October 2006    

Thy Kingdom Come: An Evangelical's Lament Author: Randall Balmer Publisher: Basic Books $24.95 Cloth (242 P.) ISBN: 0465005195 ISBN-13: 9780465005192 B&T         YBP The Myth of a Christian Nation Author: Gregory A. Boyd Publisher: Zondervan $19.99 Cloth (207 P.) ISBN: 0310267307 ISBN-13: 9780310267300 B&T         YBP When the Religious Right were completely caught up in their adoration of George W. Bush you could hear in churches I attended comments along the lines of "We finally have a Christian in the White House." and I couldn't help wonder if they had completely forgotten about President Jimmy Carter. In his famous Playboy interview, remembered more perhaps for its venue than its content, then candidate Carter, a Sunday School teacher among other callings, said that he would be committing adultery if he even looked on another woman with lust in his heart, a much more Biblical take on morality than President Bush ever managed for all his allusions in speeches that only believers would pick up on. I couldn't see the attraction for a segment of the electorate who seemed content to be kept in a sort of Open in Case of Emergency box, waiting to be aroused to vote when poked with sticks labeled Gay Marriage, Terry Schiavo, or Abortion. Those same voters, back in the late seventies, couldn't stand President Carter for all his overt Southern Baptist Christianity and the difference between how each President was perceived could only be explained by concluding that it was not really religion that motivated their support but political opinion and that today's Religious Right actually cared more about Republican positions on issues than whether the president was himself a Christian after their own definition. Thinking as well about President Reagan and his popularity among the Religious Right, this conclusion seems to hold true. Here you have a divorced man, a one-time actor from the Sodom of Hollywood whose wife guided her life with astrology and yet he managed to hold the affection of people for whom President Carter was anathema. Both books reviewed here address these issues from different but complementary perspectives. Thy Kingdom Come by Randall Balmer, editor-at-large for Christianity Today and professor at Barnard, Columbia, and Yale, seeks to explain how evangelicalism lost its 19th century progressive tradition and got co-opted, willingly it would seem, by the Religious Right. He tells the very interesting story of how it was not abortion that first drew fundamentalist evangelicals back into politics after the drubbing they received from Clarence Darrow and H.L. Mencken during the Scopes Monkey Trial but instead were motivated by concerns over losing their tax exempt status for their private, segregated schools. In order to maintain their political clout after that first foray, they turned to abortion as an issue that could be leveraged into emotional support among rank and file church goers. He also chronicles the erosion among Southern Baptists of their once-firmly held conviction in the idea of separation between church and state. The Myth of a Christian Nation, by Gregory A. Boyd, graduate of Yale Divinity School and Princeton Theological Seminary, one-time professor at Bethel College and now pastor of Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, takes a different view on some of these same issues but bemoans the impact that political involvement has had on what he terms the Kingdom of God. Arguing that since no government, however good it might be and however noble its intent, can truly reflect Christ's love, Boyd concludes that the universal church's cause must necessarily be damaged by association with politics on the level that the Religious Right today tries to maintain. This has caused some evangelicals to become the very hypocrites that Christ spoke against, attempting to change behavior through laws or what Boyd calls "power over" actions of force rather than "power under" actions of love that change peoples' hearts. The true religious question he says is not how you vote, but how you live. Clearly, from the descriptions just given, these books have different perspectives but can work together to help people of faith wrestle with the place of religion in politics and politics in religion. They can also shed insight into these "foreign" worlds that might perplex some people who don't understand what all the fuss is about. Thy Kingdom Come is heartfelt and leaves the reader with a sense of the despair the author clearly feels. It is not an intemperate book but could have been written in a slightly more measured tone. The Myth of a Christian Nation, developed from a series of sermons that caused some one thousand of the author's congregation to leave his church and suffers slightly from the rhetorical repetitions of its original oral presentation, is the more overtly "religious" of the two works, but is ultimately the more satisfying book and can be recommended to everyone if only for the author's sincerity and depth of feeling. If you want to understand that evangelicals are not a monolithic group with one very weak brain then this book is for you. If you share his beliefs, then the work rises to an inspiring and challenging level that can not only explain how the Religious Right has misled its constituency but also misread the Bible and then offers ways for individuals to reclaim and live an authentic and integrated religious practice in their lives. Rob Norton Published by YBP Library Services 999 Maple St., Contoocook, NH 03229 USA v: 800.258.3774   f: 603.746.5628 w: www.ybp.com   e: academia@ybp.com All rights reserved.