Falwell, Muehlenberg and The Religious Right

Jerry Falwell died the other day, and Bill Muehlenberg has a post about him and The Reason for the Religious Right at his blog:

Of course one’s take on Falwell will depend on where one stands on the political and religious spectrum. To the secular left he was a thundering theocrat who was about to usher in a police state in the US, with all dissent squashed and all unbelief punished. Such gross caricatures tend to be representative of the left, unfortunately. But to those of a more Christian and conservative bent, he was simply someone trying to stand up for biblical values in an increasingly hostile culture.

By making statements such as this one just after 911?:

I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.

His thoughts on homosexuals?

AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals.

Standing up for biblical values indeed. Muehlenberg then explains that Falwell and the Religious Right were simply a “response to a growing secularism, leftism, and anti-Christian bias”.

For years the rise of the secular left, as represented by such groups as the American Civil Liberties Union, had resulted in an open season being declared on biblical Christianity. Whether it was banning prayer in schools, legalising abortion, deconstructing the family, or pushing radical secularist agendas, the growing anti-Christian sentiment demanded a response.

Nonsense. Prayer isn’t banned in schools. The reality of the situation is that public schools cannot force their students to partake in prayers inside the classroom, for reasons which should be obvious to anyone – even Bill Muehlenberg. Students are of course free to pray outside of class times.

As for legalised abortion, polls indicate that about 37% of Americans want stricter abortion laws, meaning that a majority are in favour of keeping things as they are or perhaps making abortion laws less strict. Now, the Religious Right loves to bang on about how the “overwhelming majority of American citizens are Christians”, so how can they explain the fact that about 59% of Americans take the “secular left” position on abortion? The reason is simple, the Religious Right does not (thankfully) speak for all Christians, even though it likes to think it does.

And what’s this about “deconstructing the family”? Presumably members of the secular left aren’t members of families themselves, so their family deconstruction activities won’t have any impact on them. Only right-wing Christians form families.

“Pushing radical secularist agendas”? Ooh – sounds scary doesn’t it? Muehlenberg won’t spell out this agenda in too much detail however. It’s like the “Homosexual Agenda”. The target audience of the Religious Right aren’t as scared of things like “equal rights before the law”, or “relationship recognition”. That’s where terms like “Homosexual Agenda” come in, it leaves the reader to imagine the worst.

And that is what happened. Alarmed at the threats to religious freedom, the moral free-fall of American culture, and the attempts to relegate religion to the purely private realm, Christians realised that they must organise and stand up for their rights.

What threats to religious freedom? This is pure rhetoric. Muehlenberg & Co. know damn well that people can practice their faith freely in the United States. They can go to Church when they want, they can pray in their homes, they can stand on street corners handing out religious literature, they can pray on their lunch breaks etc. This is not to say that a Christian’s religious rights have never been infringed upon, but to suggest there is some systematic clamp down on the religious freedom of Christians is nothing more than an exercise in Magical Thinking. Bill continues:

For too long, anytime a religious person sought to defend faith and family values, the secular left has gone into hysterics, shouting about fundamentalist theocracies being established, and so on.

Nonsense. The secular left does not go into hysterics or cry “theocracy” when a religious person defends their faith. Opponents of the religious right speak of theocracy when they see attempts to replace the Constitution with Biblical Law. There’s a big difference between espousing one’s faith and wishing to see religious laws forced upon an entire nation, and Bill, the secular left does see the difference.

As for family values, why is it that the religious right believes it has a monopoly on values? Again, they believe that their ideology is consonant with the opinions of most Americans. And what are these family values anyway? The fact is, the Religious Right has a tactic whereby it launches a tirade of abuse against homosexuals, atheists, secularists, Muslims and it’s other targets and then proceeds to hide behind the word “families”.

Hey! We’re a pro-family organisation, so if you criticise us you’re attacking families.

It’s the same way “patriots” criticise their opponents and then proceed to hide behind the flag.

Hey! I’m pro-American so if you criticise me your attacking America.

The truth is, what we really should worry about is the establishment of fundamentalist secular theocracies.

Quite possibly the stupidest thing I’ve ever read. “Secular theocracies”? I’m lost for words.

For as American philosophy professor Brendan Sweetman argues in his valuable 2006 book, Why Politics Needs Religion, that is exactly what secular humanism is: an ideology, a worldview, and a religion.

Humanism could be described as an ideology or perhaps worldview. However, it is not a religion:

To most North Americans, "religion" probably means the belief that a God or Gods exist who created the world, who is/are to be worshipped, and who is/are responsible for creating ethical and behavioral codes. In that context, Humanism is definitely not a religion, and would not be perceived as one by its followers. Humanists do not generally believe in a supreme deity or deities, demons, ghosts, angels, or in a supernatural world, or in heaven and hell, or in a divinely ordained ethical code for humans to follow. Most would regard the Gods and Goddesses as a creation of mankind rather than the reverse.

Religious Humanism has been loosely defined as religion without deity worship and traditional theological beliefs. Replacing these factors is a belief in humanity as the highest known form of intelligent life, and a belief in the scientific method as the best way to determine truth.

Many Secular Humanists feel that the role of religion throughout history has been so profoundly negative, that the word "religion" should not be connected to their philosophy.

Muehlenberg complains that "gross caricatures tend to be representative of the left" yet it seems he can't write a single paragraph void of blatant straw-men, brazen rhetoric or complete twaddle along the likes of "secular theocracies".