Do MAGA Christians Support Trump Because of Malice or Stupidity—or Something Else?

Recently I learned about the adage called Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

The author of an article who cited those words wrote that he knows “lots of MAGA Christians but his efforts to understand ‘why’ they honor Trump have been futile. Since he has failed to find other reasons, he thinks that perhaps it must, indeed, be either because of malice or stupidity.

However, I don’t agree that it must be one or the other of those two choices. 

As most of you know well, I am not a MAGA Republican supporter. But I think that to attribute the reason that many Christians do support Trump and the MAGA movement as being due either to malice or stupidity is too harsh and inaccurate.

What can we say, then, about why there are so many MAGA Christians who do support Trump? That was an issue that Thinking Friend Jerry Jumper wrote/asked about in an email I received from him last month, and many others of you likely puzzle over that same question.

What could it be other than malice or stupidity? Several other reasons are feasible. and I think that the percentage of people who vote for Trump because of malice or stupidity is markedly smaller than those who did and will vote for Trump for other reasons.

Here are five reasons that might explain why many self-identified Christians have voted for Trump and are likely to do so again this fall, and this list is not exhaustive:

◈ Nostalgia. Many people who remember the 1950s—and still live in rural communities that fondly recall then as the “good old days” with an esteemed Republican President—wish that the U.S. could be like it was then. Thus, they are drawn to the Make America Great Again slogan.

◈ Fear. Closely related to the above is the fear of things changing for the worse. Nostalgic people often fear the loss of cherished values of the past. There is a close connection between religious and political conservatism, and one subsection of my book on fundamentalism is titled “The Fear Factor.”*¹

◈ Consistency. Some voters say they’ve always been (or ever since Reagan have been) a Republican, so naturally they vote for the Republican candidate. This was the sort of response June got from close relatives when she asked why they voted for Trump in 2016.

◈ Disinformation. Many people get misleading/erroneous information from “news” sources such as Fox News, “talk radio,” and publications such as Epoch Times.*² Last week I listened to the former some each evening—and was amazed at how their “news” differed from the “mainstream” media.*³

◈ Misinterpretation. Influential conservative evangelical Christians such as Pastor Robert Jeffress (First Baptist Church, Dallas), Ralph Reed (Faith and Freedom Coalition), and Franklin Graham (Samaritan’s Purse), among many others, have fostered misinterpretation of what the Bible says, or doesn’t say, about abortion, gay rights, etc.

Many people who support Trump for the above reasons may, indeed, lack sufficient understanding and/or information. But that doesn’t mean they are stupid. And while such reasons may trigger malicious actions by some, surely those who are MAGA supporters because of malice are few.

So, we who are steadfast opponents of Trump and MAGA Republicans need to beware of fostering arrogant, condescending, and/or belittling attitudes toward people we disagree with politically. Neighbor-love must be extended to them also, and that includes not labeling them as being either malicious or stupid.

Even the leaders of the Christian Right who for decades have sought to change this country into a theocracy, as vividly portrayed in Bad Faith, the new (2024) documentary about “Christian nationalism,” were certainly not stupid nor acting out of malice from their (mistaken) point of view.*⁴

But make no mistake about it: seeking to understand and being friendly toward MAGA Christians definitely doesn’t mean agreeing with their misguided views or minimizing the danger lurking under their unwise support of a wholly unworthy candidate for President.  

_____

*¹ Fed Up with Fundamentalism: A Historical, Theological, and Personal Appraisal of Christian Fundamentalism (2007, 2020), pp. 100~103.

*² Here is the link to an informative, and rather long, article about The Epoch Times.

*³ One evening last week, the top story at 8 p.m. was the campus unrest at Columbia University and elsewhere. Repeatedly they were referred to as “pro-Hamas” activities. The next morning the mainstream websites invariably called that unrest “pro-Palestinian.” That is a marked difference.

*⁴ This film traces the development of the Christian Right in the U.S. from the early 1970s to the present. June and I rented it from Amazon Prime and watched it last Friday evening. We thought it was a helpful film, fairly done but clear in showing the ongoing threat of Christian nationalism that seeks to overthrow USAmerican democracy. I highly recommend the viewing of, and sharing information about, that fine documentary.

 

 

Why are Teenage Girls “Not Okay”?

Soon after posting my February 16 blog article in which I referred to Diana Butler Bass, I read Bass’s latest newsletter on her Substack blog called The Cottage (which has 32,000 subscribers!) It was partly about teenage girls, which hit home with me. 

Image from Bass's newsletter

Natalie, my youngest granddaughter, turned 13 that very day. I first mentioned her in the blog post I made on February 19, 2010, three days after her birth, and I will probably refer to that article again in an upcoming blog post.

Naomi, Natalie’s sister, is celebrating her 19^th birthday today, so the youngest two of my five granddaughters are both teenagers. They have been, and are, a great delight to June and me. 

“The Girls Are Not Okay” is the title of Bass’s newsletter (click here to read it). Bass was not writing about all girls, and I am deeply grateful that she was not writing about girls such as my granddaughters, who both seem to be well-adjusted young women. But sadly, many girls are “not okay.”

Bass’s article begins by referring to the new study of USAmerica’s teens released by the Center for Disease Control’s Youth Rick Behavior Survey (YRBS), and she reports the findings were “stark and frightening.” She writes that “the crisis is particularly urgent among teenage girls.”*

The YRBS report states that according to the data, “teen girls are confronting the highest levels of sexual violence, sadness, and hopelessness they have ever reported to YRBS.” (A summary of the YRBS report can be found here.)

Interestingly, Bass seeks to link the malaise of teenage girls to an aspect of contemporary society that would not at first glance be considered a cause of that dis-ease.

“White Christian Nationalism” is part of the problem, according to Bass. She refers to “A Christian Nation? Understanding the Threat of Christian Nationalism to American Democracy and Culture,” a study released by Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) on February 8 (see here).

That study indicates that White Christian Nationalists, by and large, “believe women must submit to men” and that “society is diminished when women have more opportunities to work outside of the home.” These ideas reflect a belief in “complementarianism,” a widely held view by evangelical Christians.

Bass (who celebrated her 64^th birthday last Sunday) states, “There is little doubt among historians that second wave feminism of the 1970s improved the lives of women and girls in terms of education, health, work, finances, and overall equality.”

She mentions the significance of the 1974 book All We’re Meant to Be: A Biblical Approach to Women’s Liberation, authored by Letha Scanzoni and Nancy Hardesty. As Bass says, that book “caused a sensation in evangelical churches and theological circles.”

June and I, along with many other progressive evangelicals, read that book with much appreciation during the mid-1970s. But a decade later, conservative evangelical opposition had grown to the extent that an organization to oppose the emphasis on gender equality was formed.

That organization called The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood was founded in 1987.** That group was the result of anti-equality backlash, and it forwarded the position of “complementarianism.”

While, of course, there are several other important reasons why so many teenage girls are not okay today, I think that Bass is right in declaring that “evangelical theology” with its emphasis on complementarianism for a generation now “bears a significant part of the blame.”

As Bass gladly notes, formerly prominent Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) leader Russell Moore ten days ago now posted “a somewhat repentant editorial against complementarianism” (see here).

Unfortunately, though, the SBC continues to support male supremacy. Just two days ago Religious News Service reported that “Southern Baptists oust Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church for naming a female pastor.” That’s a bad sign for teenage girls in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

 
Strong egalitarian homes with nurturing parents is one of the most important keys to rearing teenage girls who are okay. I am truly grateful that my teenage granddaughters have such a home—and have also been strongly supported by their egalitarian American and Japanese grandmothers.

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* Not long after reading Bass’s newsletter, I read “American teens are unwell because American society is unwell,” a Feb. 15 opinion piece on The Washington Post website. It was directly related to the same YRBS report. And then on the morning of Feb. 17, the WaPo posted “The crisis in American girlhood,” another opinion piece regarding the same report.

** In “Fed Up With Fundamentalism’s View of Women,” the eighth chapter of my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism (2007, 2020), I wrote about the founding and influence of this organization among “fundamentalists” (see pp. 240~2). 

Affirming the Social Gospel: In Appreciation of Walter Rauschenbusch

He was born 160 years ago on October 4, 1861, the first year of the Civil War, and died in 1918, a few months before the end of World War I, but Walter Rauschenbusch hated militarism and other societal problems that cause human suffering and the degradation of human life.

Acknowledgment of Rauschenbusch’s Social Gospel

In all three of my “theological” books, I wrote about Rauschenbusch. In Fed Up with Fundamentalism (2007, 2020) I wrote that the Social Gospel was “the third factor [after Darwinism and biblical criticism] which helped instigate the fundamentalist movement.”

And I explained, “The most significant leader of the Social Gospel was the prominent Baptist historian Walter Rauschenbusch” (p. 30).

In The Limits of Liberalism (2010, 2020), one sub-section is “The Liberalism of Rauschenbusch” (pp. 31~35), and later I wrote that for many “the main religious appeal of liberalism is found in its ethical stance, which has often been shaped by the emphasis of Walter Rauschenbusch and the Social Gospel” (p. 109).

Then in #5 of Thirty True Things Everyone Needs to Know Now (2018), I wrote about Rauschenbusch’s “strong emphasis on the idea that the kingdom of God is both here now and also coming in the future” (p. 36).

In his book Christianizing the Social Order (1912), Rauschenbusch used the phrase “the kingdom is always but coming,” and that became the title of the superb 2004 biography of Rauschenbusch by Christopher H. Evans.

Formation of Rauschenbusch’s Social Gospel

Walter Rauschenbusch was the son of German parents who had immigrated to New York. After graduating from Rochester Theological Seminary, from 1886 to 1897 he served as the pastor of the Second German Baptist Church, located in the slum section of New York City known as Hell’s Kitchen.

That was at the apex of the Gilded Age when there was great and growing inequality between the upper and lower classes. For example, at the time when so many lived in crowded, vermin-infested tenements in Hell’s Kitchen, rich industrialists lived in luxury on 5^th Avenue and Madison Avenue.

John D. Rockefeller’s NYC home was less than a mile from Second German Baptist Church, and J.P. Morgan as well as William K. Vanderbilt and his flamboyant wife Alva lived only 1.2 miles from Rauschenbusch’s church. Here is a picture of the Vanderbilt mansion, completed in 1882. 

Rauschenbusch said that he went to his new pastorate “to save souls in the ordinarily accepted religious sense.” But in the area where his church was located, unemployment, poverty, malnutrition, disease, and crime were rampant.

He came to understand that Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount spoke more about how to live in the present rather than how to prepare for life after death. Further, he came to realize that Jesus’ key teaching about the Kingdom of God was also for the here and now, not just about the “sweet by and by.”

Affirmation of Rauschenbusch’s Social Gospel

Even though I have remained critical of some aspects of Rauschenbusch’s “liberal” theology, such as his being overly optimistic about the possibility of establishing the Kingdom of God on earth by human effort, through the years I have increasingly come to affirm his basic theological ideas.

Here are some of the most important emphases in Rauschenbusch’s Social Gospel.

    * Jesus’ core teachings are found in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5~7) and in his parable of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25:31-46).

    * The basis of Jesus’ teachings was his understanding of the Kingdom of God, which Rauschenbusch rightly understood as “always but coming.”

    * In addition to the reality and seriousness of “personal” sins, the pervasiveness and destructiveness of social sin and sinful social structures must be recognized and adamantly opposed.

The crux of Rauschenbusch’s Social Gospel is still sorely needed now as it was in the 1890s and in 1917 when he published his last book, A Theology for the Social Gospel.

Can we and will we affirm, accept, and implement that Gospel? It is truly good news for the multitude of people who are suffering deprivation, discrimination, and destructive social structures right now.

The Southern Baptist Convention: 175 Years of Turmoil

Christian Leopold (C.L.) Neiger, my only great-grandparent not born in the U.S., was born in Canton Bern, Switzerland, 180 years ago today, on May 30, 1840. Five years later, and sixteen years before C.L. immigrated to the U.S., the Southern Baptist Convention was formed in 1845.  

The International Mission Board of the SBC was formed
 on the same day as the new convention.

Turmoil at the Beginning

The Southern Baptist Convention was formed because of turmoil over slavery. There were some other issues that also led to the formation of the new convention, but the slavery issue was unquestionably the most decisive one.

Specifically, in response to the policy adopted in 1844 that slaveholders would not be appointed as missionaries, Baptist delegates in the South formed the SBC.

In May 1845, those delegates met in Augusta, Georgia, to form the new Convention. Beginning with a total membership of nearly 352,000 in over 4,100 local Baptist churches, it was geographically restricted to states that would eventually become the Confederacy.

Turmoil through the Years

Most of the turmoil in the SBC after its founding has been theological. One of the first such controversies centered around C.H. Toy, professor of Old Testament at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He was forced to resign in 1879.

Fundamentalists, such as those led by J. Frank Norris, the fiery pastor of First Baptist Church of Fort Worth, caused turmoil in the SBC from the 1920s to the early 1950s.

Turmoil in the SBC again emerged after Ralph Elliott, professor of OT at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, published The Message of Genesis in 1961. He was fired the next year.

The “conservative resurgence” of the SBC (aka the “fundamentalist takeover”) began in 1979 and following years of turmoil, the convention made a massive move to the theological—and to the political—right.

And now this year a new movement has started. It is called the Conservative Baptist Network (CBN), and some are calling it a “second conservative resurgence.” It remains to be seen how much turmoil CBN will cause in the coming years.

An Embarrassed Southern Baptist

Not long after C.L. Neiger married my great-grandmother Margaret (Abplanalp) in Indiana, they moved to Worth County in northwest Missouri, the county where I was born about 70 years later.

C.L. and Margaret’s daughter Laura married George Seat, my grandfather. George’s great-grandfather, Littleton Seat, moved from Tennessee to Cooper County, Mo., about 1818. He moved to Worth County with his family in 1844—and died there the next year, the same year that the SBC was founded.

In the eighteenth century the Seat family lived in Virginia—and they owned slaves. According to family stories, two of Littleton’s older brothers were killed by a 13-year-old slave boy in 1786.

When the Seat family moved to near Nashville, Tennessee, about the turn of the century, they likely took some slaves with them, although the three Seat brothers who moved to Missouri before 1820 didn’t seem to have slaves—and it is quite certain that the Seats in Worth County never had any.

Near the beginning of my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism, I wrote about being an embarrassed Southern Baptist—and  in June 2015 I wrote about being both a proud and ashamed Southern Baptist—but that was because of what the Southern Baptist Convention had become, theologically, after 1980.

My first embarrassment, though, was when I learned why the SBC was formed in the first place. As a boy, I always identified with the North/Union in thinking about the Civil War—and I wasn’t prejudiced against African Americans, for I never saw a Black person in my home county.

The SBC formally apologized to African Americans in 1995 (at the annual convention marking the 150^th anniversary of the SBC’s founding) for the denomination's pro-slavery past. Some charged that that was too little, too late. But I am on the side of those who say, Better late than never.

During all the years I was a Southern Baptist, I disliked the name, which embodies its racist beginnings—and I have been an advocate of a name change since my student days at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in the 1960s.

After 175 years, surely the time has come for a name change—and after 40 years of turmoil caused by those on the theological right, surely the time has come for a move back toward the theological center.

Did Your Church Open Sunday?

Although you may not have heard about it, Sunday (May 3) was ReOpen Church Sunday. Did your church open? Mine didn’t either. But should they have? Is religious liberty being attacked by the federal and state governments? That is what some Christians are charging.

There are at least three important issues that intersect in the discussion about when to reopen in-person church services: (1) religious freedom, (2) local church finances, and (3) public health. 

Baptist Church in Des Moines, Iowa, on May 3

The ReOpen Church Sunday Initiative

Liberty Counsel is a conservative Christian law group that promoted May 3 as ReOpen Church Sunday. That organization was founded in 1989 by Mathew D. (Mat) Staver, who was the dean of the law school at Liberty University from 2006 to 2014.

I first learned about Staver in 2005 when talking with people from Kentucky who had bussed to D.C. to protest the removal of the Ten Commandments in public places. They did that in front of the Supreme Court Building, and I wrote about that in my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism (2020 ed., pp. 123-4).

In the days leading up to May 3, Staver and Liberty Counsel had promoted ReOpen Church Sunday, and more information about that can be found on their website.

For Staver and his supporters, the issue is primarily one of religious freedom. They claim that government agencies prohibiting churches from meeting for worship services, even during the current pandemic, violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The Church Finances Issue

Despite stay-at-home orders, some churches have defied those directives and held public meetings anyway. Some did that because of their strong belief that they had the right and the need to conduct public worship.

Although usually not said, no doubt many of those churches were inclined to go against the grain for fear of losing financial support. And, in fact, a large majority of churches have seen a  marked decline in offerings and are suffering because of that.

(Without fail, we who are church members need to send our tithes and offerings to our churches even when they cannot conduct public worship.)

Already on April 24, an article in The Washington Post was titled “Church donations have plunged because of the coronavirus. Some churches won’t survive.” Four days later, ReligiousNews.com reported that more than $400,000 had already been raised for small churches at risk during covid-19.

The Churches Helping Churches Initiative relief fund was launched about a month ago, and by last Wednesday had received more than 1,000 applications.

The Public Health Issue

As a strong advocate of religious liberty and an ardent supporter of local churches, I sympathize with those who wanted to open their churches on May 3—or before. But I am also a strong supporter of the government seeking to protect the life and health of the citizens of the country.

I see no indication that churches (or synagogues or mosques) have been unfairly signaled out for mistreatment, although there were a few questionable actions by some local agencies.

I also see considerable indication that many governors and mayors have acted decisively to restrict public meetings in order to keep people safe during the pandemic.

Some have charged that the caution has been excessive. But how can people say that with a straight face when already there have been 70,000 covid-19 deaths in the U.S.?

What about May 10?

In Missouri where I live, Governor Parson’s March 21 order banning gatherings of more than 10 people expired yesterday (May 4). That means that, among other things, events in large venues and stadiums, including churches, will now be able to open with some restrictions.

Many churches in Missouri and elsewhere, it seems, will again have public worship on May 10, which is Mother’s Day. I hope and pray that that will not mean the deaths of an increased number of mothers, and others, because of opening churches too soon.

Rightly (or Wrongly) Explaining the Word of Truth

Ralph Drollinger is probably the tallest Bible study teacher you never heard of, at least until recently—and he may be one of the most detrimental to the health of the nation. In the Bible, 2 Timothy 2:15 ends with the words “rightly explaining the word of truth.” It is highly questionable, however, whether Drollinger rightly explains the Bible. 

(From a 4/10/18 online article by Andrew Seidel)

Drollinger’s Capitol Ministries

In 1996, Ralph Drollinger (b. 1954), who is 7’2” tall and a former NBA player, started a new organization in his home state of California. Its goal was “to create disciples of Jesus Christ in the political arena throughout the world.”

As a Christian, I certainly can’t fault that goal. But it is important to understand the kind of disciples he and his organization were/are trying to create.

Ten years ago, in 2010, Drollinger established his first national ministry in Washington, D.C., where he began a weekly Bible study for U.S. Representatives. Five years later he began a separate ministry to U.S. Senators. Then in 2017 he created a ministry to members of the White House Cabinet.

In addition, according to the Capitol Ministries website, they have “also created discipleship Bible studies to the political leaders of 24 nations on four continents.”

In their “comprehensive doctrinal statement,” Capitol Ministries declares,

We teach that the Word of God is an objective, propositional revelation (1 Cor. 2:13; 1 Thess. 2:13), verbally inspired in every word (2 Tim. 3:16), absolutely inerrant in the original documents, infallible, and God-breathed. We teach the literal, grammatical-historical interpretation of Scripture, which affirms the belief that the opening chapters of Genesis present creation in six literal days (Gen. 1:31; Ex. 31:17).

But, does the world really need more “disciples” who adhere to biblical inerrancy, including belief in a literal six-day creation?

Drollinger’s Bible Studies

Drollinger’s Bible studies on Capitol Hill has an impressive list of “sponsors.” The Cabinet members who are sponsors include Vice President Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, as well as Ben Carson and Betsy DeVos. Former Cabinet member sponsors include Rick Perry and Jeff Sessions.

Eleven Republican Senators are listed as Bible study sponsors, including Joni Ernst from Iowa, Cindy Hyde-Smith from Mississippi, James Lankford from Oklahoma, and David Perdue from Georgia.

Then there are 41 Representatives who are sponsors. The two most widely known are Kevin McCarthy, currently the House Minority Leader, and Louie Gohmert, the outspoken Congressman from Texas.

Although who actually attends each Bible study is not made known, the weekly schedule is 7 a.m. Wednesdays for the Cabinet, 8:00 a.m. Tuesdays for the Senate, and 7:45 a.m. Thursdays for the House.

There is no indication that DJT has attended any of the Bible studies, but Drollinger sends a copy of his printed studies to him and reportedly sometimes receives back comments written in his felt tip marker pen.

On March 23, Drollinger’s Bible study was titled, “Is God Judging America Today?” An online article the next day (see here) was very critical of what Drollinger said in that study—and on March 27 Drollinger issued a questionable rebuttal titled “Lies, Distortions and Inaccuracies.”

Drollinger’s Detrimental Influence

Questions about Drollinger’s Bible studies are not just recent. A 10/05/17 article in Newsweek magazine refers to Drollinger as the “next most prominent godly voice in Trump’s White House” after Paula White.

That article points out that in “Entitlement Programs Viewed Through the Lens of Scripture,” an August 2016 Bible study, Drollinger asserted that the Bible “is clear” that caring for the poor is the responsibility of the family and the church, not the government.”

Newsweek also published “White House Bible Study Led By Pastor Who Is Anti-Gay, Anti-Women and Anti-Catholic,” a 4/11/18 article even more critical of Drollinger. That headline doesn’t seem to be inaccurate—and it could have included anti-environment as well.

All of Drollinger’s Bible teaching is, no doubt, based on “the literal, grammatical-historical interpretation of Scripture.” But that is the problem—and I address that issue in “Fed Up with Fundamentalism’s View of the Bible,” the fifth chapter of my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism (2007, 2020).

To a large extent, sadly, Drollinger seems to be wrongly “explaining the word of truth.”

Transcending Fundamentalism

This is the eleventh and last blog posting this year related to my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism. I am working to get the updated and (slightly) revised edition published before the end of the year—and am hoping many of you will obtain a copy for yourself or give as a present to someone you care about (or both!).

The Necessity of Transcending Fundamentalism

Some Christians who have grown increasingly dissatisfied with fundamentalism have given up on Christianity altogether. I find that quite sad—and also unnecessary.

There are many other Christians, though, who are quite unhappy with fundamentalism, much like I am, but who have sought and found an expression of the Christian faith that seems decidedly superior to that manifested by fundamentalism and is worthy of wholehearted allegiance.

The latter is what I have been advocating in this book, and this final chapter emphasizes the necessity of transcending fundamentalism and finding a form of faith that fully honors God, is loyal to the Lord Jesus, and is invigorated by the Holy Spirit.

Rising above fundamentalism is important for Christian believers: much of the current rejection of Christianity by those raised as Christians is because of their negative reaction toward fundamentalism.  

Transcending fundamentalism is also important for Christians in their relationship with people who are not Christians. Earlier this month (see here) Pope Francis declared, “We must beware of fundamentalist groups . . . . Fundamentalism is a plague.”

Partly for creating a more peaceful society, it is necessary for Christians, as well as people in other religions, to go beyond fundamentalism.  

Help for Transcending Fundamentalism

There are numerous books, and organizations, seeking to help people who are or have been in fundamentalist churches to leave the clutches of such detrimental ways of thinking.

Through the years there have even been several different Fundamentalist(s) Anonymous groups, treating fundamentalism as a kind of addiction that people need to be freed from.

Unfortunately, many of those books and organizations were largely encouraging people to leave Christianity altogether—and certainly many have done that.

But there are also many books, such as Fed Up . . ., and new church organizations that have shown ways to reject fundamentalism and still remain in the Christian faith. Indeed, the 18^th chapter of my newest book, Thirty True Things Everyone Needs to Know Now (TTT), is “One Doesn’t Have To Be A Fundamentalist To Be A Good Christian.”

That, I firmly believe, is manifestly true. And in fact, it might even be true that Christians need to transcend fundamentalism in order to be a good Christian.

The Limits of Liberalism

Speaking of (TTT), the 19^th chapter of that book is “One Doesn’t Have To Be A Liberal To Reject Fundamentalism.” I reiterate that important point here.  

While many conservative evangelicals, as present-day fundamentalists are generally called now, tend to label my theological position as liberal, many true liberals likely would see me as fairly conservative from their point of view.

Indeed, soon after completing the first edition of Fed Up . . . I started working on the companion volume: The Limits of Liberalism: A Historical, Theological, and Personal Appraisal of Christian Liberalism (2010). Beginning in January, I am planning to begin updating and slightly revising that book also to re-publish by the end of 2020.

As I say at the end of the last paragraph of Fed Up . . .,

There is a valid form of the Christian faith that steers between the dangers of fundamentalism on the right and the dangers of liberalism on the left. It is that expression of the faith that I urge my Christian readers to join me in seeking, finding, and following as we try to be true to Christ.

Still Fed Up with Fundamentalism’s View of Three Other Issues

Abortion. Homosexuality. Capital punishment. These are the three highly controversial issues dealt with in the ninth chapter of my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism, which is currently being (slightly) revised and updated. And, yes, I am fed up with the predominant conservative evangelical views on all three of these highly contentious issues. 

What about Abortion?

As I write in the ninth chapter of Fed Up . . ., back in 1986 I felt too intimidated to attend a political rally in Kansas City because of the protesters who had gathered outside the venue, yelling “Baby killer! Baby killer!” as the candidate who had come to speak was noted for her acceptance of abortion in some cases.

Obviously, these were anti-abortion (aka “pro-life”) people protesting the “pro-choice” (aka pro-abortion) position of Harriet Woods, the senatorial candidate and the sitting Lieutenant Governor—the first woman ever elected to statewide office in Missouri.

Following the long tradition of the Catholic Church, in recent decades most conservative evangelical Christians have adopted the view that human life begins at conception, so all abortions are the same as murder, for they kill human beings. That view was the basis for the raucous protests against Woods (1927~2007).

However, neither science nor the Bible unambiguously specifies when human life begins. Thus, most of us non-fundamentalist Christians hold that abortion, especially when done in the first trimester, should be legal, safe, and rare.

What about LBGTQ Equality?

The LGBTQ issue is the second explosive matter that partly explains the overwhelming support of DJT by conservative evangelicals from before his election in 2016 to the present. Although it is hard to know what DJT actually believes on any issue, it is clear that Clinton was/is not only “pro-choice” but also advocates LBGTQ equality.

Most conservative evangelical Christians “cherry-pick” Bible verses to strongly oppose equality for practicing homosexual persons or the right of gays/lesbians to marry.

Although the right to marry has been granted by the Supreme Court (in the Obergefell v. Hodges decision of 2015), many evangelicals continue to oppose same-sex marriage just as they still oppose abortion despite the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision of 1973.

I am fed up with the negative, judgmental, “holier-than-thou” attitude of most conservative evangelicals on this issue as well. Not only do they condemn even “monogamous” homosexual activity, they covertly support discrimination against and harassment of LGBTQ persons.

And now, legislation which seeks to protect gays/lesbians from mistreatment is seen by some evangelicals as curtailing their (the evangelicals’ own) religious freedom! Surely, though, religious freedom, which I continue to advocate strongly, can never be condoned if that “freedom” results in harming other people.

What about Capital Punishment?

It cannot be denied that the Old Testament not only condones capital punishment, it even commands it.

It is not surprising, therefore, that fundamentalists and most conservative evangelicals who view the Old and New Testaments as equally inspired and equally the inerrant Word of God, which is to be literally interpreted and followed, are also people who generally favor the use of capital punishment.

It seems disingenuous, though, to base the legitimacy, or the necessity, of capital punishment in contemporary society because of the teachings of the Bible but then completely disregard the many commands—such as for cursing parents (Ex. 21:17), profaning the Sabbath (Ex. 31:14), or committing adultery (Lev. 20:10)—for the use of capital punishment in the Old Testament.

Most of us Christians who are not, or no longer, fundamentalists or conservative evangelicals recognize the clear call for capital punishment for various crimes/”sins” in the Old Testament. However, based on the teachings of Jesus, we believe that Christians should oppose, rather than affirm, capital punishment.

Still Fed Up with Fundamentalism’s View of Women

Although my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism, which currently I am (slightly) revising and updating, was published in 2007, much has changed little since then. For example, Al Mohler, whom I wrote about in the second chapter as one of four influential fundamentalist leaders from 1980 to 2005, continues to spout questionable views about women. 

The Issue of Submissive Wives

At the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting in 1998, an amendment titled simply “The Family” was added to the Baptist Faith & Message (BF&M). That amendment included the declaration that wives must submit to their husbands.

The report of the committee recommending the addition of the new article wrote, “A wife’s submission to her husband does not decrease her worth but rather enhances her value to her husband and to the Lord.”

The BF&M was then revised, for the first time since 1963, at the SBC’s 2000 convention. Mohler was one of the 15 members on the “Study Committee” that recommended the revisions, which included the 1998 amendment on the family.

Somewhat related is Mohler’s negativity through the years toward birth control—and his 8/27 podcast in which he declared that “to be human is to be a parent.” Perhaps there is a fairly close link between the emphasis on submissive wives and the “ideal” of women being kept “barefoot and pregnant.”

The position of submissive wives is upheld by the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW), which was formed in 1987 and has consistently forwarded the relationship between husbands and wives known as complementarianism.

The current president of CBMW is Denny Burk, a professor at Boyce College in Louisville. Al Mohler, who is the president of Boyce College (as well as of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary), is a member of CBMW’s Council.

The questionable emphasis on complementarianism has been correctly challenged by Christians for Biblical Equality (CBE), a group begun early in 1988. In Women, Abuse, and the Bible (1996), an important book published by CBE, the author of one chapter stresses that the emphasis on the submission of wives can lead, and has led, to the abuse of women.

The Issue of Women Pastors

Not only do fundamentalists of the past and many conservative evangelicals of the present teach that women must be submissive in the home, they also generally hold that women must be subordinate in the church as well.

The revised BF&M 2000 (referred to above) also newly declared, “While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.”

Moreover, earlier this year in a May 10 podcast, Mohler emphasized that not only can women not be pastors, “females should not preach from the pulpit on Sunday morning” (see Baptist News Global’s report here).

The issue of women preachers is a personal one with me, for many years ago I preached the ordination sermon for a Japanese woman (using Acts 2:17-18 as my text) and then for several years she served as my assistant pastor and then as co-pastor of the Fukuoka International Church.

The Case for Full Equality

For decades now, I have been a “feminist,” one who advocates the full equality of women—in the church and in the wider society. I have applauded the work of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, whose struggles for equality were opposed by conservative Christians, including women, before fundamentalism was called by that name.

I have also been a supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment, which still has not been ratified by the required number of states, partly because of the vigorous opposition by conservative, traditionalistic Christians such as Phyllis Schlafly and her ilk.

But surely, surely the time has come for full equality between men and women!

Still Fed Up with Fundamentalism’s View of War

For all of my life since high school days until the present, I have considered myself a pacifist. Thus, I have always been at odds with the predominant “just war” tradition in most Christian denominations—but never more so than for the support for war by conservative evangelical Christians in the U.S. after the tragic events of September 11, 2001. 

The Support of War by the Christian Right

Until the fourth century, almost all Christians eschewed war, but things changed dramatically after Roman Emperor Constantine adopted Christianity for political and military reasons in 312 A.D.

Augustine (354~430) was one of the first great Christian theologians, and he developed a position that came to be known as the “just war” tradition. That position became predominant in the Roman Catholic Church—and then later in most Protestant denominations.

In this century, however, Christians who are now generally called conservative evangelicals have been the main supporters of the USAmerican “war on terror,” and they were especially prominent in giving President Bush almost unqualified support in launching the attack on Iraq in 2003.

Moreover, the mass of conservative evangelicals who are Trump supporters are highly favorable, it seems, to the military build-up by the U.S. government since 2017.

Nationalism and the Christian Right

As I explain in the seventh chapter of my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism, to which this article is linked, there was a proclivity toward patriotism in the first decades of fundamentalism in this country.

There is nothing wrong with patriotism, unless it is carried to an extreme. But patriotism becomes a problem when it morphs into nationalism, as it often does.

In the first volume of his three-volume Systematic Theology (1951), the eminent theologian Paul Tillich wrote about idolatry and averred that the best example of such is the “contemporary idolatry of religious nationalism” (p. 13).

If Tillich (1886~1965) were still alive and writing today, he would most likely say the same sort of thing even more emphatically.

Near the end of last month, a group of Christians issued a statement titled “Christians Against Christian Nationalism” and asked those who agreed with their statement to sign it. I did, and I encourage you Christians to access that here and to consider doing the same.

The Position of the “Christian Left”

In contrast to the Christian Right, which is the political/social stance of most conservative evangelical Christians of the present or fundamentalists of the past, there are those who hold a much different position. For convenience, I am calling them the Christian Left.

In the seventh chapter of my book, I refer to them as “Christians for Peace and Justice.” They are the ones who advocate taking a consistent “sanctity of life” position. In that connection, I quote Jürgen Moltmann, the renowned German theologian, who wrote in The Spirit of Life (1992; German ed., 1991):

. . . anyone who really says “yes” to life says “no” to war. Anyone who really loves life says “no” to poverty. So the people who truly affirm and love life take up the struggle against the violence of war and the injustice of poverty.

But, sadly, conservative evangelicals in the U.S. have often been supporters of war and the strengthening of military armaments at tremendous cost—and the latter being done by cutting back on funds that might be used for helping those caught in the web of poverty.

Above all else, followers of Jesus are expected to seek God’s Kingdom, a realm characterized by righteousness (=justice) and shalom (see Matt. 6:33). That expectation, though, clashes with the longing of many conservative evangelical Christians to “make America great again,” a stance that could even, God forbid, lead to another major war.

Still Fed Up with Fundamentalism's View of Religious Freedom

This article is based on the sixth chapter of my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism (2007), which I am currently updating (and slightly revising) for re-publication by the end of the year. Matters related to religious freedom were not prominent during the first decades of fundamentalist Christianity, but such matters became a major concern in the 1980s and the following decades.  

Current Emphases

From the first years of the resurgence of fundamentalism, conservative evangelical Christians have made ongoing efforts to get prayer back into public schools, to procure sanctions for public displays of the Ten Commandments, and to protect the use of “one nation under God” in the pledge of allegiance and “in God we trust” on USAmerican currency.

Those emphases were accompanied by strong condemnation of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which conservative evangelicals saw/see mainly as an anti-Christian organization. To combat the activities of the ACLU, in 1990 Pat Robertson founded a new legal action organization, naming it the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ).

The headquarters of ACLJ is, as they proudly state, “just steps away from the Supreme Court and Congress.” Since 1992, Jay Sekulow has been the chief counsel of ACLJ. Many of you, though, know his name in another context: in 2017 Sekulow (b. 1956) also became one of DJT’s lawyers.

The ACLJ has been a major force of the Religious Right seeking religious freedom as they understand it. But the freedom they seek is mainly the freedom for Judeo-Christian religion to have predominance in the public square.

Current Ties to the Republican Party

It is evident that the ACLJ and most other Religious Right organizations are closely aligned with the Republican Party. That link is clearly seen with Sekulow being both the chief counsel of the ACLJ and a prominent member of the President’s legal team.

The Faith and Freedom Coalition is another prominent organization of the Christian Right. Incorporated in 2009, founder Ralph Reed (b. 1961) has described it as “a 21st century version of the Christian Coalition.”

Even though it is a 501(c)(4) non-profit organization, there is no question of it working
“hand in glove” with the Republican Party.

Since 2010, they have held conferences in Washington, D.C. My 6/5/11 blog article was about the 2011 conference, which I attended as a researcher. Nearly all the Republican 2012 presidential hopefuls spoke, as did DJT, who decided not to run for President that year.

The ties of the Faith and Freedom Coalition as a conservative evangelical Christian organization and the Republican Party could not have been more evident. This link as well as much that was said about the emphases mentioned above, also made evident a very questionable understanding of the principle of the separation of church and state.

Current Rejection of the Separation of Church and State

Although I am still very much a baptist (with a small “b”), Fed Up with Fundamentalism was written when I was still a Baptist, and the sixth chapter is clearly the most Baptistic chapter of the book.

Earlier and more consistently than any other Christian denomination, beginning with Roger Williams, who in 1638 started the first Baptist church in what is now the United States, up until about forty years ago Baptists have been outspoken proponents of the principle of the separation of church and state.

(Click here to read my 2/5/11 article titled “In Praise of Roger Williams.”)

But with the conservative resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention, that historic position has been largely lost. Consequently, I am fed up with fundamentalism’s view of religious freedom, for it does not endorse that precious freedom for all people equally.