Twilight of the Religious Right

There’s an interesting playing out of two approaches to life, political power, and culture within American Evangelicalism.

The Moral Majority Approach

The first approach is the “God and Country” approach.

Based principally in the South, this approach sees the church as the custodian of societal morality, the guardian against moral corruption and family breakdown, and the partner of like-minded elected leaders who will “protect and preserve” truth, righteousness, and the American way.

It is experiencing a crisis.

Despite success in the 1990’s and early 2000’s, the candidates elected spent foolishly, quarreled incessantly, behaved immorally, and waged war incompetently.

Then, with the coming of the Great Recession, their economic polices also fell into disfavor as unchecked, unregulated corporate leaders and lenders fed a bubble that burst in a most damaging way.

Current Woes

Their elected partners fell out of power and were replaced with either angry populists, amoral libertarian business people, or socially liberal democrats.

They have lost the presidency, have recently lost their majority on the Supreme Court, and are in great danger of losing Congress in this election.

They are wholly alienated from an increasingly hostile Democratic party, and now find themselves having to deal with a populist Republican candidate not of their choosing.

The alternatives–support an existing third party candidate, run their own social conservative candidate, or cut a deal with the remaining candidate in return for some kind of influence–are unappealing at best.

A Dying, Dead End

I don’t see much hope for this approach.

And I no longer spend much emotional energy on re-Christianizing society, or in being upset by pagan people acting like pagans and voting like pagans.

However Trump fares (as it looks likely he will lose), having identified their names, their ministries, and their faith with him will involve them in his downfall, defeat, disgrace, and discrediting.

Doubling down on political power, rather than raising up their fortunes, will ruin their credibility and cement their exile from the corridors of power.

It pains me to say it, but I think many Evangelical leaders have been bamboozled and have cut an unholy deal to hold onto at least some influence.

A Hard Road Ahead

I pity rather than scorn my traditionalist friends–where they are at now is where I myself used to be.

Losing power is extremely painful–none of us have clean hands when we lose control of something precious to us.

What I have come to accept is Bible-practicing Christians are a disliked religious minority in a mainly pagan majority society.

We are already marginalized socially, and will soon be economically and criminally marginalized as well.

Flipping roles, our society will increasingly try to legislate immorality and grant increasingly less and less space for dissenting consciences anchored in the moral absolutes of God’s Word–especially in the area of sexuality.

We Christians are going to be unjustly hurt more and more, at deeper and broader levels, at their hands.

When it comes to political power, that is our future–like it or not.

The Other Approach

Rather than being enraged about our calamitous loss of prestige, or hiding in ever deeper ghettos and fortress communities, we Evangelicals can and must change.

God wants this change.

He is sovereign and it is no accident we are losing our political power so catastrophically and categorically at this time and place.

He is seeking to have mercy on us–disenchanting us from idols of political power so we can enter into His purposes more fully for such a time as this.

The good news is there’s another way that promises a far more enduring, far more qualitative victory for Christ in the end.

This other way assumes a posture of worldly powerlessness, and requires nothing from our surrounding society to be faithful to Christ’s gospel mandates and holy imperatives.

It’s Already Happening

This other way is already happening in quiet yet powerful ways under the very noses of our society’s power brokers and disengaged elites.

It is prospering here in the Pacific NW, the region most advanced in its de-Christianization and thus the most post-Christian in its morals.

It is a movement I accidentally joined 20 years ago without realizing it.

It is a return to 1st Century practices and postures that early Christians employed under the thumb of a pagan Roman empire–confounding the powers that be.

It is in sync with how the Evangelical church in the 3rd World already operates with disproportionate results.

It answers the questions, “How do we do gospel in a post-Christian society?”, “How do we do church in a post-Christian society?”, and “How do we Christians relate to and introduce Christ to a post-Christian society that knows little about Him, and which doesn’t like what it does know from its media?”

I will outline this other, very exciting approach in the next blog.

It’s quite a story!