Reagan and God
Christopher Hitchens
Washington
See if you can parse the following sent- ence: If our opponents were as vigorous in sup- porting our voluntary prayer amendment as they were in raising taxes, maybe we could get the Lord back into schoolrooms and get drugs and violence out.
It seems clear that the speaker is implying, if not actually claiming, that he is more holy than the other fellow and that there may be some connection between religious observance and moral behaviour. The speaker is, of course, Ronald Wilson Reagan. I think that he is honestly sur- prised at the long-running furore which has been ignited by that remark, and by other claims of a Christian nature which he made in the course of his acceptance speech in Dallas.
America's lack of an established church makes it one of the most ostentatiously religious countries in the world. This is because denomination is made to matter much more. There is no embarrassment, as there would be in England, if a candidate openly discusses his chances, in a given constituency, by reference to the number of Baptists or Jews it contains. Congress opens its deliberations with a prayer. The coinage itself affirms that in God We Trust'. Few politicians fail to make specific and selective religious 'pitches' to different creeds and congregations. And yet the Founding Fathers were quite clear. Devout as they may have been, they insisted that the Constitution forbid Congress any 'establishment of religion'. They were probably wise to have done so, because American pluralism could hardly have hoped to develop if any one confession had enjoyed the sanction of the state.
The present controversy over Reagan's 'Christianity' is, in fact, about pluralism much more than it is about theology or the supernatural. If all delegates arriving at the Republican Convention had found a Gid- eon Bible in their official packages, there would probably have been no comment. But they were all issued, on the first day, with copies of the New Testament, which seems a bit — well — sectarian. Hyman Bookbinder of the American Jewish Com- mittee made a fuss, and the offending canon was withdrawn. But it left behind it, as it so often has, a certain odour of sanctity. The Reverend Jimmy Swaggart, whose name is almost onomatopoeic, and who maintains that Roman Catholicism is 'a false religion' and that the Jews are damned to the pit, is a frequent visitor to the White House and a man whose views on policy are solicited by Republican strategists. A few weeks ago. Senator Paul Laxalt of Nevada (perhaps the most godless state in the Union) wrote to 45,000 ministers in his capacity as Ronald Reagan's campaign manager. The letter was addressed. 'Dear Christian Leader', and it argued that, as leaders under God's authority, we cannot afford to be neutral'. The Christian leaders were earnestly enjoined, in this late Pauline Epistle, to hold registration drives for voters in their churches, and to ensure the President a second term of office. Invited to deliver the benediction at the Republi- can Convention, the Reverend Jerry Fal- well of the laughably named Moral Major- ity referred to Reagan and Bush as 'God's instruments for rebuilding America', and an associated group is publishing some- thing called 'The Presidential Biblical Scorecard', which tends to give low marks to Democrats on what appear to be scrip- tural grounds.
All this is not so much 'Christian' as it is plebeian fundamentalist Protestantism. It upsets the Catholics, even the conservative ones who agree with the Moral Majority's tirades against abortion. And it alarms the Jews, who have already had a few queasy moments this year on account of the Reverend Jesse Jackson. In fact, the steady growth of Republicanism among Jewish voters seems to have been given a check, even if only a temporary one. Many Protestants, too, are upset by the vulgarity and extremism of the less polished evange- licals.
But the Reaganites seem in some way incapable of keeping their distance from the faction. It is believed by many of the architects of the 1980 victory that it was the religious populists who helped to iso- late Jimmy Carter and who form the potential of a permanent conservative mass base. They are, accordingly, indulged to a surprising degree. This may simply be yet another example of Republican over- confidence in a year when the party be- lieves itself to be invicible. Or it may be, as I suspect, further proof that the American Right needs religion and has an authenti- cally messianic conception of its mission.
Why else would the President spend so much of his time on his poorly reasoned campaign to get American schoolchildren praying again? The Supreme Court ruled, years ago, that prayer in the schools was a violation of the constitutional separation of
church and state. This is not a proposition which requires much demonstration. Con- gress has easily upheld the same standard in recent votes, with the most cogent anti-prayer speeches being made by the Republican Senator Lowell Weicker. But Reagan just won't leave the subject alone. For a divorced man who never sees the children or the grandchildren of his first marriage, and who never goes to church because (he says) the security arrange- ments are too onerous, he can make an awful lot of mileage from the invocation of godly and family values.
The liberals sense an issue here, even though their own position is pretty hypocri- tical too. Politics and religion were allowed to mix when it was the Reverend Martin Luther King doing the mixing, and there were very few Democratic objections when Jesse Jackson rattled the tin from the pulpit. My mailbox is regularly stuffed by radical Catholics who feel that they are 'bearing witness' in Central America, and by Quakers and others who want my help in brotherly love political campaigns about nuclear missiles or homeless families. The main difference between their kind of appeal and that of the proselytising Right is that it is more defiantly humanistic in tone more ecumenical as I call it, and 'interfaith' as they call it — and never quite goes so far as affirming a belief in the Creator. And it seldom, if ever, makes derogatory remarks about other religions. Still, the temptation to claim spiritual authority is not restricted to the redneck bible belt.
The political significance of all this is, potentially at least, considerable. In return for glowing endorsements from the well: funded radio stations and direct-mail chains of the extreme fundamentalists, Reagan has taken a risk with the middle ground, with the Jews, with the secular, with the sceptical and with that surprisinglY large number of genuine believers who als°, believe in Thomas Jefferson's 'wall 0; separation between church and state'. And after some hesitation (with him, it is always after some hesitation) Walter Mondale has found a sturdy American voice in which to speak. He's still not very confident in It but he sounded quite good last week in Washington, when he reminded his audi- ence of what George Washington wrote to the elders of the Touro Synagogue — that America should give to bigotry no sanc- tion, to persecution no assistance'. WI- dale has publicly disowned the black anti- semites on the fringe of the Democratic campaign, and he's also started going to church a great deal. Reagan would find it very difficult to disown his demagogic wing — 'the Moonies, the Mormons and the l Moral Majority.' And he avoids church parade like a vampire shunning garlic. Which of these two better embodies `Christi of civilisation'? A nonsensical question, course, but one which may get an interest- ing answer. Those who start claiming `0°t„ mit uns' are usually found to be going 0" about something else altogether.
Previous page
