Where Did They Come From?

I was sitting around one day watching the news, looking through websites and thinking about the Idaho Legislature’s recent attempt to define marriage and ultimately ban gay marriage. I asked this question: How does our government rule or vote; on a religious or a civil basis? I asked this because everything I was hearing or reading about their arguments had a religious overtone or were blatantly religious. Since this is an issue that struck really close to home I said “hey lets see what I can find.” I found almost too much material; but I didn’t want to go with just the overall aspect of religion in government, primarily because this paper would end up being a book, so I tried to find articles that discussed the top issues where religion is playing a big part.

I found three articles, two of them are six pages long, and it meant a lot of reading. But I found a lot of interesting things in them. They both appeare in the Economist. “The Triumph of the Religious Right” (Econ A) appeared on November 11^th, 2004 and “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” (Econ B) appeared on June 25^th, 2005. The third article I found is much shorter, just two pages, and appeared in Mother Jones (M. Jones) under the title “The Great Debate of Our Season” in the December 2005 issue. All three of these articles discuss how Christians are influencing Federal and State level government.

“The Triumph of the Religious Right” presents data from the 2004 Presidential Election concerning the Christian vote. It is introduced by a quote from “A Confederacy of Dunces” written by John Kennedy Toole. The quote talks about a Presidential candidate that goes to a gay party and finds a wrestler teaching judo holds to the attendees. After seeing one of the demonstrations the candidate remarks ‘I can see that we’re going to have a great deal of trouble capturing the conservative rural red-neck Calvinist vote”(Econ A 2). This leads to the point the article makes “the conservative rural red-neck Calvinist vote has captured America” (Econ A 2) The next paragraph mentions the how the left-wing was “dismayed” by the Christian right’s ability to gain enough votes to decide the election (Econ A 2). The article then goes on to discuss how different America and Europe are when it comes to religion and government. It moves into the argument that the moralists/Christians were not in fact a majority, presenting figures and polling information. Following the poll figures, the discussion turns to associations and the leaders of the evangelical, moralist, Christian groups that are trying to influence policy and law. After the associations, the discussion goes into these groups and the religious leadership, which the article says is not there (Econ A 3-4). The religious right as a whole operates in a disjointed, grassroots fashion. Then the article turns back to presidential elections and how the religious/moralist right will influence the President’s actions and policies. From there the article pretty much stays with political influence and discusses various points where the religious/moral right would support some liberal ideas and policies.

After reading this article I found my self curious to know why so many voted for Mr. Bush. I also became concerned by the fact that such a majority of people in this country knowing Mr. Bush’s allegiances could support such narrow minded views and limited speaking ability. I am a tolerant person. I style myself as a moderate because I believe in balance. I do not understand why people have to be extreme in matters that can easily be compromised on. Gay marriage for one, I can agree that marriage is a religious institution, which, therefore, should not be something the government can get involved with, but since it is traditionally considered a social and mainstream thing I won’t argue that point. What I would ask is that if marriage is religious and socially accepted as between a man and a woman, why then can’t the government leave marriage to the church and balance things making everything in a marital fashion a civil union in the law’s eyes? This article blabs on about the numbers and the general complaint of many about how religion is getting mixed up in politics and showing that there isn’t a majority with the religious right.

Despite that these two articles came from the same source the next one presents a better argument as far as the role of religion in politics.

“You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” (Econ B) is the second Economist article; it discusses several aspects of the religious right’s growth and power base. The article opens with the point that President Bush affirms that his values are the same as those of the religious right. The next paragraph takes a wide swing to point out that in the 1960’s the government was primarily secular and now is swinging toward what can be called a “theocracy” (Econ B 2). However, the rise in the involvement of the religious right in government and the increase in bitter partisanship are connected, according to John Danforth (Econ B 2). This trend of bitter partisanship is likely to continue and so is the continuation of the religious influence on national policy. To this point we have only seen “skirmishes” but with the passing of time the battle will heat up (Econ B 2). Following this introduction is a section titled “In the Beginning” that discusses how the religious right is stepping into the lime light. The first paragraph of this section presents some curious numbers which show that 75% of the population used to consider themselves as strongly religious compared to today’s 60%. The factor that is contributed to the change is the shift in religious demographics; liberal churches are declining while the conservative churches are gaining. However, the part that makes the religious right so strong is their “confidence” (Econ B 2). Another factor that is causing this change is that the Born-again Christians are no longer just “rural hicks” but becoming increasingly “Ivy League” (Econ B 2). After making this point it moves to show that not all of the religious right is white, it points out that there are significant numbers of other ethnicities joining the right. Also, the right isn’t just made up of evangelicals, but also Catholics and Orthodox Jews. The next section is titled “The power of organization”. It starts off with the argument that some of the Christian rights’ arguments are correct, one that is given concerns “’liberal activist judges’ exceeding their mandate” (Econ B 3). The section goes on to say that these liberal judges have provoked the religious right to pull together. The discussion then moves into how the right has organized and what they are doing. Some of the groups have formed political action committees and started dumping lots of money into the political system (Econ B 3). However, despite the right’s gaining influence, they are compromising on some issues because of public opinion. The section ends with the discussion of the right’s co-ordination efforts. Some have built non-profit organizations such as “The Arlington Group” which is a coalition of some 60 pro-family groups” (Econ B 3). Following this is a section titled “Can’t always get what you want?” that discusses how the right still represents a minority point of view and the one pitfall point the right has. “Some leaders of the religious right think they are far more powerful than they actually are” (Econ B 4). Even though the right has gained much influence the administration doesn’t have to follow each step in their dance but seems to still follow the right’s band. The administration gets away with this because of the broad power base that the local groups provide and the need to avoid alienating the leftish voters. Another limiting point for the right is public opinion. However, the right does seem to have support on at least one issue, but this support is limited, gay marriage. The people support it at state level but don’t really like the idea of “changing the constitution” (Econ B 4). Some of the factors that are guiding and tempering the right’s movements are things like young members with more liberal ideas and scandal. However, something that may give a kick to the right’s momentum is the courts; should the courts overturn any of the current gay amendments and statutes. This isn’t too likely because the courts are gaining younger and more conservative appointees, thus giving a long run for conservatism. Coming up after all of that is the mirror argument that the right could over-reach. But, because of the right’s movement into the lime light they have all but forced the left to get religious because of the publics’ apparent view that religion is less “weird” than secular (Econ B 5).

What caught me in this article is the discussion of how the right isn’t that big, numbers wise. Just as presented in the first article, “The Triumph of the religious right,” evangelicals and other traditional Christians are actually a minority group. These two articles just help to support a general theory simply put is thus “the loudest voice is the one that is heard.” This really scares me because I fall into a minority that is pretty loud but isn’t being heard so well. I think that is contributing to the general defeatist attitude that I am seeing and hearing amongst my friends and associates. I can understand their point of view because of how overwhelming the right wing seems to be. Probably the most disturbing piece from this article would be that the public seems to now view that religion is less weird than secular (Econ B 5). How, when and why did this happen? I guess I will have to do some more looking into this.

This next essay shows that our government was not founded on religion.

“The Great Debate of Our Season” opens with a statement from the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli, “The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion” (M. Jones 1); which has been considered the “Founding Fathers’” statement of the “role of religion in our government” (M. Jones 1). The article talks about how religion has always been a part of this country and an aspect of its leaders but that even though a lot of the language of the time had religious overtones the state was not governing by religious motivation. Mother Jones discusses the history of the religious movement. The discussion starts with how the 19^th Century evangelicals lobbied for a secular government to protect them from an overwhelming majority of traditional groups. The opposition felt that secularism in government was a flaw rather than a benefit. Mother Jones believes that these groups are now gaining ground. This article argues that they gained this ground by quietly campaigning through networks of “political pulpits, media outlets, funding organs, and think tanks” (M. Jones 2).

From this article I gather that my main theory is correct. That theory is this: religion has been making a major effort, though relatively quiet, to influence government. The Mother Jones article shows something of a time line of this action. However, I would have to say that religion hasn’t just worked on influencing the governance of the country but of society. In Mother Jones’ article an inference can be made that they are also influencing society at the ground level to accept its influence in the management of the country and society. The resulting culture, in my opinion, is one that is closed minded. In the end I see a revolution of sorts coming.

The amount of pressure being placed on major social things such as abortion and “gay rights,” among some of the more controversial aspects, is growing to the blowing point. Eventually something will break and bring about some major changes. I would hope and generally think that people will resist some of this pressure but I doubt the resistance will be strong enough to block it from some violent reaction. Though, the form of violence that comes, I am not sure. I hope it will be more of a rhetorical debate. However, at this moment I don’t really know what to think for sure. I plan to do a lot of research on this subject in the future and use it for my research paper.