The Grassroots Backlash against Secularism

Two commitments helped me survive spiritually through the scathing and acrimonious presidential campaign season this fall.  One was a commitment I made on July 10 to spend an hour each day reading the scriptures and praying for the next 120 days, until November 8. That was inspired the week a relative and I had a falling out over political comments she had written on Facebook.  Thirty-four members of the congregation I serve agreed with me to pray for one another, our church, our nation, and this election. While I fell short of the 1-hour commitment many days, I always remembered it when I got irked by some piece of political backbiting or character assassination I heard from each candidate against the other. When I got bent out of shape a few times and shouted at the radio, internet, or television, I would remember my commitment and redouble my efforts to read scripture and pray instead.  This has been a spiritually trying campaign. I have been tested to the limit. The second source of my help to get through the campaign season and adjust to the outcome of this election was a commitment I made during the summer to lead a fall class at church on Wednesday evenings titled “In the World but Not of the World: How Christians Engage Culture.”[i] 

I offer my analysis of what happened in the 2016 presidential election using concepts and definitions the class and I have explored weekly since August 24.  Experts are baffled and trying to figure out what happened to give Donald Trump the unexpected victory over Hillary Clinton.  Prognosticators who gave Clinton the advantage prior to the election predicted overwhelming support for her from the increased diversity of the American electorate: Hispanics, Blacks, young people, women, and educated white males. They calculated they would far outnumber Donald Trump’s supporters who were largely white with no college degrees and who live in rural communities, today aptly called “the forgotten population.”  Many contributing factors to this nearly unprecedented defeat of the “establishment candidate” by an outsider have been named, and all of them have some relevance. For the moment, however, leave behind Hillary Clinton’s emails doing her in or her sleeping through the Benghazi attack in which Americans, including a U.S. ambassador, were killed. There is actually something bigger going on in America, and the Trump movement sensed it and rode it to victory.  I am speaking of the grassroots backlash against government supported secularization of American political life. Secularism and the Washington establishment on both sides of the aisle failed to notice a group which seemed lost in all the new diversity of America. But this group refused to fade into the background. I am speaking of the rural white working class, “the forgotten population.”

Here is my theory as it relates to the 2016 Presidential election: The Democratic Party in general, including the Obama Administration and the Clinton Campaign, has adopted secularization as a leading force behind societal change.  So have many in the Republican Party, albeit to a lesser degree.    Secularization in its most extreme form is a force that seeks to eliminate religion from society. We call that Atheism. Secularization as it has been adopted by politicians and the large majority of those called progressives, (most of whom have college degrees), does not seek to eliminate religion from society but to remove religion from having influence on the social and political life of our nation.  The central value of secularism is inclusiveness, which aligns with core values of many churches, but the form of secularism that has driven societal change in American life over the past forty years pushes inclusiveness as a melding together of everyone without honoring and preserving the distinctiveness of each.

Secularization has taken the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”), and turned it into a dragon at the gate of government that keeps religious groups from exerting influence in American political life.  Thomas Jefferson in a personal letter to a Baptist group that supported his election to the White House coined the phrase “wall of separation between church and state.”[ii] Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black in a 1947 ruling used Jefferson’s phrase “wall of separation” as if it were a part of the Constitution itself.  He said, “That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach.”[iii]

This impregnable wall between church and state notion has since allowed room for the force of secularization, which in effect is a religion of its own, to prevent Christian views from influencing Supreme Court rulings from Rowe vs. Wade which legalized abortions in 1973 to the legalization of gay marriage in 2015.  The latter ruling followed by the death of the most vocal conservative Justice on the Supreme Court Antonin Scalia in February, 2016 set fire to the grassroots backlash against the force of secularization in American political life. The deciding votes in the 2016 presidential election came from rural America in states like Wisconsin which had voted Democratic in every election since 1980.  And much of the vote came from rural white Christians who do not hold college degrees. What they do hold is a strong conviction that their faith should have a say in how we are governed in America and in the shape and character of our society.

For many of us who were repulsed by Donald Trump’s demeanor, his irresponsible statements about women, Hispanics, the handicapped, and released recordings of his boasting about taking sexual advantage of women because of his celebrity status, the evangelical church’s support of Donald Trump was an outright contradiction.  His personal moral conduct has been reprehensible and his apology for any of it disingenuous. How could a Christian of any denomination ever support him?

The grassroots backlash against secularization explains this aberration in the Christian vote as well.  Secularization seeks to prevent the majority Christian religion from influencing American political life and to drive Christian faith into the private realm of personal moral behavior.  Citizens who make up the grass roots of America refuse to have their faith defined by or their voices confined to personal moral behaviors, their own or Donald Trump’s. They have spoken loudly, sometimes angrily, and now with their votes powerfully and effectively with a resounding NO MORE to secularization as the force driving progress in America.  The grassroots Christians who voted Donald Trump into the Whitehouse have successfully rushed the impregnable wall of separation between church and state and defeated the forces of secularization in American political life.

The grassroots voters who catapulted Donald Trump into the White House expect in return for their votes the reversal of serval policies and rulings of the current and previous Administrations and the Supreme Court that have been driven by the tide of secularization over the past 40 years.  Whether these changes will be effected is yet to be seen. President Elect Trump will work with Republican majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, but the question of whether he and the Republican Party are compatible or misfits is yet to be answered. The assumption and hope of the grassroots voters who put Donald Trump in the White House is that the new president and Congress will work together enough to reverse decisions secularization drove over them and their religious values.  The values of the grassroots which they still hold as part of their Biblical faith have passed through some swamps and sewers of politics and they have arrived to help shape the future of American political life.  They came to be players. They got into the game. And this year they won.

Hughey Reynolds

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Endnotes:

[i] *My primary resource for the class is the book Christ and Culture Revisited by D. A. Carson.  Carson is research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. I chose the book intentionally knowing the author represented a more Biblically conservative viewpoint than I hold. This school where he teaches holds the statement of the faith of the Evangelical Free Church of America, which views the Bible as inerrant in its original writings, the complete revelation of His will for our salvation and “the ultimate authority by which every realm of human knowledge and endeavor should be judged” (https://divinity.tiu.edu/who-we-are/statement-of-faith/). As a United Methodist elder, I recognize our denomination holds scripture as the primary source of knowledge for salvation but stops short of stating or suggesting that the scriptures are without error in the original writings. Rather, The United Methodist Book of Discipline states, “We are convinced that Jesus Christ is the living World of God in our midst whom we trust in life and death. The biblical authors, illumined by the Holy Spirit, bear witness that in Christ the world is reconciled to God” (The 2012 Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church, paragraph 105, p. 81). While those claiming belief in the inerrancy of Scripture also rely on Tradition, Experience, and Reason for interpreting the Scriptures, United Methodists sometimes elevate these extra-biblical sources to be on par with Scripture. D. A. Carson would reject this practice.

The book is a summary and critique of the classic work on the relationship of the sacred and the secular titled Christ and Culture, which was written by the theologian H. Richard Niebuhr in 1952.  During the class we reviewed the typology H. Richard Niebuhr developed to categorize distinct approaches various Christians have toward the culture in which they are situated.  His 5 types are Christ against culture, Christ of culture, Christ above culture, Christ and culture in paradox, and Christ the transformer of culture. While all but the second approach (Christ of culture) finds grounding in some parts of scripture, no one of them stands up against the major turning points of Biblical theology--God’s mighty acts of salvation from creation, the fall, the call of Abraham, the giving of the law, the sending of the prophets, the exile, and the acts of redemption God initiated through Biblical history culminating in the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, his life, death, resurrection, ascension, and promised return to earth to gather the elect and establish God’s Kingdom where he reigns in justice, mercy, and love.  Niebuhr’s classic work is not rejected but honored as an astute analysis of the primary views churches that existed in the 1950s held about the relationship between the church and culture. Christian denominations across the theological spectrum aligned themselves accordingly primarily with one or the other of Niebuhr’s types.

D.A. Carson concludes that in light of the whole of Biblical theology and in light of the developments in the church and in society, adhering to one or the other of Niebuhr’s philosophies about the relationship of the church and culture is an act of reductionism. We have to ignore much of Biblical theology and many developments in society to hold to one of these perspectives as our stance about how the church should relate to society.  The whole of Biblical theology rather than one of Niebuhr’s types is the standard for determining the church’s role in a given culture and assessing whether the church should stand over against cultural entities or work in cooperation with them. 

[ii] Thomas Jefferson’s letter responding to congratulations from the Baptist Association of Danbury, Connecticut on his election to the presidency in which they applauded him for his defense of religious liberty. Jefferson himself was in France in 1789 when the First Amendment was ratified.
[iii] James Hitchcock, The Supreme Court and Religion in American Life, vol. 1: The Odyssey of the Religion Clauses; vol. 2: From “Higher Law” to “Sectarian Scruples (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004)

Is There Any Non-Partisan Truth Left?

A retired colleague of mine posted on social media a scorecard that showed which national politicians lied the most. The scorecard was based on a non-partisan study of at least 50 public statements each of the politicians had made. The scorecard had a scale that indicated how many of the claims made by each politician were true, how many were partial truths, and how many were completely fabricated (flat out lies). According to the scorecard, the ones who lied the most were actually the ones who most frequently accused the others of lying. 

The Democrats fared a lot better on his scorecard than Republicans, so my Republican friends who responded to his post cried "foul!" They were absolutely certain the study was biased,  either a total fantasy of my friend's demented thinking or nothing more than propaganda from the left.  We have reached a time in the history of communications when nothing has to be verified as true before it is published as the truth, so critics were justified in their skepticism. Even if the scorecard was amassed by researchers with blinders on, the party that scores worse on it will deny its validity. That's the way of politics these days.

In 2016, a civil conversation about political differences is as rare as a high temperature of 75 degrees or less on an August afternoon in Alabama. Civil political conversations occur only when both parties admit that their opinions are biased toward the party and candidate they prefer.  The human condition of original sin continues to plague even those of us redeemed by grace so that we delude ourselves to believe our truth is objective and reliable and our opponent's truth is subjective and unreliable. The problem is so pronounced during this presidential election season that showing a lack of disdain for the candidate the local and vocal majority opposes will get you pigeonholed as ignorant or a radical, if not a lunatic.

Prophets were seldom if ever honored in their time for speaking inconvenient truth. Many of them were accused of treason and imprisoned or killed for their words whose truth time would confirm. Their words rang true sometimes centuries after they announced judgment or blessing.  Eighty-four years ago, Reinhold Niebuhr published a book titled Moral Man and Immoral Society in which he offered a theological perspective on social and political issues as current as today's news. The year was 1932, before the Nazi movement and its excesses became a serious concern to the US and its allies and long before the civil rights movement pressed for equal rights under the law for all races. Read the following statements written by Niebuhr. Think of American and world history since he wrote these words. Think of our current reality and draw your own conclusions. 

“There is a paradox in patriotism…[because] patriotism transmutes individual unselfishness into national egoism…The unqualified character of this devotion is the very basis of the nation’s power and of the freedom to use the power without moral restraint.”

“The moral attitudes of dominant and privileged groups are characterized by universal self-deception and hypocrisy.” They conflate (and confuse) “the unconscious and conscious identification of their special interests with general interests and universal values.”

“Will a disinherited group, such as [African-Americans], ever win full justice in society [through negotiation]? Will not even its most minimum demands seem exorbitant to the dominant whites, among whom only a very small minority will regard the inter-racial problem from the perspective of objective justice?”

“Contending factions in a social struggle require morale; and morale is created by the right dogmas, symbols and emotionally potent oversimplifications.”

A partisan view sees any truth in these statements as a critique of our opponent or enemy but does not see it as applicable to us.  A non-partisan view of these statements says, HE NAILED US. The partisan approach is denial. The non-partisan approach is contrition, a synonym for repentance. The only non-partisan truth that remains is confession of our own sins, mea culpa. Accusing our opponents of their many sins does not count as confession. Acknowledging our own failures and learning from them so that we do not repeat them is confession and repentance.  We would have smarter politicians if we allowed them to acknowledge their mistakes, learn from them, and continue to serve except with a little more humility and gratitude afterwards. As long as partisan politics determines who gets elected as our governmental leaders, confession and repentance will amount to political suicide, a self-incriminating admission to weakness. It is nonetheless the only way to start recognizing and telling non-partisan truth, and that is the purest kind. 

Hughey Reynolds

The Moral Dilemma of Voting for a Presidential Candidate

Several of us will have to eat our words when we vote for the Democratic or Republican Party nominee for President in this year's general election.  More than a few who were in the "Never Trump" movement are now lining up to work for Donald Trump's election this November. And among Hillary Clinton's supporters are former critics who once wanted to spit every time they heard her name.

This year I have said more than once that I am bracing myself to vote in November for "the lesser of two evils."  I do not want to vote for evil. I want to vote for good. Is that possible this year, or any year?  Based on recent primary campaign tactics and antics, I expect that the Democratic and Republican party candidates will attempt to demonize each other all the way up to November. Each candidate will ignore or minimize the positive and exaggerate the negative aspects of his or her opponent's personality, capabilities, and platform.

To accept the demonizing of any political candidate is sloth. It is intellectually lazy and far less than we should expect of ourselves or our fellow citizens. And yet, conceding to vote for the lesser of two evils in November assumes that the demonizing politicians were right and that both candidates are devils.  On the other hand, believing the choice is between my candidate who is an angel, or at least an admirable human being, and the other candidate who is a devil is delusional.

A twentieth century American theologian named Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) taught, wrote, and preached prophetically about political life in America.  If you will engage his words thoughtfully, I believe you will see that what he wrote in 1946 offers a fresh and insightful perspective on this year's political campaign.  I believe acknowledging the truth of his words, i.e., that you and I see from a limited and skewed perspective, allows us to make a clearer judgment about this year's presidential candidates. When I no longer project my deception and my ignorance onto them I can see more objectively their real strengths and real weaknesses.

The following is more than a sound bite, but  if you soak in these thoughts and use them to reflect on our current political climate I believe the words will ring true.  This is an excerpt from Reinhold Niebuhr's book Discerning the Signs of the Times (Scribner's, 1946, pp. 12-13).

Since we usually do not deceive others without also deceiving ourselves, our motives are frequently "honest" after we have dishonestly constructed the imposing facade of ideal intentions...  

The combination of ignorance and dishonesty, which determines the composition of our social prejudices, is occasioned by the fact that all men are creatures of limited perspectives and yet are also free spirits who have some knowledge of the larger frame of reference in which their judgment and their interest are not the center of the scheme of things. Our anxieties as weak creatures in competition with other forms of life prompt us to advance our own interests. Our strength as rational and spiritual creatures enables us to advance these interests beyond their rightful range. Our further capacity to recognize the invalidity of these claims means that we must, with some degree of conscious dishonesty, hide our special interests and claims, and merge them with the more universal and general interests.

Thus it is that every party claim and every national judgment, every racial and religious prejudice, and every private estimate of the interests and virtues of other men, is something more and something less than a purely intellectual judgment. From the simplest judgment of our rival and competitor to the most ultimate judgment about the character of human history and the manner of its final fulfillment, we are tempted to error by our anxieties and our pride; and we seek to hide the error by pretension. We can not discern the signs of the times because we are hypocrites.

 Niebuhr's understanding does not elevate political candidates above the rest of us or give them immunity from the ignorance and dishonesty by which all humans pursue our own self-interest. He rather brings into focus the limited perspective we have to judge politicians, inviting us to take the first step toward gaining a clearer perspective by practicing a little humility.  Niebuhr astutely observes further, as if peering ahead 70 years from 1946 (p. 21,22, 25):

Anger is the root of both righteousness and sin... One source of sin in anger lies in the selfish narrowness of our emotions... The second corrupt fruit of anger is hatred..  The cure of the sin in anger is not an emotional detachment from the issues of life. It is rather an attitude of humility which recognizes the constant temptation to sinful and egoistic corruption in our anger.

Niebuhr's critique of human anger and limitation is on target. Does he see and offer any solution?  He warns us not to assume that having faith purifies our politics. "A faith which claims to know too much is not merely the bearer of the pretensions of wisdom, but also the instrument of human will-to-power" (p. 90).  He gives no final answer for us but has hope for our national life in the faith of Abraham who looked for a city whose builder and maker was God (Hebrews 11:10); in our expectant waiting for the coming of the Son of Man (Matthew 25:1-13); in the humor of God (Psalm 2:4) and our own capacity to laugh at ourselves; in the power of God that is made perfect in weakness (Matthew 27, 2 Corinthians 2:9); in the unconquered mysteries of God (1 Corinthians 13:12); and in peace of God which surpasses all understanding and keeps our hearts through Jesus Christ (Philippians 4:7).

As Christians we do not have to choose between two evil political candidates, but rather confess the evil in our own lives that distorts our perspectives and claim for ourselves the mercy, grace, and love of God at work to forgive us and open our eyes so we realistically, and without condemnation, assess human beings for who they are: sinners saved by grace, and therefore God's children. As children of God we are called and expected to embrace interests that are far bigger than our own.

Given these realities, and discerning the spirit of the times, I fully expect to see the good beyond the bad in both presidential candidates and to make a choice for the one I believe is most committed and capable of delivering the good of our nation and world in the days ahead.