The Idols of Secularism
By Robert H. Knight
Winter 2002 Family Voice

In a political bid for the hearts and minds of Americans, liberals and libertarians are comparing Christian conservatives to the Taliban and other extremists. If they succeed, they will gain ground for the liberal agenda of abortion, homosexuality and unlimited pornography.

A case in point: After Rev. Jerry Falwell made the post-September 11 remarks for which he has since apologized, liberals continue to castigate him. On the CBN show The 700 Club, Falwell said that God might have lifted protection of America because of liberal groups that promote various cultural evils.

Rev. Falwell himself acknowledged that he had overreached in saying, “I point the finger” at the ACLU, People for the American Way, homosexual activists and other liberals. As a Bible-based preacher, Rev. Falwell knows that no human can fathom the doings of Almighty God: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord (Isaiah 55:8).

My Side or Yours
Time magazine published one of the attacks: Roger Rosenblatt’s December 17 column, “God Is Not On My Side. Or Yours.” The piece criticizes the Judeo-Christian concept of God and likens the Rev. Falwell to “the Taliban without the bloodlust.” Rosenblatt put Dr. Falwell’s views on a par with September 11 terrorist leader Mohamed Atta, and questioned the idea that God even cares about human action: “So indefinite is my idea of God that I do not even connect it to morality,” he said.

Newsweek writer Jonathan Alter called Dr. Falwell’s view “a despicable ‘Blame America First’ analysis. … This notion that God has fixed ideas on political issues is what Islamic fundamentalists believe, not us,” Alter wrote.

Along the same lines, New York Times reporter Douglas Jehl, in a December 27 article, used “religious right“—a familiar description of America’s Christian conservatives—to characterize Islamic militants. In 1990, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, CBS News and other news outlets used the term “conservatives” to refer to hard-line communists who opposed the Gorbachev reforms. It didn’t matter that the communists had nothing in common with U.S. conservatives; they were all opponents of “progress.”

In Maine, during a legislators’ forum in December, Democratic Assemblyman Chris Hall compared Christian Civic League of Maine leader Michael Heath to Osama bin Laden. Heath had led the People’s Veto ballot victory over a homosexual rights law. To their credit, state Democratic leaders distanced themselves from Hall’s remarks. Sen. Beverly Daggett, Democratic leader of the Senate, told Heath, “I’ve known you for years, and seen you at work in many different situations. It is ridiculous to make any comparisons between you and terrorists.”

Turf Battle Ahead
Christian conservatives had better be prepared for more of the same, reports Newsweek. In a December column, Howard Fineman wrote: “The GOP is out of the mainstream, some Democrats will argue [in 2002], because it’s too dependent upon an intolerant ‘religious right.’ This is an incendiary battle plan—essentially comparing the GOP right with the Taliban—designed to draw an outraged response from the president. Then Democrats would have Bush just where they wanted him: in a fire fight at home.”

Not only liberals are bashing religious conservatives. The libertarians, who believe in fiscal conservatism and a largely liberal social agenda, have joined the effort. On October 23, Tod Lindberg, who edits the conservative Hoover Institution’s Policy Review, wrote a Washington Times column with this headline: “Osama bin Laden, meet Jerry Falwell: Extremism must be defanged.”

“There is a gulf of civilization separating Mr. Falwell from decent Americans who couldn’t imagine blaming their countrymen for the terror attack,” Lindberg wrote. “But even this is small compared to the vast gulf of civilization that separates bin Laden and Mr. Falwell. Mr. Falwell lives in a time and place in which those harboring his view of fellow human beings are constrained to express it in the marketplace. … There will, for a while to come anyway, probably be ample rewards for those best able to articulate this point of view, on account of its lingering (if diminishing) resonance with some Americans.” Translation: Jerry Falwell is pretty much like bin Laden, but the system prevents him from doing violence, so we guess he’s more civilized … barely.

Radical homosexual groups such as Soulforce, which likens Biblical sexual morality to “spiritual violence,” often make these kinds of arguments. It’s shocking, however, when they come from a mainstream Republican conservative, as Mr. Lindberg appears to consider himself.

Falwell vs. ‘Decent’ Americans
Let’s examine Mr. Lindberg’s view more closely: He casts Mr. Falwell into darkness, away from “decent” Americans, a category that presumably includes anyone who declines to speculate on whether God punishes nations (a theme throughout the Bible). This would mean that the “decent” hard-core pornographer, the “decent” abortionist who shoves scissors into the necks of fully-formed babies, the “decent” sex educator who acquaints elementary schoolchildren with enough explicit material to destroy any vestige of innocence, are morally superior to Rev. Falwell. Yes, because these “decent” folks probably do not speculate on whether God rewards or punishes human agency.

But if Mr. Falwell had put it differently, would it be beyond the pale to suggest the possibility that God may, in fact, be angry with America for allowing the killing of “inconvenient” children, for promoting immoral sexual behavior and pornography in ways that would make Sodom blush, and for banishing His name from the public square?

Divine Judgment
America’s forefathers had no problem with the concept of Divine Judgment. In his second inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln stated that the Civil War, which killed hundreds of thousands, was God’s punishment on America for slavery. He made the speech a month before the war ended, quoting Psalm 19:9: “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” Would the GOP’s founder still have a place in the “new” Republican Party or Mr. Lindberg’s secularized brave new world?

Mr. Lindberg implies that fundamentalist Christianity is on the wane, and a good thing, too. This argument ignores Christendom’s irreplaceable contributions to freedom: the end of “suttee,” the Hindu practice of throwing a wife onto her dead husband’s burning funeral pyre; the abolitionist movements in England and the United States; and the establishment of limited government. America’s Founders embraced checks and balances on power—not direct democracy—because, as Madison observed, if men were angels, they wouldn’t need governance.

Mr. Lindberg assures us that as Rev. Falwell and his ilk are driven from public life, the marketplace will regain civility: “Some of the old hatred and anger will certainly remain—now, however, defanged, its own adherents no longer willing to act on their anger by killing; their violence only metaphorical.” His unmistakable message: Clip the wings of all religious zanies, and the marketplace will be our salvation.

Rev. Falwell strongly supports the free market and self-government, like most Americans. He is imperfect, too, like the rest of us. However, I doubt we will ever see him regard man’s marketplace of ideas, however illuminating, as ultimate truth, which comes only from God.

Good people make mistakes. Good people forgive them. It’s not too late for Mr. Lindberg, Mr. Rosenblatt or Mr. Alter to put a little love in their hearts for Rev. Falwell. And we can forgive those men for their prejudices, as we are told to do by Him who loves us all.

Robert H. Knight is the director of the Culture and Family Institute (CFI), an affiliate of Concerned Women for America.

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