Death Knell for the Fundie Movement?

Frank Rich is a writer that I admire immensely - and not just because I agree with virtually all of the man's political views.  I am never less than dazzled by the way he puts words together, and in a country with far too many shrill journalists - some on the left, most on the right - Rich manages to make erudition seem effortless, and compassion (which he demonstrates to those Christians who eschew the concept) seem almost unavoidable.  I would trust Frank Rich to watch my dogs, the highest honor I could bestow upon a person.  (As opposed to, say, Ann Coulter, whom I would not allow in the same room with them lest they pick up fleas, ringworm, or peculiar eating habits.) 

In a recent column for the New York Times entitled The Culture Warriors Get Laid Off, Rich notes what is possibly the only upside to America's current financial woes.  Here, at last, is one piece of good news in our global economic meltdown: Americans have less and less patience for the intrusive and divisive moral scolds who thrived in the bubbles of the Clinton and Bush years. Culture wars are a luxury the country - the G.O.P. included - can no longer afford.  

Rich frames his argument historically by reminding readers of what happened during our nation's other devastating financial crisis, The Great Depression.  He points to an earlier "great moral crusade" that occurred amid the 1920s economic boom, and notes that besides banning the sale and manufacture of alcoholic beverages, those self-righteous zealots railed against the teaching of evolution in schools:  The Anti-Saloon League was the Moral Majority of its day, the vanguard of a powerful fundamentalist movement that pushed anti-evolution legislation as vehemently as it did its war on booze. (The Scopes “monkey trial” was in 1925.)  But the political standing of this crowd crashed along with the stock market...  Having lost plenty in the Depression, the public did not want to surrender any more freedoms to the noisy minority that had shut down the nation’s saloons.

Rank-and-file Americans may be hurting financially, but they're not oblivious to the bald hypocrisy of Bible-beating GOPers.  Writes Rich:  Indeed, the two top candidates for leader of the post-Bush G.O.P, Rush and Newt, have six marriages between them. The party that once declared war on unmarried welfare moms, homosexual “recruiters” and Bill Clinton’s private life has been rebranded by Mark Foley, Larry Craig, David Vitter and the irrepressible Palins.  Even before the economy tanked, Americans had more faith in medical researchers using discarded embryos to battle Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s than in Washington politicians making ad hoc medical decisions for Terri Schiavo.  (Frank, if you're ever in Houston will you come over and watch my dogs?)

Funerals are usually sad affairs, but an interment for the malevolent policies hailed by America's hateful culture warriors will be a cause for celebration.  "We fell for the trap of believing in a cause more than a faith," says Michael Spencer at  the Christian Science Monitor, a self-styled "post-evangelical reformation Christian" (and hoary sibyl): There are three kinds of evangelical churches today: consumer-driven megachurches, dying churches, and new churches whose future is fragile. Denominations will shrink, even vanish, while fewer and fewer evangelical churches will survive and thrive.  (And you've brought it all upon yourselves.)  Even in areas where Evangelicals imagine themselves strong (like the Bible Belt), we will find a great inability to pass on to our children a vital evangelical confidence in the Bible and the importance of the faith.  (Because fundies have embraced intolerance and plain meanness.)  The money will dry up.  (Jesus wept.)  We need new evangelicalism that learns from the past and listens more carefully to what God says about being His people in the midst of a powerful, idolatrous culture.  (There you go again.)

Chip Berlet on Talk To Action:  The issue is not secular belief versus spiritual faith; the issue is how to craft a pluralist civil society that honors the dignity of both secular philosophy and spiritual faith, while insisting that theological claims alone should never dictate public policies. That's why we say we are challenging theocracy; because that's what the Christian Right is increasingly sowing: a theocratic society.

Berlet wrote those words four years ago.  Little has changed. The modern evangelical movement will continue to be challenged - and found wanting - as long as right-wing Christians preach hate and meddle in politics.  It will continue to decline until fundies learn to love their neighbors as they so passionately love themselves.