
whose worldviews were shaped by the new knowledge taught
in the universities.
.
Leading "modernist" thinkers like Reinhold Neibuhr also made a difference
in reacting to the superstar of conservative faith, Billy Graham, whom
Neibuhr
and many of his colleagues regarded as an embarrassment for his naivete,
simplistic theology, and "easy grace" message to the unwashed that all you
need
to do is believe in Jesus. But it was the 1960s that proved to be the real
watershed
as liberal-minded churches accepted much of the critique that the youth
movement
of that era was making about war and social injustice as valid -while
traditionalist churches did not, and often regarded campus radicals, even
those who claimed
to be speaking from the viewpoint of religious conscience, as more Marxist
than Christian, or not really Christian at all.
.
>From that time to this the conservative wing of Protestant Christianity
seemed determined to self-destruct, not all at once, but piecemeal,
decade after decade losing relevance in the culture at large. Yes, there
was still a major revival of traditional faith ahead, mostly in the 1980s,
but it did not effect urban America all that much, and, in any case,
it did not last. It spoke to fathers and mothers with 2.3 kids but had
far less resonance among the unmarried, among single mothers, and
among aspiring professionals making their way up the ladder.
There was no way the revival could last.
.
This is not to justify much of anything about the liberal wing of
Protestantism
although it should be pointed out that, ironically, until some time in the
early
1990s, the modernists were the most supportive of Martin Luther King,
a black Baptist preacher who, while politically radical for his time, was
sometimes very conservative spiritually. Which was reflected in his
political
allegiance to the Republican Party until late in his all-too-brief life.
.
That is, liberal Protestantism made the horrendous mistake, still
unrecognized
as a mistake in the early 21st century, of exchanging the 'gospel of social
relevance' for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The new scripture came in
installments in the form of the New York Times and all those publications
that followed its editorial policy. The old scripture, known as "the
Bible,"
was increasingly seen as obsolete or no better than a book filled with
advice you could take or leave. As Mark Steyn has put it, the new
gospel taught that "in today’s America, land of the Obamacare Pajama Boy,
Jesus is basically Nightshirt Boy, a fey non-judgmental dweeb who’s
cool with whatever." Exactly what this is supposed to mean isn't clear,
but enough of the idea comes across to get the point; 'liberal' Protestant
faith is a pale imitation of the real thing.
.
At any rate, the decline of liberal Protestantism has been far worse and
far
more rapid than has been true for conservative churches. And just about all
of that fall from cultural dominance has been self-induced.
.
The story of Protestant Christian decline is complicated and there is
no simple narrative to explain everything that actually happened in
history.
But you nonetheless can say that part of the reason for the slow-motion
implosion of what we eventually came to call the Religious Right was caused
by internal weaknesses that still have not been addressed
by the great majority of Evangelicals.
.
In other words, it is essential to make it clear that what you are about to
read,
if this was a chapter in a history textbook, would need to include a good
deal
of material that describes the structural limitations of conservative
Christian faith,
in the sense that too many of the ideas it promotes, and too many of the
assumptions about human nature taken as fact by believers, have contributed
directly to conservative religious decline. However, this is not what will
be
focused on here -because, more than anything, this decline has been the
result of a war or ideas and values against Christian faith that has been
waged starting in the early 1970s until, by now, the enemies of
Christianity
have achieved most of the goals they sought to reach.
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