Fight for American values, soul plays out
Speakers denounce evil at men’s conference
David Bereit paced the stage for almost an hour Saturday morning at the Cincinnati Men’s Conference, his voice rising and falling like a tent revival preacher as he rattled off all the reasons he believes America is on the brink of destruction.
Abortion. Pornography. Divorce. Premarital sex. Attempts to redefine family, marriage and gender. A government that “lives off moral decay.”
“What causes great nations to fail?” Bereit asked the 3,500 men seated around the basketball court at Fifth Third Arena. “What causes civilizations that once were powerhouses to ultimately end up on the ash heap of history?”
The answer should be plain to see said Bereit, an anti-abortion activist from Virginia. The threats are everywhere. Unless men of faith act quickly, he warned, it would be too late to save themselves, their families and their country.
“Evil prevails,” he said, “when good men do nothing.”
Bereit’s depiction of a nation under siege dominated the men’s conference Saturday. Speaker after speaker described looming storms and dark forces on the verge of overtaking the defenders of American values.
The dire warnings were more than dramatic flourishes. They’re part of a movement among religious activists to reshape debates over abortion, transgender rights, gay marriage, public school curriculums and even COVID-19 restrictions as existential fights for the soul of the nation.
For many of these activists, the work of defining American society in the 21st century is not a slow-moving, generational struggle between conservatives and liberals, but a battle between good and evil that must be waged every day in town halls, courthouses and schools.
Their rhetoric, as it was throughout the men’s conference Saturday, can be both soaring and strident as they seek to inspire religious Americans to join that battle.
While some worry their methods and language create deeper divisions in an already polarized country, those leading the charge make no apologies.
“The biggest evil in the world today is this idea of compromise,” men’s conference founder Joe Condit told the crowd Saturday. “All evil starts with compromise.”
A call for ‘holy revolution’
Condit isn’t an outlier, at least among religious people. A Pew poll in December found almost 60% of Americans who attend religious services at least once a week believe most things in society can be “clearly divided into good and evil.” About 40% of those who seldom attend religious services felt the same way.
Strong religious beliefs also make Americans, especially conservatives, more likely to think faith should play a
prominent role in government.
Almost 7 in 10 Republicans told Pew in 2020 that the Bible should have an influence on U.S. laws, compared to 3 in 10 Democrats. When asked whether the Bible or the will of the people should have more influence when the two conflict, 40% of Republicans chose the Bible.
At the men’s conference Saturday, Bereit and other guest speakers avoided overtly political comments. But there was no doubt where they stood on topics that are very much a part of the nation’s politics today.
Every speech echoed the conference theme that Bereit championed in his opening keynote: “Evil prevails when good men do nothing.”
Bishop Joseph Strickland, of the Diocese of Tyler, Texas, told attendees the work of Satan was “washing over us like crashing waves of the ocean.” Fox News contributor Raymond Arroyo said it was “time to mount a holy revolution.”
And actor Jim Caviezel, who portrayed Jesus in “The Passion of the Christ,” urged the men to “set yourself apart from this corrupt generation.”
“You came today,” Caviezel told the crowd, “because you are fully aware of the cultural depravity that our families and children find themselves in.”
The crowd, heavily Catholic, white and middle-aged, embraced the message, interrupting often with applause and standing ovations. Mick Beede, a retired Marine from Maineville, was among those who welcomed the call to action.
He said the conservative, Christian beliefs espoused by conference speakers were synonymous with American values. And he said he fears people like him, who share those beliefs, are losing the country to those who don’t.
“It irritates the hell out of me,” he said. “The whole world is changing, and
we’re standing here watching it go by.”
When religion, politics collide
The notion that Christian men must defend their values in a changing America isn’t new to the Cincinnati Men’s Conference.
The gathering, led by Catholics but open to men of all faiths, has for years welcomed football coaches, clergy and local celebrities to talk about the challenges of being men of faith in an increasingly secular world.
This year, though, was a little different. The lineup of speakers was more widely known, but also more controversial.
Arroyo is a supporter of former President Donald Trump and a frequent critic of Pope Francis. Strickland once praised a video that argued good Catholics can’t vote for Democrats. And Caviezel has appeared at far-right political events and embraced a baseless Qanon conspiracy.
The conference also gave a turn at the podium to J.D. Vance, an author and Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Ohio who has warned that liberals have helped create a “civilizational crisis” in America.
Condit, the conference’s founder, said he invited them all because they’re dynamic speakers and faithful Catholics, not because of their politics.
He said those who object to his choice of speakers or to the conference’s theme don’t understand the Catholic faith, which regards abortion as an “intrinsic evil” and teaches that contraception, premarital sex, homosexuality and gay marriage violate God’s law. If those topics also happen to be hot political topics, Condit said, so be it.
“These guys preached nothing that conflicted with the true faith of the Catholic Church,” Condit said of his speakers.
For some, though, the conference’s good-versus-evil message and the political activism of its speakers were too much.
Cincinnati Archbishop Dennis Schnurr withdrew the archdiocese’s sponsorship of the event in February because of the political “baggage” Arroyo and Caviezel would bring to the stage. And Covington Bishop John Iffert dropped out for undisclosed reasons around the same time.
Church leaders aren’t the only ones concerned about mixing religion and politics. Over time, some critics say, turning political disagreements into religious battles will corrode the national discourse and lead to tragedies such as the Jan. 6 insurrection, which included rioters who carried religious imagery and signs.
“The Christianization of politics makes people in a democracy less persuadable,” Michael Gerson, a former George W. Bush advisor, wrote in his Washington Post column last week. “It is more difficult to question your cause if you regard it as a holy cause. And it becomes harder to see any glimmer of truth in your opponents’ views.”
Spiritual or political message?
Shawn Brown, a Covington resident who attended the conference Saturday, said he shared those concerns as he listened to Bereit and others speak with so much certainty about issues he believes may be more complicated.
Though he said he opposes abortion, Brown worried that the conference’s focus on topics like abortion and gender overshadowed other aspects of Catholic teaching, such as caring for the poor.
“I feel like, in a lot of ways, Christianity has become synonymous with rightwing politics,” he said. “I hate that.”
Condit, though, said the feedback he’s received from conference attendees suggests most heard a spiritual message, not a political one.
“You can always find something political,” said Steve Goetz, an attendee from Green Township. “This is strengthening my faith, strengthening my will to become a better man, a better Christian.”
His friend, Tom Fleming, said worries about politics taking over the conference were overblown. “I don’t know what they’re afraid of,” he said. “That it’ll be a pro-trump Catholic rally?”
While it’s true none of the speakers mentioned Donald Trump, Joe Biden or the 2020 election, they didn’t have to. That’s because the causes championed on the stage Saturday are the same causes that have been championed for years by conservative politicians.
More recently, those causes have been portrayed not just as political debates, but as all-or-nothing conflicts between good and evil.
In his opening address, Bereit told the story of why he founded Forty Days for Life, which leads around-the-clock protests outside abortion clinics for 40 consecutive days. He did it, he said, after concluding he needed to do more than pray for change. He needed to act.
Before that, Bereit said, he wasn’t truly living his beliefs. Not when it came to fighting abortion, or anything else on that long list he recited in his opening remarks.
Bereit told the crowd he believes God wants other Christians to do as he did. He didn’t say that might mean mixing their religion with their politics, the way some of the men on stage Saturday have done, but he didn’t have to.
“This is the moment God put us on this Earth for,” he said. “That is the only thing that will bring hope to an otherwise hopeless world.”