Practice What You Preach

What do people who are successful at acquiring considerable quantities of money do when they are suddenly seized with unwelcome pangs of conscience? If they feel the need to impart of portion of their wealth to disadvantaged causes, they become philanthropists; if they want to keep everything for themselves, they become right-wing evangelical Christians—so that they can cast out the devilishly unwelcome pangs of conscience.

Meanwhile a continuously credulous mainstream media (such as CNN) seems unwillingly to challenge the motives of self-proclaimed moral paladins like Franklin Graham, son of “America’s Preacher” Billy Graham. Graham’s recent threats against Barack Obama stem chiefly from his resentment about being excluded by the Pentagon from a military prayer event. Graham failed in his attempt to persuade Obama to rescind the exclusion, perhaps because he insisted on repeating his “Islam is Evil” speech. It seems doubtful that explaining to Graham that it was unpatriotic to continuously make this inflammatory declaration when the military is trying to win the hearts and minds of Muslims in Afghanistan who are not yet our enemies—not to mention win a war—helped his cause. Frankly, if Franklin and his fellow evangelical and fundamentalist Christian followers want to end the “evil” of Islam, then they should stop being hypocrites and all volunteer for duty in Afghanistan, so that they can put both their own beliefs—and lives—to the test.

That they won’t do this is another object lesson in the need for separation of church and state. The state must act on behalf of all people; churches must tend to fulfilling the spiritual needs of their own congregation. I’m not against religion, especially those sects that view Jesus as the model for advancing social justice. Unfortunately, fundamentalists and white evangelicals see themselves as advancing the cause of social order, which usually involves bigotry, intolerance, and a jingoistic nationalism without a sense of social nationalism. While Graham and others on the Christian right threaten to inflame their followers to vote against Democrats in the 2010 mid-term elections, it should be noted that most white evangelicals voted against Obama in 2008, and non-white evangelicals probably see such attacks on Obama in a different light.