 | Ch 2: "God Bless Our President . . ."
and Other Revolutionary Ideas
Televangelism: Power and Politics on God`s Frontier |  |
Ch 2: "God Bless Our President . . ." and Other Revolutionary Ideas
I've
always thought that a providential hand had something to do with the
founding of this country, that God had His reasons for placing this land
here between two great oceans to tee found by a certain kind of
people.
Ronald Reagan,
Statue of Liberty Relighting
Ceremonies
On April 29, 1980, a crowd estimated at a quarter to a half million poured onto the Mall in Washington, D. C., for a marathon prayer meeting that its organizers called Washington for Jesus. Those who were on the Mall at 6 A.M. and remained until the final benediction after 6 P.M. heard forty-seven speakers, scores of prayers, and almost as many religious and patriotic songs. One by one, the speakers came forth to confess a long litany of national sins and to repent on behalf of a yet-unrepentant secular nation. Each of the early speakers presented slightly different emphases and oratorical styles, but as the damp and dreary morning gave way to a sunny afternoon, the words seemed to blur. The audience had become mesmerized.
The gathering then took on a festive, Woodstock-like quality it was a religious happening unlike any that had occurred before in America. The speakers' platform was usually the focal point of the gathering, but at times dozens of spontaneous prayer groups and off
podium speeches captured the attention of significant numbers of the assembled.
Undergirding the sermons, prayers, and speeches was an unmistakable historical sense. The date of April 29 was selected for an important reason. It was April 29, 1607, that the first permanent settlers planted a cross in the sand at Jamestown, Virginia, and prayed that this new land might arise and prosper with "His blessing and to His glory."
April 29 was the eve of another monumental date in American history. In the anguish of the War Between the States, 256 years after the Jamestown settlers reaffirmed their covenant with God, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed April 30, 1863, as a day of National Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer.
"We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven [God's gift of dominion]," wrote Lincoln, ". . . but we have forgotten God [man's failure to keep the terms of the covenant]." Lincoln's confession on behalf of the torn and battered nation continued:
In a manner and form that is completely consistent with numerous Old Testament confessions, Lincoln's proclamation moved from confession to pleading for God's forgiveness:
On April 29, 1980, the words of Abraham Lincoln's Proclamation for a National Day of Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer reverberated
off the granite monuments of America's capital city, as did the words of numerous Old Testament prophets; they challenged the assembled to renew the vows of Lincoln and the first settlers of this land so that the godly character of America might be restored.
The day's most frequently cited verse of Scripture virtually the theme of the rally came from an Old Testament covenant story. Solomon asks God what is to be done to restore his favor. God replies:
Speaker after speaker intertwined words of the Old and New Testaments with American history and the contemporary malaise as if they were interlocking experiences. In America and in the Bible, the theme repeats itself: (1) God's covenant, (2) man's disobedience to the covenant, (3) confession and repentance, (4) redemption and restoration.
Dr. William R. Bright, founder and president of Campus Crusade for Christ International and co-chairman of the Washington for Jesus rally, set the tone of confession and repentance early in the morning:
Bill Bright's chronicle of recent American history intermingles transgressions against God with the evidences of God's chastening. A rational scholar might well criticize Bright for lack of conceptual clarity. What is cause and what is effect?
What is important about Bright's statement is his forceful communication of the gnawing conviction that something has gone terribly wrong with America. What is wrong is the result of sin, of disobedience of God's covenant with America. There is also, in the words of Bright and others, the steadfast belief that America is not just one among nations; it is instead the nation with a providential mission in God's grand scheme of things. And finally, a certain faith is expressed that repentance can again restore the covenantal relationship and set America on the path God intended when He led His people of faith to the shores of this continent.
The national media ignored Washington for Jesus, or gave it brief notice. Almost everyone who did cover it noted that the rally failed to produce the million participants forecast by its organizers supposedly evidence that the meeting was not a success. They also gave nearly as much attention to a hastily organized counter-rally, which attracted only a few hundred. But the media did not mention that it was the largest crowd ever to assemble on the Mall larger than for any of the civil rights marches on Washington during the 1960s, larger than several antiwar protests during the 1960s and 1970, larger than the crowd that attended a mass with Pope John Paul II on the same site a few months earlier. The event was telecast over the satellite network of the Christian Broadcasting Network, PTL Network, and Trinity Broadcasting Network, putting several million more faithful in touch with this historic moment.
Bill Bright was undaunted by the media's lack of attention and generally negative tone. He looked out upon the throng of people and proclaimed April 29, 1980, to be "the most important day in this nation's history apart from its founding. " [3] Televangelist Pat Robertson, co-chairman of the event, agreed that something important was happening: "I believe this is an historic moment for our nation." [4]
Washington for Jesus was the brainchild of John Gimenez, a selfproclaimed "holy roller" preacher from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Earlier in his life, Gimenez, the son of a Puerto Rican Methodist minister, was overwhelmed by the dark side of Spanish Harlem in New York City. He pimped to support an addiction to heroin, and his life in the underworld rewarded him with prison terms at Auburn, Elmira, Sing Sing, and Riker's Island.
In 1966 Gimenez had a life-changing experience under the guidance of evangelists Mom and Pop Rassaddo of the Damascus Church in the Bronx. A year later he married Anne Nethery, a traveling evangelist. In 1968 Pat Robertson invited them to Virginia Beach to be guests on "The 700 Club." They stayed on, founding the Rock Church a few blocks from CBN headquarters, never returning to New York. With John and Anne Gimenez as co-pastors, the Rock Church has grown to more than 5,000 members. They have founded eighteen additional Rock Churches, one as far away as Oklahoma, and in 1986 they launched the Rock Church Network, a seven-day-a-week, twenty-four-hour network targeted at Hispanics.
The idea for a mass rally in Washington came to Gimenez in 1978, while he was preaching at a conference in California. When he returned to Virginia, he shared the idea with his friend Pat Robertson, who agreed to be national chairman of the effort.
John Gilman, an independent filmmaker who is a member of Gimenez's Rock Church and the former producer of The 700 Club," agreed to be national coordinator for the event. With Robertson's guidance, they soon lined up the support of many of the leading charismatic religious figures in America.
Although all of the principals for the planning of this event were charismatic Christians, they concluded that this gathering was too important to exclude noncharismatics. (More about these vast distinctions later.) But how could they accomplish this, since the several major branches of conservative evangelical Christianity have been engaged in an ideological war for the better part of this century? The story unfolds.
In the spring of 1979, while traveling in Asia, Bill Bright, who is not a charismatic, felt he was being led by God to organize a pastors' conference in 1980 to pray for the nation. He shared this with some of his televangelist friends at a small gathering in Texas.
When Gilman learned of this, he flew to California to enlist Bright's support for the Washington for Jesus rally. Bright was not immediately certain that this rally was the event God was leading him to schedule, but after talking with Gimenez and Robertson, he was confident that the plans were inspired by God, and he agreed to join Robertson as co- chairman.
Bill Bright is not nearly as well known outside evangelical circles as Billy Graham, but for those who have worked in the evangelical Christian movement over the past three decades, there is no name other than Billy Graham's that is more recognizable and respected. Bright's energetic sponsorship would greatly expand the rally's theological base.
Bill Bright is a man of vision, ambition, boundless energy, and determination. The Campus Crusade for Christ, which he founded at UCLA in 1951, is an organization that has spilled over the boundaries of college and university campuses in America to become a worldwide ministry in 150 countries. In addition to its emphasis on evangelizing youth, Campus Crusade for Christ International has scores of ministries to prisoners, inner- city ghettos, hospitals, business and professional organizations, and diplomatic communities.
Bill Bright's grand-scale vision has inspired all 16,000 members of his worldwide staff to raise money to cover their own salaries. He believes he can evangelize the world. If the Guinness Book of World Records kept track of soul-saving spectaculars, Bright's name probably would be in the book before Billy Graham's. His "prayer target" is to introduce at least one billion people to Christ by the year 2000.
One of Bright's major projects is a combination evangelistic meeting and training workshop that he calls "EXPLO." Each takes several years to prepare, and the first, EXPLO '72, climaxed in Dallas with 180,000 persons attending a final rally. EXPLO '74 registered 323,000 in Seoul, Korea, with several times that number (it was claimed) attending one of the evening sessions. Bright returned to Seoul in 1980 to attract 2.7 million Christians (believed to be the largest gathering in history) to one rally.
Bright is reaching out to the vast rural areas of the Third World with a film on the life of Jesus. The film's sound track has been translated into ninety languages of a 271-language target making the words
understandable to "almost all of the world's population," as Bright puts it.
People don't normally think of Bill Bright as a televangelist. He doesn't have a syndicated program, nor does he regularly telecast specials as Billy Graham does. Yet few preachers are more skilled in the art of modern communications. EXPLO '85 was a technological spectacular. Utilizing eighteen communications satellites, his global training conference was simulcast at more than ninety sites in fifty-four nations from a satellite hookup in London; most of the sessions of this four-day videoconference were simultaneously translated into thirty languages.
EXPLO '85 was the largest international closed-circuit satellite videoconference in history, involving 20,000 technicians under the direction of communications specialist Michael Clifford of Scottsdale, Arizona, who claimed the project was more technically complex than the 1984 worldwide Olympics telecast. Spokespersons for the event stressed that they were not simply putting on a onetime video-wonder for the record books. With their experience and technological knowhow, they plan to stage a greatly expanded EXPLO '90.
The financial support for televangelists consists of tens of thousands of $15-to-$25-per-month pledges. Bright, however, has learned how to work a different crowd, and in 1980 dreamed up a billion-dollar fund-raising campaign. His target: "History's Handful," a thousand donors who would each give or raise at least a million dollars. A few months into the campaign, he had pledges of $170 million. One intimate breakfast for 500 in Houston netted $15 million. Not a bad morning's work. [5]
Had the Washington for Jesus rally occurred anywhere else, Bright might have claimed the goal of a million was achieved and few would have been the wiser. But the secular media were present, and the National Park Service estimated the crowd on the Mall at about onefourth of that size. Given that the rally lasted twelve hours, with a number of people coming and going during the day, the total number of participants may have approached the half-million figure claimed by the organizers.
Whatever the number, it was no small achievement. Large demonstrations do not occur spontaneously. Anyone who was involved in the civil rights marches of the 1960s or the antiwar protests a few
years later knows how essential it is to tap into hundreds of organizations to bring out a crowd. But what of these Christians on the Mall? Where did they come from, and why?
The answers are evident in the personalities and the messages of the speakers who paraded to the microphone to speak and preach and pray. The roster of sponsors and speakers was a Who's Who of the Electric Church. Bill Bright and Pat Robertson were joined by Ben Armstrong, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Paul Crouch, Ben Haden, Rex Humbard, D. James Kennedy, Carl Richardson, James Robison, Robert Schuller, Lester Sumrall, Charles Stanley, George Vanderman, and many more. There were some conspicuous absences, including Billy Graham, Oral Roberts, and Jerry Falwell. But most of the stars of the electric church were present.
The crowd was there because powerful radio and television preachers from all over America used their programs and publications to invite their constituencies to Washington. They then tapped into the infrastructures of their multifaceted communications organizations to help get people aboard buses and airplanes and private vehicles en route to Washington.
Washington for Jesus was as firmly anchored in American history as any assembly in the nation's capital might be. Late-twentieth- century secular Americans may choose to be ignorant of the role of religion in shaping this nation's history. But by trivializing the importance of religion in history, they blind themselves to an understanding of how religious forces are again shaping the nation. If they remain ignorant of the past and fail to grasp the significance of the contemporary religious surge in America, they will certainly render themselves impotent in the struggle to determine the shape of things to come.
This is not a mistake that Ronald Reagan has made. Early on, politician Ronald Reagan saw the pragmatic benefits of courting evangelical Christians. His alliance with the New Christian Right began on August 22, 1980, when he addressed a gathering of preachers in the Reunion Arena in Dallas. It was 104 degrees outside as he spoke to the National Affairs Briefing. On that occasion, candidate Reagan had to wait ninety minutes beyond his scheduled appearance while a bunch of long-winded preachers, including Jerry Falwell, got in their licks to a capacity house of 15,000.
Had Governor Reagan been a Bible scholar, he might have wondered, as he watched and waited, if he were in King Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He thought it was a friendly crowd, but televangelist James Robison, the man who warmed up the crowd for him, told them not to commit themselves to a candidate, and they loved it. And with all the introductions and offerings and other carryings-on, no one seemed the slightest bit interested in hearing Reagan. Certainly they weren't particularly respectful of his grueling schedule, his age, or his position.
Undaunted, Reagan stepped to the podium and displayed a classic example of his extraordinary sense of timing. Departing from his prepared remarks, he began:
Those words worked their magic, as the enthusiastic evangelicals leapt to their feet with wild applause and exuberant shouts of "Amen!"
For liberals, including the press, Reagan's popularity with evangelical Christians has been an enigma. And his religious values are perhaps the least-understood dimension of his persona. To the extent that secular journalists have tried to understand his religious character, they have been prone to interpret it as cynical. After all, he doesn't go to church often, his contributions to charity are nil, he is divorced, he doesn't interact with his children much, and so forth.
While Reagan in his personal life and behavior may not be a paragon of evangelical piety and virtue, not to recognize how his worldview is anchored in religious precepts is to miss one of the most important aspects of the man. Whether or not religious principles have always undergirded Reagan's worldview is an open question. But it is clear that he sees religious significance in, and has offered religious explanations for, many of his policies in public office.
Ronald Reagan has been accused of merely "throwing crumbs" to the New Christian Right. But that is not the way the New Christian
Right leadership sees it. From that electrifying moment in the Reunion Arena, they have never questioned Ronald Reagan s support.
Some of their more sophisticated leaders understand very well that the most important support Reagan can offer is the legitimizing of their agenda and their organizations. During his campaign and his first term in office. Reagan addressed the National Religious Broadcasters on five occasions. No other interest group received that kind of attention.
President Reagan is doing much more than merely acknowledging gratitude for past support. By arousing their enthusiasm, by reassuring people who have not traditionally been politically active that it is all right for Christians to get involved ill the political process, Reagan is mobilizing evangelical Christian participation in politics. And there is no more profound multiplier effect in American politics than 3,500 religious broadcasters disseminating the social and political agenda of the New Christian Right on their respective radio and television programs.
Ronald Reagan's popularity with evangelical Christians also tells us something very important about the changing character of this large sector of American society. While stereotyped as dogmatic and aloof from the world, evangelicals have become increasingly this- worldly and pragmatic. Reagan's agenda and theirs have been close enough that they haven't been interested in quarrelling about the fine details of his personal beliefs and behavior. What matters to evangelicals is that Ronald Reagan has been instrumental in "turning America around."
In the quarter century before Reagan became president, America achieved technological advancements that were beyond the human imagination only a generation earlier. Americans had taken giant strides to erase inequities and injustices inherited from their ancestors. And they had grown increasingly conscious of their planet, their place on it, and the environmental requirements of planetary good- citizenship.
But, ironically, for all of the accomplishments and good intentions, America seemed to stumble. In a series of tragedies that sorely tested their character, her people suffered the pain of assassination, the agony of defeat in war, the frustration of impotence in world affairs, and the disgrace of failed leadership.
Domestically, the evidence of lasting progress in eliminating discrimination against minorities and women seemed ambiguous at best,
poverty stubbornly resisted prescription for eradication; drug use and crime seemed out of control. The list of ills and frustrations, at home and abroad, seemed to grow.
However Ronald Reagan may be remembered, he most certainly will be recognized for his role in transforming Americans' attitudes toward themselves, their institutions, and their country. He stressed that patriotism even chauvinism, properly understood is a virtue, and that it's OK to feel good about, and look out for, oneself.
If Reagan's nuclear arms control initiatives serve as a secure foundation for progressive steps toward real disarmament, this achievement will certainly be his most enduring legacy. But Reagan's restoration of confidence and pride in America will also likely be as important a legacy as any president could hope to convey.
Reagan's finest hour may well have been on the Fourth of July weekend of 1986, midway through his second term in office. For America, the weekend was an orgy of self-celebration, with festivities that in intensity and spectacle exceeded anything in the nation's 210 year history, eclipsing even the Bicentennial.
Patriotic speeches; a six-hour procession of historic tall sailing ships and international naval vessels plus a flotilla of 30,000 pleasure boats; fireworks in an intensity and duration never before produced anywhere; and, of course, star-studded entertainment -It was quite a bash.
The manifest occasion was the centennial of the Statue of Liberty, which had just undergone two years of refurbishing. But beneath the stated purpose of the celebration was a deeper meaning: Americans had begun to refurbish their own spirits and to feel good about America again. "The pride is back," rang out a television commercial for an American-made automobile. And, indeed, it was.
The restoration of the Statue of Liberty had been surrounded by controversy from the outset, and the very logic and structure of mass media news coverage assured the critics and naysayers a voice. From the decision to turn over the restoration of Liberty Island to free enterprise, to the gaudy carnival merchandising of Statue of Liberty paraphernalia, to the firing of Lee Iacocca as chairman of the federal commission overseeing the restoration, to the $5,000 admission tickets to the opening ceremonies on Governor's Island, critics disparaged the project as a sham and a cheapening of the Statue and what she stood for.
But on Liberty Weekend, Americans were not much in the mood for such negativism, or for rhetoric about the indispensability of liberty and justice (and the absence of the latter under the Reagan administration). This was a day when Americans came together. The projected 8 million souls never descended on Manhattan in person, but no one complained or suggested that the shortfall meant the festivities were not a resounding success. One didn't need a yacht or an expensive window seat in a skyscraper restaurant to be a part of the action. A twenty-five-cent ride on the Staten Island Ferry brought tens of thousands right into the middle of the action. And the most spectacular seats of all were in America's living rooms; hours of breathtaking sights and sounds for a few cents of electricity. People who chose to spend big bucks for a grand time of conspicuous consumption were more a source of amusement than of scorn or envy. It's a free country. To each his own.
For that moment, at least, Americans were not concerned about vast income discrepancies. Nor were they concerned about the illegal immigrants from Haiti being held in detention centers, nor about the hundreds more that U.S. immigration officials would turn back from the Mexican border that weekend halting, temporarily at least, their efforts to join the huddled masses who had come to America generations earlier. The Fourth of July in 1986 was a time to forget problems and differences. It was a time to celebrate and a time for Americans to rediscover their heritage.
Presiding over the festivities in New York Harbor was Ronald Reagan. This moment had to be one of the grandest of his long life and several careers. He had hosted a couple of impressive inaugural parties, but nothing like this. Nor had he ever starred in a movie with such a grand concept and set. He watched the tall ships proudly and, on several occasions, addressed his countrymen with all the selfconfidence of a commander-in-chief firmly in control of things.
Ronald Reagan is a master communicator because he understands and utilizes symbols and myths as well as anyone who has occupied the office of the presidency in this century. His words had begun lifting Americans' spirits and restoring their confidence in their country long before they gathered together via the marvel of television as well as in New York Harbor, to pay respects to Miss Liberty and celebrate 210 years of nationhood. Now he had the most potent of symbols to
work with, the Statue of Liberty, and the mythology he invoked employed a skillful intertwining of both secular and sacred creation myths.
"I've always thought that a providential hand had something to do with the founding of this country," he said, moments before he tripped the switch to relight Miss Liberty's torch. No pope, no victorious general, no Shakespearean actor could have timed better the delivery of his best lines.
God intended that America be a special place in His scheme of things. That is the myth. America is the Promised Land and those who find their way here are surely his Chosen People. The idea that there is something providential about the American experience is as old as America itself older, actually. By choosing to intertwine the secular and the religious symbols and myths of American culture, Ronald Reagan transformed a secular commemoration of a limited aspect of the nation's collective experience into a civil-religious ceremony of enormous significance.
Myths are the stories that people tell about their origins, their ancestors, and their heroes. Myths both appeal to and reelect the consciousness of people by embodying their ideals and by giving expression to their most profound and deeply held sentiments. Myths create, sustain, and reinforce meaning in human cultures. [6]
Anthropologically speaking, myths cannot be judged as true or not true. Rather, they stand as raw data bearing witness to the sentiments and values of a people. Some myths are intended to be understood as lighthearted, others clearly bear evidence of transcendent sacred meanings. They tell a people what is right and wrong, sacred and profane.
No known society lacks a rich array of mythological motifs that manifest themselves in many forms. [7] To strip away myths systematically, or to declare them illegitimate or inferior, is to create a vacuum a culture without meaning. But, as Richard John Neuhaus has argued so brilliantly in The Naked Public Square, a vacuum is a temporary condition. If old myths are destroyed, new ones will rush in to fill the vacuum [8]
The festivities of Liberty Weekend represented a bold attempt to rekindle some old creation myths. And President Reagan, the architect of America's new pride, knew exactly what he was doing. The recounting of the long and often dangerous sea voyages that brought
immigrants to these shores served as a powerful reminder of the origins of this country. Many millions of us can claim direct ancestry to those who entered the country through New York Harbor, passing the Statue of Liberty en route to Ellis Island. The weekend's broadcasts focused on this powerful symbol of who Americans are and what the nation is all about. Oscar Handlin, the historian-biographer of the roots of white Anglo-Saxon Americans, began his classic work, The Uprooted with these words "Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that the immigrants were American history. [9]
Ronald Reagan's proclamation that "We are all boat people" is, of course, an exaggeration, but it is not all that far from the truth. Some 200 million Americans trace their ancestry to European soil, another 21 million to Africa, and 3.5 million to Asia. Native Americans account for only about 7 million. Thus, a huge proportion of Americans can identify with the immigration experience.
The Statue of Liberty, then, is a symbol of the national myth of origin. Of course, the ancestors of many who witnessed the festivities came to this country before Lady Liberty stood proudly in the harbor, and others had relatives who came to the country through another port of entry. But these facts do not diminish the power of the creation myth to instill a sense of common origin and identity. While millions are indeed directly linked to the Statue, millions of others regard the Statue as a symbol of their immigrant origins.
Similarly, not all came to America in poverty, and some did not even come willingly. But millions did, and so the imagery of the poor and huddled masses seeking a new start is also a part of the creation myth, with the Statue of Liberty a symbol of humble origins and of hope.
The power of the Statue of Liberty to evoke sentiment is further enriched by the fact that a very large proportion of American soldiers who went to fight World War I and World War II passed through New York Harbor going and/or returning. Miss Liberty gave meaning to that ordeal then. And the public rededication of the Statue renews that meaning.
But what does all of this matter? What purpose is served when a collectivity is able to identify with these symbols? Quite simply, the ability to sense a common identity transforms a collectivity into a
bonded group. In this case, it was not just a group but a nation. In addition to the sense of belonging, there is an awareness of a common past and an identification with that past. [10]
The earliest Americans likened their experience to that of the Israelites: They were a Chosen People who made a covenant with God. America was their Promised Land. The Calvinist Puritans explicitly thought of themselves as the New Israelites, but they were by no means the only ones who drew upon Old Testament imagery to give meaning to their experience.
Reagan's assertion of America's providential nature was not an ad lib or an irrelevant passing reference. It was the core content of his civil-religious sermon. "We are the keepers of the flame of liberty," he proclaimed; "We hold it high tonight for the world to see. A beacon of hope. A light unto the nations."
How similar are these words to those that John Winthrop, first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, preached to the Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower before their landing in 1630:
Except for the occasional stern pronouncement on the evils of communism, Reagan's language tends to be milder than a Winthrop sermon, so that on Liberty Weekend, rather than threaten Divine judgment for failure to keep the covenant, he merely reminded Americans that they have a duty to be true to it:
Clearly there is a strongly secular character to this mandate. What is usually overlooked is the fact that this secular language is, nevertheless, anchored in transcendental meaning and purpose. Witness, for example, George Will's suggestion of America s mission to spread
liberty around the globe. In a column written for a special issue of Newsweek devoted to the Statue of Liberty rededication, the First Family's favorite pundit wrote:
When Reagan in his Liberty Weekend speech linked the secular meaning of America as a land of immigrants with the religious meaning, he contributed to the resacralization of the American creation myth. And in doing so, he placed the New Christian Right's understanding of the American experience on center stage for one of the most significant ceremonies to take place in this country for many years.
Words arouse sentiments, and with sentiments aroused, persons of faith have risen and changed the world. Reagan understands this. If he has not been more active in pushing the social and moral agenda of the New Christian Right, it is because he knows that its supporters have not been sufficiently aroused to pursue that agenda effectively. But he has been extremely active in encouraging the development of a solid support base for the evangelical program. One cannot possibly understand or account for the rapid movement of religious broadcasters into the political arena during the 1980s without examining the role of Ronald Reagan in legitimizing both their causes and their involvement in politics.
Largely unnoticed by the media and, hence, the general public, Reagan's first term in office saw evangelicals enjoying unprecedented access to the presidency and the White House, with theological liberals and moderates virtually locked out. Reverend Jerry Falwell replaced the more establishment evangelical Billy Graham as the White House's unofficial chaplain. No president during this century has so completely
snubbed the established liberal religious leadership of this nation as has Ronald Reagan. His embrace of the New Christian Right has, in effect, rewritten the book on who is "The Establishment."
On August 23, 1984, just hours before his acceptance of the Republican party's nomination for a second term, President Reagan addressed 17,000 supporters at a prayer breakfast in the Reunion Arena in Dallas. The occasion was, in fact, a reunion for Reagan and the New Christian Right. Their alliance had begun four years and a day earlier when candidate Reagan had addressed the gathering of preachers at the National Affairs Briefing from that very same podium.
It is difficult to recall a single memorable line from Reagan's acceptance speech later that same day, hut not so the prayer breakfast speech. His words proclaiming the inseparability of religion and politics had an instant impact:
Back in 1980, the leaders of the Washington for Jesus rally had vociferously denied that their prayer meeting on the Mall in Washington had anything to do with politics. But the social ills they identified and the substance of their prayers made engagement in politics inevitable. On the other hand, those who believe that a political agenda was the primary objective miss the significance of the event as a spiritual and ecumenical moment. Pat Robertson did not. In America's Dates with Destiny, he notes:
Today, even more so than in the emotion and high drama of that moment, there is a growing conviction among conservative Christians
that the Washington for Jesus rally was a turning point in American history. God heard their prayers, and he recognized that not just a faithful remnant but a growing, rejuvenated, repentant movement was seeking a return to the covenant. During the years of the Reagan administration, they believe, the country turned around and was now resetting its course.
To paraphrase the lyrics of a song from Hair, Broadway's embodiment of the 1960s counterculture, April 29, 1980, was the dawning of the Age of the Christian Right. But, more important, it was the dawning of a new conservative ecumenical movement. Without the latter, the former would never be possible.
In the chronicles of time, we often fail to take note of events when they occur--events that are seen later as historic. Someday, historians may well agree that Washington for Jesus was a watershed in American history. And, if so, this dawning of a cultural revolution passed virtually unnoticed by the overwhelming majority of Americans. But the several hundred thousand happy warriors for Jesus, who may not have been aware of the political implications of their actions, were sure that God Almighty had taken notice.
And from the stage erected in front of the old Smithsonian Castle, Pat Robertson certainly took notice of the crowd. It stretched as far as he could see toward the Washington Monument to his left and the United States Capitol on his right. Happy, shouting, singing, praying Christians all, proclaiming that they were reclaiming Washington and the nation for Jesus. Pat Robertson was confident that God was present, and he must have sensed that this could be the start of Something Big.
Notes
Epigraph: From President Ronald Reagan's speech at the Statue of Liberty relighting ceremonies, New York Times, July 4, 1986. Abraham Lincoln, A Proclamation for a Day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer, April 29, 1863. Reprinted in rally materials prepared by organizers of Washington for Jesus.
Ninian Smart, "Religion, Myth, and Nationalism," in Peter H. Merkl and Ninian Smart, eds., Religion and the Politics of the Modern World (New York: New York University Press, 1985), pp. 15-28.
Richard John Neuhaus, The Naked Public Square (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1984), p. 80.
| Ch 2: "God Bless Our President . . ."
and Other Revolutionary Ideas
Televangelism: Power and Politics on God`s Frontier | |