With the November elections seven weeks away, we have time to read good books about politics. Is there such a thing as “theo-politics?” Can earthly political power help sinful mankind reach out for transcendent goods? Can Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Bahai, Unitarians and others bring their religious faiths to bear on practical American politics?

The answer is “yes.” We do not yet understand how precisely people, despite their different beliefs and motives, learn to work together in teams. In fact, however, Mormons and Catholics and Lutherans with different canons of Scripture assert together the centrality of the traditional American two-parent family,the inadmissibility of pre-marital sex and other positions. 

In 1996, when still Executive Director of Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition, Ralph Reed published ACTIVE FAITH: HOW CHRISTIANS ARE CHANGING THE SOUL OF AMERICAN POLITICS, (New York, Free Press, 298 pp., $25). Reed, now [NOTE: in 1998] 37 years old,  holds a Ph.D. in American History from Emory University. ACTIVE FAITH is an unabashed apology for legitimate religious idealism in American politics. 

Reed reviews the history of several American political issues greatly influenced by passionate religious believers. Evangelist George Whitefield in the period 1740 - 1760 inflamed a religious revival which emboldened believers like Patrick Henry to agitate  for national liberty. Later the first moral outrage against slavery and abuse of alcoholic beverages was fueled by religious convictions. The Social Gospel swept through American Protestantism from 1865 to 1915 and beyond. The Social Gospel helped “the Democratic party to attain a political dominance it had never before known.” (p. 40) In times of its greatest triumphs, the Democratic party proudly let religion illumine its politics.

Ralph Reed argues that 

“far from being shackled to their pews, people of faith have, at critical times in our nation’s history, been moved to vigorous activism. That is the thrust of most religions: to move adherents out of places of worship to redress the moral drift of modern life.” (p. 40).

FDR  succeeded with the American people in part because he presented himself “as both president and intercessor, one who sought to heal not only the nation’s economy but its conscience as well.” (p. 54)

Reed charges that the national Democratic party no longer welcomes religious reasoning and rhetoric.  At the national level, therefore, the Moral Majority, the Christian Coalition and other religious believers have nowhere else to go but the Republican Party. Happily, things  are different at the local level. The Christian Coalition and the broader Pro-Family Movement believe that real change is cultural change. And cultural change  must begin at the grass roots. That means among both Republicans and Democrats running for school boards, county commissions, for mayor and state legislatures. At the grass roots the individual and his personal character are more important than party allegiance.

ACTIVE FAITH ranges through American history from colonial days through President Johnson’s Great Society to today’s issues and personalities.  Ralph Reed sees President Clinton as merely transitional, like the USSR’s Gorbachev. For the liberalism which Clinton represents is a spent force, having died in 1985 when the Democratic Leadership Council was formed to “talk conservative and govern as a liberal.” (p. 98)

Thirty million previously silent religious conservatives began their political activism in 1979 through Rev. Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority. They received new energy and a focus on the grassroots in 1989 via Rev. Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition. A defining moment came in August 1980 when presidential candidate Ronald Reagan addressed a Religious Roundtable meeting in Dallas, attended by 20,000 fundamentalists and evangelicals. That was the wedding day for evangelicals and the Republican party. For, against the advice of his spinners, Ronald Reagan said, “I know that you cannot endorse me, but I endorse you and everything you do.” (p. 111) 

Ralph Reed shares with readers of ACTIVE FAITH lessons about how to bring evangelicals to success through politics. 

--Rhetoric based on military images (“We are at war!”) turns non-evangelicals off. So, use sports metaphors instead. (p. 121) 

--Replace clergy by laymen in most political leadership positions. (p.123) 

--Win at the grassroots and Washington will fall as a ripe plum. Train, train, train local people how to do politics. 

--Never abandon “the social agenda.” (p. 125) 

--Evangelical ideas can and do dominate the natural democracy of the internet. (p. 184) 

There are no economic solutions to America’s moral chaos.  Reed’s people therefore change America’s culture for the better, by small steps and without coercion. They guard against Christians’ propensity to stop too soon. Jerry Falwell said: “One thing I have learned about Christians...when they lose, they quit. And when they win they quit. We are just quitters.” (17)

An alliance grows stronger daily among evangelical activists, conservative Catholics, Orthodox and believing Jews. All want “to limit government, reinvigorate the family, and restore the culture’s Judeo-Christian principles.” “They are people of faith first, Americans second, and Republicans or Democrats third.  ...The real battle for the soul of our nation is not fought primarily over the gross national product and the prime interest rate, but over values, virtues, and the culture.” (p. 8) With Reinhold Niebuhr and the Social Gospel, Reed’s pro-family movement believes that “the purpose of politics is to establish justice in a fallen world.” (p. 256)

Faith as a political force is the best safeguard of American democracy. America will never become a tyranny if most of its citizens believe that they owe “allegiance to a Higher Power, not the government.” (p. 8) 

Now, that is American theo-politics.

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for Asheville TRIBUNE