Evangelicalism According To Alexandra Pelosi
In 2007 Alexandra Pelosi, daughter of Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, released a documentary entitled Friends of God. She, and a television crew from HBO, toured American evangelical hotspots, mostly in the South and Inter-Mountain West including Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Texas, Ted Haggard’s New Life Church in Colorado Springs, and Lynchburg, Virginia, home to Jerry Falwell and Liberty University.
Pelosi presents an Evangelicalism that is pervasive, politically engaged, passionately partisan, single (or simple) minded, and kinda tacky. She emphasizes the political aspect of a Christian worldview by focusing her questions and editing on the evangelical use of militaristic terminology; she spends time with evangelical organizations like “Battlecry” and “Patriot Pastors.” There is a gospel message being promoted within the film, a gospel that proclaims the necessity for zealous promotion of social conservatism.
To a certain degree the fault lies with Pelosi’s choice of subjects and other editorial decisions. Still, after finishing the film I was grieved that a non-believer would come away from this documentary with the idea that evangelical Christianity is all about a set of conservative politicals beliefs (anti-abortion, anti-homosexual, pro-military, etc…) rather than about the salvation offered by the atoning work of Christ on the cross. Pelosi uses dozens of images of the cross by highways and churches as visual filler during voice-overs and transitions, but the cross represents something very different from “The Old Rugged Cross.”
Yet I wonder if a large share of the blame lies within broader evangelicalism. We have so twisted the idea of cultural engagement that a Christian political worldview has nearly subsumed the gospel. Carl Henry and the original New Evangelicals rejected the cultural isolation promoted by many Fundamentalists, a shift which I appreciate. But the next generation of Evangelical leaders, men like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Ted Haggard, appear to have confused the salvation of souls with the salvation of a conservative America. Have we become so focused on “winning back the White House” that we have forgotten our primary responsibility to proclaim Christ?
There was a particular instance in the movie when I began to question the impact of the culture wars on Christianity. A self-proclaimed gay evangelical, a former ghost speech-writer for Jerry Falwell, read a portion from one of Falwell’s sermons condemning homosexuality. In this sermon Falwell explained why homosexuality was wrong: Gays have “a plan which will destroy America’s traditional moral values.”
There is something very wrong with this statement. I don’t dispute that homosexuality is destructive of the moral fabric of our nation, but that is not primarily why it is wrong. Homosexuality should be preached against because it is a sinful lifestyle that grieves God, who loves homosexuals just as much as he loves us.
My concern is that the Religious Right may have won the battle for political control of our government, but in doing so we have lost the war for America’s souls. Perhaps we need to shift our emphasis from being Right to being right with God.
I have a couple interesting tidbits from the film that didn’t fit into the thesis of my post, so I’ll include them in a comment.
Dr. Bob Sr. and Dr. Bob III each have a several second audio clip during topical introductions. The one from Dr. Bob III makes some sense since he was involved in the political scene, but using Dr. Bob Sr doesn’t make much sense seeing as he has been dead for over 40 years and the documentary is meant to illustrate the Religious Right which arose in 1976. Still, my roomie Michael and I got all excited when we heard him speak because of all the good memories of early Saturday morning WMUU memorial sermons; Sr’s conversational tone during his radio addresses is really quite pleasant.
Two of the three figures featured in the film have charismatic connections (Joel Osteen and Ted Haggard). I wonder if there is any link between charismaticism and political activism or if the seeming correlation is just a coincidence.
Reading through Bob Jones, Sr.’s sermons (as I’ve been doing regularly since the beginning of the year), I’ve been struck by how little BJsr mentions the political world. And when he does, the comment usually doesn’t fit the stereotype of the modern Religious Right. For instance, here’s a comment I read yesterday from a chapel message given on January 19, 1950:
“Christians in this country could learn something about energy and driving power from communists….You could learn something from labor organizers. They’ve got a driving, snappy, go-after-it!”
BJsr.’s radio voice is, I think, very unusual among fundamentalists because it’s so different from his full-lunged preaching style. That’s almost because it had to be. BJsr. came to prominence in a world without amplification, so the name of the evangelistic game was vocal projection to giant audiences. Then radio came along, and he immediately realized that radio broadcasting was a completely different animal. The consequence is that his radio messages have been continuously replayed since his death more than forty years ago while his extant recorded sermons border on the unlistenable.
As for Pelosi’s emphasis on the political rather than the spiritual, that’s easy. The unsaved person does not understand spiritual things, “they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually appraised.” (1 Cor. 2.14) Right-wing politics is a bunch easier.