In response to the failure of government to teach our children to pray and to teach the poor to be industrious and chaste, many Christians tried to purify the government. In the 1980’s, Jerry Falwell famously founded the Moral Majority as a political movement, and was successful in helping elect Ronald Reagan president.
Later on, the Christian Coalition was successful in electing George W. Bush as president, providing the key votes and volunteers to win two extraordinarily close elections. Conservative Christians have become a genuine political force.
However, the victory proved less than thrilling. Even a quarter century after the “Reagan Revolution,” the Moral Majority has failed to achieve its major goals. Roe v. Wade is still the law of the land. Pornography is more easily available and more socially acceptable than ever. The public schools not only refuse to teach prayer, prayer is banned at football games and graduations.
Welfare reform did pass, but illegitimacy rates are only plateaued, not on the decrease. Divorce rates are moderating, but only because more people are living together without marriage. Homosexuality is increasingly being normalized, so much so that two states now permit homosexual marriage.
In short, the moral decadence that led to the founding of the Moral Majority has only increased. The failure of government to stem the flow has become only more pronounced. The public schools have become only more amoral.
Worse yet, the American church has become more divided, as half the churches (the white evangelicals) fight for Republican causes and the other half (mainline and black churches) fight for Democratic causes, thereby turning their congregations into special interest groups working inside the worldly political system.
All of these churches have allied themselves with some very un-Christian agendas. The black and mainline churches support a party that campaigns for abortion on demand and the right of children to have abortions without parental involvement–not to mention the normalization of homosexuality.
Meanwhile, the white evangelicals support a party that’s opposes efforts to protect the environment and has no interest in helping the poor other than through trickle-down economics. I mean, every time the interests of business and Christianity are in conflict, the Republicans take the side of business.
The mistake the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition have made is to seek to defeat the world with the world’s weapons. Rather than turning to scripture for truth, we’ve idolized Rush Limbaugh and Jessie Jackson, Bill Clinton and George Bush. We would do much better to gain our political insights from Jesus, Paul, and Isaiah.
