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May 20, 2005

National Media Witch Hunt Against The Religious Right

By Quin Hillyer

Memo to the national media, and to the political left in general: Get a grip. Stop being paranoid. The "religious right" isn't evil, doesn't run the country, and won't destroy your liberties.

So stop spouting all that nonsense about "theocracy" and "ayatollahs." Stop fighting against a mythical bogeyman. Stop scaring people.

For background, consider that the media for years had problems not just with Christian conservatives, but with religion in general. The craziest example was the sub-headline in a national news magazine back in the 1990s that noted "the surprising unsecularity of the American public."

When did "secularity" become the norm? Why was it "surprising" to the editors that the American public is religious? This is, after all, a country where more than 90 percent of people profess belief in God.

The current media freak-out, however, began after President George W. Bush won re-election. Maureen Dowd of The New York Times wrote immediately that Mr. Bush was running "a jihad in America," that he "got re-elected by dividing the country along fault lines of fear, intolerance, ignorance and religious rule."

Yeah, right. As if the only reasons for 60 million Americans to support Mr. Bush or oppose John Kerry were variants of bigotry or stupidity.

In truth, the sky isn't falling. But Ms. Dowd has returned repeatedly to the same theme, even starting one column with this line: "Oh my God, we really are in a theocracy."

Such fulminations have become the norm in today's punditry. Rarely does a day go by without at least one column on the news wire lamenting that rule by domestic ayatollahs is at hand.

In the pages of the Register on May 15, for instance, columnist Cynthia Tucker warned that "our science infrastructure is under attack from religious extremists." A day earlier, Leonard Pitts and Ellen Goodman both wrote in similar terms against the religious right. On May 10, it was Clarence Page's turn. On May 3, Carl Hiassen opined against religious "zealots" in a "tizzy."

And on April 24, Ms. Tucker sputtered that the Christian right's "antediluvian (before the flood?) agenda represents a serious threat to American democracy." If they get their way, she wrote, "the entire nation will live according to the rigid rules of a handful of self-righteous folks who distrust modernity. They would dictate the way we worship, live, work, have sex and even die. ... These extremists have much in common with the jihadist wing of Islam."

Does she really have so little confidence in our nation? Is it really just one small jump, for instance, from requiring parental consent for out-of-state abortions to waging a holy war that encourages the beheading of innocents?

These writers should take a chill pill. They're not just crying wolf; they're crying werewolf at the mere sight of a poodle puppy.

The latest story upsetting the worry-warts is the North Carolina church whose pastor tried to run off congregation members who voted for John Kerry. Never mind that public reaction was perfectly capable of punishing the blatant politicization: In the end, it was the pastor who had to resign.

What's oddly instructive is that the same pundits so aghast at this incident don't seem to object to the decades-long tradition of direct involvement of black churches in supporting liberal political candidates -- often in conjunction with financial donations to the churches by Democratic organizations.

These pundits also ignore how overtly political the national bodies of the "mainline" Protestant churches have become -- always in support of the left. Go to the Web page of the National Council of Churches: You'll find headlines urging support of the Democrats' filibusters against judicial nominees. You'll find support for a more liberal federal budget, and opposition to oil drilling in Alaska.

On the Web pages of the Episcopal, United Methodist and Presbyterian churches, you'll see official statements in support of liberal positions on gun control, economics, abortion and foreign affairs.

Last summer in Mobile, an Episcopal priest asserted (without proof) at a John Kerry rally that the combination of the Christian Coalition and the Bush administration had "used racist means" and would "use its power to stop and destroy anyone or anything that gets in its way. It is a mob gone wild. ... They will stop at nothing to silence discourse. ... The formerly fringe fanatics now have power and they want to create a theocracy."

Clearly, free-speech rights are alive and well in the United States. Obviously, there's no shortage of "religious" voices in politics across the ideological spectrum.

What should be equally obvious is that on issue after issue, tens of millions of Americans make decisions based on a host of factors -- some rooted in their faiths, many more rooted in their own personal sense of justice, value or even self-interest.

One doesn't have to be a member of the "religious right" to want to ban partial-birth abortions. One doesn't have to be a secular or religious leftist to believe that society must care for the elderly and disabled.

This is a pluralistic nation, with a Constitution with so many safeguards that it's virtually impossible for a narrow-minded interest, much less a theocracy, to wield hugely disproportionate power.

Personally, I don't think the Bible is a treatise on political economics. I would urge religious groups to limit their political involvement to momentous, clear-cut moral issues.

But I worry about their involvement not because religion pollutes the politics of such a pluralistic society, but because politics pollutes religion. AMEN!

Your neighbor at the Pentecostal Church has neither the intention nor the power to subject you to theocracy. But he has every right to organize, just as you do, to win support for his political views.

The danger isn't that you'll lose your most basic rights to his promulgation of faith. Instead, the most profound danger is that he, or you, may -- little by little -- lose an essential character of faith in the search for political power.

Quin Hillyer is an editorial writer for the Mobile Register, where this article first appeared. He may be reached via email at qhillyer@mobileregister.com.