[Dialogue] Spong on evangelicals

[KroegerD@aol.com]

August 31, 2005 
The Dark Side of  Evangelical Religion 
I often wonder what Bible it is that people read in America's Bible Belt. I  
wonder what the religion is that is practiced by the Religious Right. It  
certainly does not connect with my understanding of Christianity. Perhaps I am  
the one who is blind to the things they perceive, but seeing their enthusiasm  
for war, their lack of concern for the welfare of minorities, their overt  
homophobia, and their violence (as expressed in the number of legal executions  in 
that region), I cannot help but ask those who live in the Bible Belt and  
those who hold membership in the Religious Right to help me comprehend the  
religious understanding that they espouse.  
This issue was raised sharply for me recently by a remark from Pat Robertson, 
 president and owner of the Christian Broadcasting Television Network. On his 
 700 Club program, Robertson — one of America's leading evangelical voices  —
 called for the assassination of Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez. Murder,  
apparently, is a legitimate Christian solution when you have a disagreement 
with  someone. Robertson, who was a candidate for the Republican nomination for  
president in 1988, is a major force in the religious base dedicated to the  
presidency of George W. Bush. (Bush's "red state" region is the home of the 
most  overtly religious voters in this country.) The president has represented 
their  point of view well with his opposition to abortion, stem-cell research,  
homosexuality, and the right to make end-of-life decisions. Utterances 
emanating  from Pat Robertson's lips, however, do not sound to me like the words of a 
 religious leader, at least not a Christian religious leader.  
This murder recommendation, by the way, was not his only bizarre moral lapse. 
 Writing about the feminist movement in a fund-raising letter, Robertson 
said:  "The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a  
socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their  
husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and  
become lesbians." That does not sound like the feminists I know and is  
especially offensive to those feminists who are my wife and daughters. About  
homosexuality Robertson has not only been hostile but also uninformed and  judgmental. 
Additionally he has combined his prejudices by adding the faint odor  of 
anti-Semitism to his homophobia. In a Christmas Eve program, he once said:  "The 
acceptance of homosexuality is the last step in the decline of gentile  
Christianity." Now he has decided that the murder of Hugo Chavez is within his  
understanding of Christianity. This is the same man, I remind you, who  championed 
the right of Chief Justice Roy Moore of Alabama to hang the Ten  Commandments 
in his courtroom. Perhaps Robertson has not read those commandments  recently, 
but the last time I looked they still contained the injunction: "Thou  shalt 
not kill."  
It was amusing yet frightening to watch some of this nation's other  
evangelical leaders dance around these comments by their colleague. One of them  tried 
to justify Robertson's words by suggesting that they came during "the  
political side" of Robertson's television program rather than "the religious  side." 
This strange logic suggests that murder is okay in the political arena,  but 
not in the religious arena. Somehow murder seems to me to be both terminal  
and evil in either place. Jesse Jackson's request that the Federal  
Communications Commission discipline Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network  for his 
comments, just as they disciplined CBS and MTV over the exposure of  Janet 
Jackson's breast during the half-time show of the Super Bowl in 2004, was  
dismissed by the same evangelical leader as not being "in the same category of  moral 
concern," the implication being that the comments were a lesser offense.  
That argument's value escapes me. A performer's exposed breast is certainly in  
bad taste but no one died as a result of that insensitive act. To call for the  
murder of a head of state because you dislike his politics strikes me as of a 
 totally different and far more severe moral dimension. Members of the 
Religious  Right do seem to be more obsessed with issues of sexuality than they are 
about  issues like war and peace or discrimination. Sometimes they remind me 
of the old  joke that "fundamentalists are opposed to sex because it might lead 
to dancing!"   
I grew up a Southern evangelical fundamentalist in the Bible Belt. I  
certainly needed the security it offered me during the early years of my life,  as I 
dealt with both death and poverty. I left that movement, however, because I  
found it intellectually bankrupt and morally indefensible. It was their  
indefensible morality far more than their intellectual bankruptcy that bothered  me 
the most even then. Intellectual issues can be debated, facts cited, and  
minds changed. I know that from my own spiritual journey. When immoral activity  
done in the name of religion occurs, however, the scars created by both the 
pain  of disillusionment and the loss of integrity are very long lasting. So out 
of  the embarrassment of listening to a person identified as a Christian 
calling for  an act of murder, I seek answers to my searching questions.  
What Bible do people read in that region of America we call the Bible  Belt? 
In that part of our nation, church going is more popular than it is in any  
other part of America, and people living there hold to their religious  
affiliations very deeply. Yet that is the same part of America that engaged in  
slavery until they were required to give up that inhumane practice by force of  
arms. Is the enslavement of human beings compatible with the Christian life?  
Certainly quotations from Holy Scripture were used to justify slavery and to  
remove any pangs of guilt that might have accompanied that institution in the  
hearts of the "fine Christian slaveholders" of the South. Yet how does slavery  
square with Jesus' words: "By this will all know that you are my disciples, if  
you love one another" (John 13:35). Would they have me believe that slavery 
is  simply a form of love that I do not recognize? Is the calling for the 
murder of  a head of state also a form of love that I just do not understand?  
When slavery was made illegal in the Bible Belt following the American Civil  
War, its bastard stepchild, known as segregation, took its place. Black 
people  were separated from white people by law. Their children were forced to go 
to  inferior schools. They were not allowed access to public libraries, public  
parks, or public toilets. They were refused service in both hotels and  
restaurants, and they were prohibited from trying on clothes in department  stores 
and dress shops. Black people had no standing and few rights in the  
white-dominated courts. Enforcing these brutal practices was an organization  called 
the Ku Klux Klan, which used the primary Christian symbol, a cross,  turning it 
into an instrument of intimidation and fear by setting it ablaze. The  Klan 
was also served by a "Khaplain," who invariably articulated the values of  what 
was called white, gentile Christianity, while at the same time seeking to  
dominate and coerce people of color with physical violence. The great majority  
of the white people of the Bible Belt supported segregation until it was  
declared to be illegal in 1954 by a unanimous ruling of the Supreme Court. Even  
then the white Christians of the South resisted that law by every possible  
means, legal and illegal. "Massive resistance to the law of the land" was the  
motto adopted by the church-going political organization run by Senator Harry  
Byrd of Virginia. It was fully supported by the junior senator from that same  
state, A. Willis Robertson, who along with his wife, were quite overtly  
religious, God-fearing, church-going Christians. They were also the parents of  
evangelist Pat Robertson. Perhaps neither the Byrds nor the Robertsons ever read  
Jesus' words describing his purpose as that of bringing life, abundant life to 
 all (John 10:10). Or perhaps they were able to convince themselves that  
segregation offered enhancement, not diminishment, of the humanity of black  
people.  
What kind of religion was being practiced in the Bible Belt of the South when 
 lynching, mostly of black males, occurred there with great regularity until 
the  mid-twentieth century with the full support of both the white 
law-enforcement  officials and the white dominated courts? How was it possible that 
Southern  sheriffs, police officials, judges, and juries, who winked at this murder 
of  black people, were also God-fearing, Bible-reading, church-going 
Christians? If  they could square the lynching of "offensive" black males with the 
Christianity  they practiced in the Bible Belt, then calling for the murder of an 
offending  head of state in Venezuela by a well-known Southern Christian 
evangelist a  generation later should be easy to understand.  
America's Religious Right was appalled at the sexual misconduct of President  
Clinton. So was I. But again their moral compass seems askew when they are 
not  equally appalled at the behavior of a president who has taken us into a war 
 based on blatantly false intelligence data. He has presided over a 
tremendous  abuse of human rights in both Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo for which no 
persons  other than enlisted personnel have yet been convicted. His actions have 
cost the  lives of some 1,900 American service persons, the wounding of thousands 
more, to  say nothing of his responsibility for the deaths of uncounted 
Iraqis. His  religious supporters appear to feel no outrage about this. Yet this 
president  claims that his religion guides his every action.  
I am glad Pat Robertson got caught with his moral pants hanging at half-mast, 
 for it is time that the citizens of this country awaken to the dark side of 
the  religious coalition that threatens, if it has not already done so, to 
seize  power in the United States.  
So, I return to my questions: What Bible do they read in the Bible Belt? What 
 kind of religion do those who are said to be members of the Religious Right  
practice? What kind of Christian evangelist is it who thinks it is moral to 
call  for the murder of a head of state? I would love to have an answer. So 
would an  increasingly larger and larger segment of the citizens of the United 
States.  
— John Shelby Spong  
Question and Answer
With John  Shelby Spong 
Carolyn Young, via the Internet, writes:  
"When you research Biblical views, what Internet or written sources are good  
starting points for persons who want to hear a liberal viewpoint besides your 
 own. I am looking for commentaries and Bible software that is worth the  
investment of money or time. I do not want Matthew Henry or Strog's Concordance  
anymore. Help!"  
Dear Carolyn,  
I wish it were that simple. There is really no such thing as liberal biblical 
 scholarship or conservative biblical scholarship. There is only competent or 
 incompetent biblical scholarship, the findings of which can be interpreted 
by  people who are either conservative or liberal. But if one asserts, for 
example,  as one of my readers did recently, that all four Gospels were written by 
the  same person that is simply incompetent.  
What you need to do is to utilize the bibliography in books by authors you  
believe are enlightened. You also need to read sources that communicate to you  
where you are at this moment. For example, one of my favorite New Testament  
scholars is Michael Donald Goulder, recently retired from the University of  
Birmingham in the U.K. Michael is a first rate scholar who makes copious use of 
 notes. Sometimes three quarters of one of his pages consists of notes. 
Included  in the notes are Greek phrases and Hebrew phrases. Unless you are 
proficient in  those languages, Michael's books would be very difficult going. Yet 
his  two-volume commentary on Luke entitled, "Luke, A New Paradigm" is still the 
best  work on Luke I have ever read. Many commentaries and most biblical 
software are  the products of those who have more zeal than knowledge.  
I have been working on these things for a lifetime. I wish there was a short  
cut. There isn't. So be prepared for the long haul. My best.  
— John Shelby Spong