In the Bush era, with graduates of Pat Robertson's university packing the Justice Department, holy rollers fighting the teaching of evolution, and Supreme Court justices mistaking their robes for clerical garb, surely the population of right wing evangelicals is growing.
Interesting, then, to come across this piece of a Ross Douthat Atlantic article (with hat tip to Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo blog):
"In a [2002] paper in the American Sociological Review, Michael Hout and Claude S. Fischer announced the startling fact that the percentage of Americans who said they had 'no religious preference' had doubled in less than 10 years, rising from 7 percent to 14 percent of the population.
"This unexpected spike wasn't the result of growing atheism, Hout and Fischer argued; rather, more Americans were distancing themselves from organized religion as 'a symbolic statement' against the religious right."
If they're right—and even those of us who aren't Bush have a gut with which to intuit now and again, and my gut says they're dead on—our fundamentalist friends need to do some serious reflecting on what happens when you ignore that Jesus guy and just take crap over because you think you're right. They are turning people away from Christianity, the opposite of what the Bible tells them to do.
I'm the son of a Baptist preacher. I know a thing or three about fundamentalists, even though my family never qualified for that moniker (me, I like evolution just fine, though I hold more closely to the ideas of devolution).
I always thought the fundamentalist brand of "witnessing" (when the guy in line behind you at McDonald's starts an awkward conversation, and 30 seconds in says, "Do you know Jesus?") was counter-productive. It's also the school of thought that produces Chick tracts, those weird little cartoon booklets designed to scare the hell out of you for, usually: a) living the rock and roll lifestyle, b) being Catholic, or c) dressing like a pimp. They contain a generic prayer at the end. Intone it, it promises, and you're stepping off the hell express, right into Ned Flanders-ville.
It might seem obvious to those of us who are not fundamentalists that high on the list of "How to Win Friends and Influence People" is not "employ strange, frightening methods to make them convert to the religion of your choice." It might seem obvious that 99 percent of the targets of such manipulation will immediately develop an intense mistrust of anybody who looks nervous around the extra ketchup. They are doing terrible things to the belief system I personally value, which is heavy on the Golden Rule, light on all the smiting.
The fundamentalists invaded politics in earnest in the '80s. The results have flown in the face of our Constitution, which, as Northampton author Frederick Clarkson has repeatedly pointed out, included Article 6 in order to cut theocracy, then present in the colonies, out of government. They also, with the help of the main matchmaker of church-state romance, Karl Rove, brought us George W. Bush.
The whole evangelical emphasis seems to have gone down the drain ever since they took to taking over government instead of souls. Of course, Jesus told even right wingers to "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's." Then there was the whole throwing the moneychangers out of the temple thing. I guess they skipped that part of the Bible. They seem to prefer smiting and vengeful gods to loving thy neighbor and being meek and humble.
There's a central problem they've overlooked. As an old proverb says, "I can't hear what you're saying—I'm too busy watching what you do.""
For more, including sample pages from Chick tracts, visit James Heflin's blog, the Ten Gallon Liberal, at www.valleyadvocate.com/blogs/tengallon.
