The ability of the human mind to imagine a "Perfect Being" who has
handed down His perfect word, leading to aa Perfect Closed Mind. No
room for debate.
Carl Jarvis
On 10/18/20, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The Conversation
Evangelical leaders like Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell Sr. have long
talked
of conspiracies against God's chosen - those ideas are finding resonance
today
October 12, 2020 8.20am EDT
Author
Samuel Perry
Associate professor, Baylor University
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President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House.. AP
Photo/Alex
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President Donald Trump sees many conspiracies around him.
He has described investigations into both Russia's interference in the U.S.
election and alleged violations of campaign finance laws, as well as the
entirety of his impeachment, as "witch hunts" and a "hoax."
He is not the only one seeing sinister forces at play. Some of his
supporters do the same. A number of books on conspiracy theories chronicle
alleged failed "deep state" attempts to take down Trump.
Even Trump's COVID-19 diagnosis and hospital stay spawned a range of
conspiracy theories, with some conservative sources suggesting Republicans
were infected deliberately.
In my recent book, "Rhetoric, Race, and Religion on the Christian Right," I
examined conspiratorial themes and rhetoric of some of the leaders of the
Christian right during the Obama administration.
I argue that the rhetoric of conspiracy, now used by Trump, was
foundational
for many prominent figures of the Christian right.
The Christian right and conspiracy
In the late 1970s and 1980s, evangelical leaders such as Jerry Falwell Sr.,
Billy Graham and others resisted social and cultural changes such as racial
integration of schools. For some, social and cultural changes were signs of
a fallen country.
As religious historian Randall Balmer explains, some conservative
evangelicals and fundamentalists began to coalesce around resistance to
desegregation in the mid-1970s. Conspiracy theories circulated in some
conservative political spheres concerning civil rights protests.
These conspiracy theorists suggested that the student protesters in the
civil rights movement were outside agitators. Others suggested that Martin
Luther King Jr. and student protesters and organizers were in league with
international Communist organizations.
Then in the late 1970s, Republican political strategist Paul Weyrich
brought
disparate religious factions and conservative politicians together and
named
them the Moral Majority.
Weyrich and his companions saw Christianity as under attack and suggested
that America had fallen away from its values. In 1980 Falwell Sr. argued,
"What's happened to America is that the wicked are bearing rule. We have to
lead the nation back to the moral stance that made America great."
Falwell saw the nation as fallen and secular forces as the enemy of
Christianity. Theological and political differences, rather than
differences
of approach or argument, were figured as a battle for America's soul.
Popular religious figures like Francis Schaeffer, a Presbyterian minister,
framed the survival of Western culture as a battle between secular humanism
and Christianity.
In explaining his father's place as a foundational figure on the Christian
right, Francis Schaeffer Jr. argued, "For the first time in American
history, what you've got coming out of the '70s and evangelical subculture
is a world that looks at its own country as the enemy to be feared."
This new brand of evangelicalism grew quickly. According to sociologist
Sara
Diamond, 20 to 40 million Americans identified as evangelical by 1989.
Exact
numbers of evangelicals are hard to pinpoint, because the term encompasses
a
wide range of denominations.
Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of the Gallup Poll explained it this way:
"the term has been associated with a particular group of Christians who
hold
conservative and generally Republican ideological and political beliefs."
According to a Gallup poll aggregating data from 1991 to 2018 about 40% of
Americans identified as evangelicals or born-again Christians. The number
has remained steady for the past three decades.
To clarify, not all evangelicals are conservative. But a defining feature
of
the Christian Right is political involvement. While younger evangelicals
are
less politically committed, older evangelicals associated with the
Christian
right remain deeply politically committed.
A Pew Research Poll shows that 79% of white Protestant evangelicals voted
Republican in the 2012 presidential. Exit polls show about 80% of white
evangelicals voted for Trump in 2016.
Christian values and conspiracy
Some Christian right leaders have named groups they held responsible for
the
fallen nature of America. Tim LaHaye, a political organizer and co-author
of
a series of best-selling Christian books, "Left Behind," claimed that a
group called the "Illuminati" coordinated a global conspiracy to undermine
Christian values.
The historical Illuminati were members of a secret society founded in
Bavaria, modern-day Germany, in 1776 to oppose the abuse of power by the
state. Today, a mythological version of the Illuminati is a favorite among
conspiracy theorists.
LaHaye, for example, claimed the Illuminati faltered in their attempts to
establish a New World Order because the Christian right mobilized the vote
for Ronald Reagan. One-time presidential candidate and televangelist Pat
Robertson similarly has attributed other conspiracy theories to the
Illuminati.
More than culture wars
Since the late 1970s, the rhetoric of some of the Christian right leaders
has been used to wage culture war battles against racial integration,
marriage and gender identity protections and compulsory public education.
In 1986, prominent evangelical leader and political activist Beverly
LaHaye,
wife of Tim LaHaye, lamented feminism and those advocating for the Equal
Rights Amendment, saying, "Well, nobody really likes their unisex, lesbian,
radical philosophy either."
LaHaye describes equal rights and pay equality as radical and suggests
feminism seeks to undo biological sex and is intrinsically linked to
same-sex relationships. Rather than a civil rights issue concerning
individual freedoms, LaHaye framed the women's movement as an attack on
conservative communities and their values.
Phyllis Schlafly, founder of STOP ERA, an organization formed to stop the
passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, rose to national prominence in 1964
with her book "A Choice Not an Echo." She claimed: "From 1936 to 1960 the
Republican presidential nominee was selected by a secret group of
kingmakers
who are the most powerful opinion makers in the world." Schlafly claimed
powerful elites took the power of the conservative party from the people.
Fifty years later, in her 2014 book "Who Killed the American Family?"
Schlafly claimed, "The American nuclear family made America great, but few
are now defending it against forces determined to destroy it." In
Schlafly's
telling, the American family is monolithic. Variance in family structures
signals destruction of conservative notions of the nuclear family.
Schlafly's monthly newsletter, renamed the Eagle Forums Report after her
death, forwards similar positions with regard to immigration. Authors on
the
site suggest ending birthright citizenship and make generalizations about
Muslim immigrants being terrorists. They frame these matters as a means of
protecting American culture and values.
Birther theories
Donald Trump seems to have joined himself with conspiracy theorists on the
Christian right early in his political career.
Even before his campaign, Trump joined with conservative Christian figures
like Joseph Farah, the founder and editor of WND, or World Net Daily. WND
is
a far-right website that entered the mainstream during President Obama's
presidency. The website was a hub for the birther conspiracy.
Participants at a rally in Washington in 2010 that questioned President
Obama's eligibility. AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin
According to some birthers, Obama was a "secret" Muslim. A 2009 article in
the Columbia Journalism Review noted that some of the right-wing media had
attacked him for being "un-American."
In the middle of the Obama presidency, WND attracted 4 million unique
visitors a month. WND also ran a publishing house that featured book titles
from conservative figures like Schlafly.
Trump and the Christian right
Trump's presidency brings together two lines of argument from some of these
evangelical leaders through his rhetoric. First, God punishes America when
Americans are unfaithful to his commandments. Second, Christianity is under
attack.
In an article the Rev. Billy Graham wrote in 2012 during the lead-up to
Obama's reelection, he recalled his wife, Ruth, telling him, "If God
doesn't
punish America, He'll have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah."
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The reference to the Old Testament story in which God laid waste to two
cities for their sinful nature reinforces the idea that American leadership
is responsible for American decline just as the leaders of these ancient
cities were responsible for the wickedness of their people.
The underlying and unstated premise of Graham's argument is that Obama is
responsible for a fallen America that will bring God's punishment. The
Sodom
and Gommorah example is telling. For Graham and some other evangelical
leaders, Obama's leadership represented an intentional move away from
Christian values toward immorality.
Trump offered himself as an antidote to that fallen America and as a savior
from the destruction. One way people came to accept that narrative is, I
argue, through his use of conspiracy theories.
