Religious right has turned into tribe of sycophants
Michael Gerson
At the Family Research Council’s recent Values Voter Summit, the religious right effectively declared its conversion to Trumpism.
The president was received as a hero. Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka — both fired from the White House, in part, for their extremism — set the tone and agenda. “There is a time and season for everything,” Bannon said. “And right now, it’s a season for war against a GOP establishment.”
A time to live and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to uproot. A time to mourn and a time to embrace angry ethnonationalism and racial demagoguery. Yes, a time to mourn.
There is no group in America less attached to its own ideals or more eager for its own exploitation than religious conservatives. Forget Augustine and Aquinas, Wilberforce and Shaftesbury. For many years, leaders of the religious right exactly conformed Christian social teaching to the contours of Fox News evening programming. Now, according to Bannon, “economic nationalism” is the “centerpiece of value voters.” I had thought the centerpiece was a vision of human dignity rooted in faith. But never mind. Evidently, the Christian approach to social justice is miraculously identical to 1930s Republican protectionism, isolationism and nativism.
Do religious right leaders have any clue how foolish they appear? Rather than confidently and persistently representing a set of distinctive beliefs, they pant and beg to be a part of someone else’s movement. In this case, it is a movement that takes advantage of racial and ethnic divisions and dehumanizes Muslims, migrants and refugees. A movement that has cultivated ties to alt-right leaders and flirted with white identity politics. A movement that will eventually soil and discredit all who are associated with it.
The common good is a neglected topic in our politics. It is not identical to market forces, or to legal rules that maximize individual autonomy. It is the result of prudent public and private choices that strengthen community and ensure the weak are valued and protected. The idea of the common good emerged from religious sources but provides a broad common ground.
If there is a single reason that Republican health care reform has failed, it is because party leaders could not make a credible case that the common good was being served. Even if individual elements of the various plans were rational, they did not add up to a more just and inclusive society.
Who would now identify conservative Christian political engagement with the pursuit of the common good? Rather, the religious right is an interest group seeking preference and advancement from a strongman — and rewarding him with loyal acceptance of his priorities. The prophets have become clients. The priests have become acolytes.
It is possible for Christian conservatives to support the appointment of conservative judges without becoming a tribe of apologists and sycophants. It is possible to endorse elements of the administration’s agenda without becoming Bannon’s foot soldiers.
When anyone or anything takes priority over the faith, there is a good, strong religious word for it: idolatry. And the word is unavoidable, as religious conservatives carry their golden calf into Bannon’s battles.