AHC/PC/WI: More Progressive Christian Culture

There are three big reasons why American evangelical Christianity is right wing:

  • The South is typically more conservative than the North, at least among the white community, and evangelical Christianity has the strongest following in the South
  • The shameful silence or opposition of Evangelical Christianity on the 1950s-60s Civil Rights Movement
  • One factor divided into three subfactors
    • Roe v. Wade
    • Francis Schaeffer's book A Christian Manifesto, which helped create the Christian Right
    • The diverging platforms of the Democratic and Republican Parties with respect to abortion. If the Democratic party had not been monolithic on abortion issues, at least for presidential candidates and congressional leaders, you would have likely not seen the Catholic move to the GOP.
These issues have tended to make American evangelical Christianity right wing.
I like the first one, the focus on baseline. Which we often ignore at our own peril because it's not a fun, interesting, sexy topic.

Alright, from the 1973 decision on abortion (which was actually a doctor's rights decision, not a women's or a patients' rights decision at least not initially) up until 1978 mid-terms in several Senate races, evangelicals tended to think of abortion as 'a Catholic issue.'

In a similar way, did white ministers think of civil rights as 'an African-American issue'?

And it shouldn't surprise us too much if people are tribal, even spiritual persons. We probably all have our groups and causes we more closely identify with.

And what was missed with abortion was the idea, given that a Constitutional Amendment will probably take a while, let's see what we can do in the meantime to reduce the incidence . . . in large part leading to issues of economic justice.
 
Alright, from the 1973 decision on abortion (which was actually a doctor's rights decision, not a women's or a patients' rights decision at least not initially) up until 1978 mid-terms in several Senate races, evangelicals tended to think of abortion as 'a Catholic issue.'

That's why I mentioned Schaeffer. He was a prominent evangelical Christian apologist in the 1960s and 70s and The Christian Manifesto was considered the spark for evangelicals (already more conservative by geographic concentration) to become politically motivated by abortion.

It definitely had been seen as a Catholic issue, and the mainline churches were and still are in support of abortion.

A lot of it is simply that Evangelicalism got co-opted by the Republican Party, more than the other way around. From these traditionalist viewpoints, the entire old social order had been tossed out in the "moral anarchy" of the 1960s and 70s (some of it was racial, some sexual, and general views of authority), and the Democratic Party was pushing the envelope. A good political party knows when to adapt, and when to co-opt a shift. Once the Democratic party became firmly pro-choice, these newly political evangelicals felt like they had nowhere else to go.

Contrast that with the UK, where ever since the Puritans, doctrinally evangelical Christianity has had a lot to say about social welfare that would be rather leftist (anti-slavery, temperance movements, trade unionism, and the like), and the "traditional" doctrinally moderate Anglicans have tended to be Tory. For example, I believe the new Liberal Democratic leader is a fairly staunch evangelical, and so are many in the Labour party - especially more old Labour types (UK friends please correct me on this).
 
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Another POD (albeit pre-1900) is this:

  • Thanks to stronger Methodist and evangelical advocacy inspired by William Wilberforce, the Virginia legislature passes a gradual emancipation Act in the 1820s. (Anti-slavery support in the South peaked at this time) Gradually other, more southern states follow suit.
  • Due to the economic risk to Northern textile interests, pro-slavery advocacy comes loudly from not two quarters, instead of just the fire-eaters.
  • Thanks to the victory, Protestants in the south keep working for compensated abolition instead of totally vanishing.
The other factor that plays into this is that almost all of the major social reformers in America tended to be at least somewhat "unorthodox" (if not much more so) in Christian theology, such that it became pretty easy for liberal social ideas and [liberal/radical/heretical] theological ideas to be closely associated in the evangelical/orthodox protestant mold.

A lot is simply unique to the American founding and perspective, even beyond the Evangelical sphere.
 
Another POD (albeit pre-1900) is this:


  • Thanks to stronger Methodist and evangelical advocacy inspired by William Wilberforce, the Virginia legislature passes a gradual emancipation Act in the 1820s. (Anti-slavery support in the South peaked at this time) . . . . .
I like this potential timeline. And I like the fact that pro-slavery advocacy comes from not just the fire-eaters in the South, but also textile interests in the North, in perhaps an early example of oh-so smooth corporate PR.

Alright, and it will be an occasion in which a number of people decide to do something which is directly opposed to their economic interests. This has perhaps happened a couple of times in human history, and perhaps more than a couple if we really look. And religion is as good a motivation as any, perhaps better than most.

Maybe momentum increases so that this is largely successful in thirty years. And then, perhaps an end game strategy to deal with the holdovers.
 
and/or for a modern POD, the whole situation regarding Bob Jones University vs. the IRS, and the conservative activism regarding such.

Maybe Bob Jones is still defiant, but other evangelicals split and say there's nothing biblical about discrimination; in fact, it goes against our values. And running a school is not the same as a church and is not automatically entitled to a tax exemption.

So, some evangelical leaders stay with President Carter and some go with Governor Reagan in the 1980 election, and we have a much more fluid, dynamic situation in the years following.*

* By the way, this issue goes back to the Nixon and Ford administrations. Just that another court case hit when Carter was president and the IRS was going ahead with the regulations.
 
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