Context Is...Oops!

The Christian right's self-destruction is unfolding before our eyes https://t.co/bfRbbhZZMK

— Raw Story (@RawStory) October 7, 2022

That's very pragmatic, which is fair enough. But I think we can safely say that Democrats no longer need to listen to the religious right's pompous braying about "character" and have absolutely no obligation to give them any credence when it comes to morals and values. They are political actors, doing what political actors do. And we know they're religious phonies too: Look at what happens to those who refuse to go along, like theologian Russell Moore, a former leading figure in the Southern Baptist Convention who quit rather than continue to support the moral rot at the heart of his organization, which includes a cult-like devotion to Donald Trump. The contrast couldn't be more obvious.

NOW we "can safely say that Democrats no longer need to listen to the religious right's pompous braying about "character"?

Does no one remember the collapse of the televangelists in the '80's?  Jim and Tammy Faye, anybody?  Jimmy Swaggart weeping crocodile tears?  And somehow Ralph Reed continues to be the true teflon public personality. 

Reed was named in the scandal arising from lobbying work performed by Jack Abramoff on behalf of Indian gambling tribes. E-mails released by federal investigators in June 2005 revealed that Reed secretly accepted payments from Abramoff to lobby against Indian casino gambling and oppose an Alabama education lottery.[25] Additional e-mails released in November 2005 show that Reed also worked for another Abramoff client seeking to block a congressional ban on Internet gambling. These cases are being investigated by multiple federal and state grand juries and by the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. Abramoff pleaded guilty to three felony counts in federal court, raising the prospects of Abramoff testifying against others.

Those e-mails and other evidence revealed the participation of the Christian Coalition in the alleged fraud, particularly the Alabama chapter of the Christian Coalition, which received large amounts of donations from the casino money. It is alleged that Abramoff engaged Reed to set up an anti-gambling campaign to include the U.S. Family Network, the Christian Coalition, and Focus on the Family in order to frighten the tribes into spending as much as $82 million for Abramoff to lobby on their behalf. To represent him in connection with the scandal, Reed retained defense attorney W. Neil Eggleston, then of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP. Eggleston served as White House associate counsel during the administration of President Bill Clinton.

In 2004, Reed confirmed that he had been paid more than $1 million in fees by lobbyists working on behalf of American Indian casinos.[31]

In December 2005, three Texas public interest groups filed a complaint with Travis County Attorney David Escamilla on December 1, 2005, alleging that Reed failed to register as a lobbyist in 2001 or 2002 when he was working for Abramoff.[32] Escamilla said on March 27, 2006, "his office had concluded its investigation – but that a two-year statute of limitations on misdemeanors from 2001 and 2002 had expired."

On June 22, 2006, the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs released its final report on the scandal.[34] The report said that Reed had used his contacts to conservative Christian groups to prevent the opening or expansion of casinos competing with the casinos operated by Abramoff's clients from 1998 to 2002 and that he had been paid a total of $5.3 million through Abramoff's law firm and from organizations controlled by Abramoff's partner Michael Scanlon.[35][36] The report did not accuse Reed of having known about Abramoff's illegal activities.[35]

The report further states that under the guidance of the Mississippi Choctaw tribe's planner, Nell Rogers, the tribe agreed to launder money because "Ralph Reed did not want to be paid directly by a tribe with gaming interests." It also states that Reed used non-profits, like Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, as pass-throughs to disguise the origin of the funds, and that "the structure was recommended by Jack Abramoff to accommodate Mr. Reed’s political concerns."[34]

Reed was never charged with any wrongdoing concerning the Indian gambling scandals.

I don't care about Reed's criminal culpability; but the man is as slimy as a snake and as crooked as a dog's hind leg. That recital is a very anodyne recounting of Reed's cynicism and hucksterism and sheer disinterest in anything approaching a moral sense.  This has, in other words, been going on for at least four decades.  Jerry Falwell rose to national prominence because he was a racist huckster, not because he was a Baptist saint.  Pat Robertson, it should never be forgotten, ran for President in the GOP primaries (he disappeared beneath the waves and gave up being "political" for the most part after that, except for "culture war" issues.).

Nothing about the current situation is new or novel; it's just that the "giants" have all passed from the scene, and the culture that supported evangelicals/fundamentalists in the public spotlight, has moved on.  And yes, it's taking those churches with it.

Protestantism has the peculiarity of always having been a product of the immediate culture, rather than an institution in its own right (the Roman Catholic Church).  Neither model is without critique or flaw, but Protestantism is watching as the culture passes it by.  There was a United Church of Christ church (then E&R) in St. Louis that was "the" church in what was then an important American city (site of the World's Fair, which park still stands and still offers the museum built for that fair, and an aviary still in use and wonderful to visit are both places).  This was the church of the carriage trade and every politician who came to town, from the Governor on down.  They had their own staff to cook meals, their own silverware pattern and china pattern (still on display in the church).  And it's all gone but the memories.  I was last there (first and only time) in the mid '90's.  I wouldn't be surprised if it was no longer a church at all by now.  The culture, you see, moved on.

Roman Catholic churches close, too.  They are expected to sustain themselves and a priest, and some eventually can't.  But Protestantism can't sustain itself at all if it isn't reflective of the culture of the people who sustain it.  That decline came first for the "mainline" denominations, the ones with European roots.  Now it's catching up with the American (i.e., non-European) churches.  Which is not to say every Protestant church in America will soon be shuttered; not at all.  But the culture that sustained them, and that they sustained, is gone.  They became "liberal" because the culture around them became more pronouncedly "conservative," and that led to the rise of the  Southern Baptists and other similarly "conservative" denominations and non-denominational mega-churches.  But the latter are no longer the wave of the future, and the former find they must become more and more overtly political just to survive.

But it's a survival tactic that just hastens their decline into irrelevance.  Where once church leaders had to be moral exemplars (and mega-church pastors find the limits of their charisma as they are exposed as less than moral themselves), now denominations (at least; mega-churches tend to be singular.  Some like a political pastor; some don't) find the morals of their leaders matter far less than their politics.  Which, yes, is entirely what's wrong with them

But this is old news.  Older than me, at least.  And while only now is the fall apparent, that's been coming ever since Jerry Falwell decided integrated schools would not do and church schools for white kids (which is the only reason they were started, at least by the churches that never had schools before (so excluding Catholics and Episcopalians)) were demanded by God because race-mixing was an offense to man (if not God).  And I'll go back again to a decade before Falwell, when Dr. King upbraided the churches for not supporting the civil rights movement.  It was a moral tongue-lashing most didn't feel because morality was mighty inconvenient where status quo and "don't rock the boat" were concerned.  Which is to say it's been coming ever since the Boomers realized their parents were not cool with radical changes in the social order.  And while the Boomers grew up to reconcile themselves to white privilege, their children learned the lessons the Boomers had outgrown.

When I published those quotes from Tocqueville, I thought I had already published this.  It was fresh in my mind, but not in anybody else's.  Context is all, and I forgot to supply the context. So here it partially is; an incomplete post I'm not likely now to get around to finishing.  But hey, this platform is free, too, right?