Fgalkin's Fundie Guide

[fgalkin]

Writing this paper was the reason for my absence. I tried to put it online.

Here is the link (I hope this works) http://angelfire.lycos.com/scifi2/fgalk ... _paper.doc

The bibliography is at http://angelfire.lycos.com/scifi2/fgalk ... r_bibl.doc

This should work.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Alyrium Denryle]

damn 116 pages...

[victorhadin]

Suddenly my writing about centre-of-gravity and wing/ nacelle positioning on jet transport aircraft seems mediocre and nothing worth whining about in comparison.

Damn, that's a lot of words.

[Jadeite]

Wow, thats a big document, 1.05 megabytes.

EDIT: It kept going past 1.05, its now at 1.40, how big is this?

[Enforcer Talen]

hm. its given me 32 pages of text, starting in the middle, and some 2000 pages of gibberish.

-begins deleting-

[fgalkin]

Here, try again. This is a zip file now
http://angelfire.lycos.com/scifi2/fgalk ... _paper.zip

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi]

The zip file doesn't seem to be working, nor do your first links, or at least for me. Would it be possible to copy and paste the whole thing here and warn people about the long-ass post coming up?

[fgalkin]

The zip file doesn't seem to be working, nor do your first links, or at least for me. Would it be possible to copy and paste the whole thing here and warn people about the long-ass post coming up?

116 Pages? I'll try.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[fgalkin]

The first few pages (dealing with the history of religion in America)




Thesis Statement: The rise of the Religious Right is one of the greatest threats to American democracy today.

Religion has always exerted great influence in America. The early colonists: the Pilgrims, the Puritans, the Quakers, the Jews, and others have come to this country to avoid religious persecution. Some of these groups, like the Puritans, however, were not tolerant to other religions. This intolerance has continued to this day. The Christian Fundamentalists of the Religious Right, much like the Puritans of the early Colonies, believe that only their idea of what’s right and what’s not is important. The fundamentalists, then, have launched a crusade to turn America into a Christian empire, and in doing so, went against the ideas of the Founding Fathers, written in the Constitution. This Paper will examine their reasons for doing so, and what exactly do they have in store for America.

Before this can proceed, several terms need to be clarified. “Fundamentalism” is a movement in American Protestantism that arose in the early part of the 20th century in reaction to Modernism and that stresses the infallibility of the Bible not only in matters of faith and morals but also in literal historical record (“Fundamentalism,” Random House Webster’s College Dictionary, 1999 ed.).
“Atheism” is the doctrine that there is no God or Supreme Being (“Atheism,” Random House Webster’s College Dictionary, 1999 ed.).
“Religious Right”, also known as the “New Right” a political movement made up especially of Protestants, opposed especially to secular humanism, and concerned with issues especially of church and state, patriotism, laissez-faire economics, pornography, and abortion (“New Right,” Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online).
“Evangelism” is the preaching or promulgation of the Christian gospel (“Evangelism” Random House Webster’s College Dictionary, 1999 ed.).
“Lobby” is a group of persons who try to influence legislators or other public officials to vote or act in favor of a special interest (“Lobby” Random House Webster’s College Dictionary, 1999 ed.).

This Paper will compare the religious intolerance of the of the Puritans of the early colonies to the religious intolerance of the Religious Right in modern America. It will also compare the Enlightenment principles of government expressed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution to the theocratic principles of the Religious Right. Finally, it will discuss the crusade of the Religious Right to impose their views on America.
This Paper will focus on the following time periods: the early American colonies, to describe the religious intolerance of the Puritans and compare it to the tolerance in the other colonies. It will also focus on the late 18th century, to show that the US Constitution was based on secularist Enlightenment ideals. Finally, it will focus on the second half of the 20th century and show the rise of the Religious Right.


In 1492, Christopher Columbus had made his famous voyage, and opened America to European colonization. Many Europeans have used this opportunity to settle in America. Some of them brought ideas of religious tolerance. Others fled religious persecution in England only to oppress other religious groups. This Paper will describe these early settlers, and will show how the religious differences of the early colonies have continued to exist to this day.


I.
In 1620, a group of religious separatists known as the Pilgrims has dropped anchor in the harbor of what is now Provincetown, Massachusetts, and, one month later they landed in what became the Plymouth colony. Their greatest achievement was the Mayflower Compact, which served as a precursor of constitutional law in America, and was influential in the writing of the Constitution.

Another group of religious separatists that came to America was the Puritans. They arrived in 1630 and founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Puritans were members of the Anglican Church, who wanted to reform the practices of their church.
Puritan theology is a version of Calvinism. Its basic belief is that humankind is sinful, but it also declares that God has determined that some will be saved through the righteousness of Christ despite their sins. However, no one can be certain in this life what their eternal destiny will be. Nevertheless, the experience of conversion, is at least some indication that one is of the elect. (“Puritanism”, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 99).
The Puritans claimed that the Massachusetts Bay Colony offered religious freedom to all. This, however, was not entirely true. Only members of the church could vote and hold political privileges. Non-Puritans were might be fined, beaten, imprisoned, or banished. Quakers were the most unwelcome of all: some were whipped or had their ears cut of. And, in 1659, two Quakers were hanged (Sherrow, Separation of Church and State, p. 18). It was not, however, a theocracy, since ministers could not hold public office, and magistrates had no jurisdiction over doctrine of criteria for church membership (Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America, pp. 1-2). The Puritans also held the belief that they were the Chosen People, ordered by God to create a City upon a Hill, a New Israel, a Redeemer Nation, for the entire world to emulate (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 2).
Not everyone agreed with this assessment, however. Roger Williams, a dissenting minister, taught that political leaders had no authority over religious matters, and that “people had the right to worship God as their consciences dictated” (Kleeberg, Separation of Church and State, p. 15). He then proceeded to start the Rhode Island colony.
Another exile from the Massachusetts Bay Colony was Anne Hutchinson. She was exiled because of her belief that faith in God was the only thing required to enter heaven; the church believed that good works were also needed” (Kleeberg, Separation of Church and State, p. 15). She and her family moved to Rhode Island, and, after the death of her family, to what is now Pelham Bay, The Bronx, NY (“Hutchinson, Anne”, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 99).

When Roger Williams was exiled, he purchased a piece of land from the Native Americans, and founded the colony of Rhode Island. It offered religious and political liberty for all, including Native Americans. The colony Charter said:
No person within the said Colony, at any time hereafter, shall be in any wise molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question for any differences of opinion in matters of religion.
(Sherrow, Separation of Church and State, p. 21).
Williams was also the first known person to speak of the separation of church and state. He spoke of a “hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church, and the wilderness of the world” (Sherrow, Separation of Church and State, p. 21).

Another colony was Maryland. George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, established Maryland as a refuge for Roman Catholics. However, all other congregations except Unitarians were allowed to settle (Kleeberg, Separation of Church and State, p. 17). Maryland’s Act of Toleration (1649) forbade people to deride one another’s beliefs and to use terms “heretic”, “papist”, or “Puritan” to insult other colonists (Sherrow, Separation of Church and State, p. 23).
However, this era of tolerance did not last long. More and more Puritans were moving into Maryland. Eventually, there were enough of them to take control of the colony. Once in power, they banned Roman Catholicism and the Church of England. In 1688, however, the Church of England was dominant back in England, and it became the established church of Maryland (Kleeberg, Separation of Church and State, p. 17).

The Colony of New Amsterdam was settled by Dutch immigrants in the 1620s. They have founded Dutch Reformed churches, based on the teachings of John Calvin (Sherrow, Separation of Church and State, p. 17). Governor Stuyvesant originally opposed all religions but his own. In 1657, however, he received instructions from Holland ordering him to pursue more tolerant policies. In response to that, the people of Flushing, Long Island added a clause to their town charter called the “Freedom from Molestation” clause, and forbid the town officials to “condemn, punish, banish, prosecute, or lay violent hands upon anyone, in whatever name, form, or title he might appear. (Sherrow, Separation of Church and State, p. 21).
The colony grew and soon contained citizens of more than fourteen countries. In addition to the members of the Dutch Reformed, Anglican, and Catholic churches, there were Quakers, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Jews, and others (Sherrow, Separation of Church and State, p. 17).

The South was a mix of different denominations. Anglicans and Huguenots lived along the South Carolina coast. Scotch-Irish Presbyterians settled farther inland. North Carolina was occupied by Anglicans, but also had Baptists, Presbyterians, Quakers, and others living in it; while Virginia was settled mostly by followers of the Church of England. Georgia was home to Austrian Salzburgers, Lutherans, Waldensians, Quakers, Catholics, Baptists, Anglicans, Moravians, Methodists, and Presbyterians (Sherrow, Separation of Church and State, pp. 17-18).

Finally, William Penn had founded the colony of Pennsylvania in 1682. It was intended to be the “holy experiment” where people of different faiths, even Native Americans, could live together. In fact, Penn’s policies of nonviolence towards Native Americans had averted wars between them and the settlers for more than seventy years (Sherrow, Separation of Church and State, p. 22).
Pennsylvania became the most religiously diverse of all the colonies. Along with Quakers, there were Puritans, Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, German Pietists, Anabaptists, Roman Catholics, Jews, Deists, Schwenckfelders, and agnostics. It was also home to such pacifist sects as Mennonites, Brethren (Dunkers), Amish, and Moravians. By 1776, there were about 403 different congregations in Pennsylvania (Sherrow, Separation of Church and State, p. 22).

[fgalkin]

II.
A hundred years from the coming of the Mayflower, America was thrown into a state of religious turmoil known as the Great Awakening. It was caused by the preaching of clergymen like the Puritan Jonathan Edwards, Presbyterian priest Gilbert Tennent, and the English evangelist George Whitefield (“Great Awakening”, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 99). These ministers traveled between towns, reinvigorating the peoples’ religious zeal. Karen Armstrong, author of The Battle for God, describes the Great Awakening in the town of Northampton, Connecticut:
(quote)…the people of Northampton had not been particularly religious, but in 1734 two young people died suddenly, and the shock (backed up by Edward’s own emotive preaching) plunged the town into a frenzied religiosity, which spread like contagion to Massachusetts and Long Island. People stopped work and spent the whole day reading the Bible. Within six months, three hundred people in the town had experienced a wrenching “born-again” conversion. They alternated between soaring highs and devastating lows; sometimes they were quite broken and “sank into an abyss, under a sense of guilt that they were ready to think was beyond the mercy of God.” At other times they would “break forth into laughter, tears often at the same time issuing like a flood, and intermingling with a loud weeping”…one man was so cast down, he committed suicide, convinced that his loss of ecstatic joy could only mean that he was predestined to Hell (pp. 78-79).(/quote)

The revival was dying down, when it was reinvigorated by George Whitefield, during whose sermons “churches shook with the cries of those who imagined themselves saved, and the groans of [those] who were convinced that they were damned (Armstrong, The Battle for God, p. 79).
Initially, the revivalists were welcomed by the ministers of the congregations where they preached. Before long, however, the methods of the itinerants and the fervent emotionalism of the revival drew criticism, being seen by a large proportion of the settled clergy as a threat to the established order. In addition to that, Revivalists often accused settled ministers of being unconverted and of leading their congregations to spiritual destruction (“Great Awakening”, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 99).
This led to a split of the Calvinist denominations into two factions. The Old Lights, led by the Boston minister Jonathan Mayhew and Charles Chauncy, believed that Christianity should be a rational and enlightened religion, and were appalled by the mass hysteria of the Great Awakening. The Old Lights tended to come from more prosperous, and, thus, more educated, sectors of society, while the lower classes tended to favor the breakaway New Lights, who often established their own denominations. The most notorious of this, was, of course, the split of the Presbyterian New Lights from the Presbyterian synod in 1741. The split was eventually healed in 1758, but in that time, the New Lights had acquired a separatist identity, which was crucial in the emergence of the fundamentalist movement of the late 19th century (Armstrong, The Battle for God, p. 80).
The Great Awakening changed life in the Christian community. In revivalist churches power passed from the clergy to the laity. Instead of formal training and theological acumen, the test of leadership became the ability to appeal to the heart, to rouse men and women to seek salvation and a transformed life (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 3).
The Great Awakening had another side effect. The ecstatic experiences of those who were exposed to the Great Awakening left them “with the memory of a blissful state of freedom” (Armstrong, The Battle for God, p. 80). During the Revolution, these people would desire freedom, even though they could not understand the lofty ideals of the Enlightenment.





III.
In all that time, America underwent a period of great change. Between 1620, when the Pilgrims landed, and 1787, when the Constitution was drawn up, the country had advanced tremendously (Kleeberg, Separation of Church and State, p. 20).
In 1620, the non-Native American population of what is now the continental United States was around 500. By 1776, the population was about 2,500,000. Also, a mail service of post riders went from Portsmouth, New Hampshire to Virginia in 1732. And, in 1775, a more formal Post Office Department had been set up (Kleeberg, Separation of Church and State, p. 20).
Finally, the construction of roads helped bring the colonies together. By 1756 stage coaches could make the trip between New York and Philadelphia in three days. By 1788, there were 2,000 miles of post roads running from New Hampshire to Georgia (Kleeberg, Separation of Church and State, p. 21).
Another change in colonial society was the decreased interest in religion. Since life was no longer a struggle to survive in a hostile environment, colonists did not have to rely upon God too much, and people now had time to read, think, and talk about ideas for living (Kleeberg, Separation of Church and State, p. 21).
Another change was brought by the Revolutionary War. Soldiers from many nationalities and religions fought side by side for a common interest. This brought an increased tolerance to the life of the colonists (Sherrow, Separation of Church and State, p. 24).
However, there was another aspect to the American Revolution that often gets neglected. For the very religious revivalist churches, the Revolution became a religious, as well as a secular affair. British officials were portrayed as being in league with the devil. After the passing of the Stamp Act (1765), patriotic poems and songs presented its perpetrators, Lords Bute, Grenville, and North, as the minions of Satan, who were conspiring to lure the Americans into the devil’s eternal Kingdom (Armstrong, The Battle for God, p. 84). The Stamp was described as the “mark of the Beast,” and effigies depicting the British ministers were carried alongside portraits of Satan in political processions and hung from “liberty trees” throughout the colonies (Armstrong, The Battle for God, p. 84). In 1774, King George III became associated with the Antichrist when he granted religious freedom to the French Catholics in the Canadian territory conquered by England in the Seven Years War (Armstrong, The Battle for God, p. 84). Even the more educated colonists fell prey to the fear of hidden cosmic conspiracy. The presidents of Harvard and Yale both believed that the colonists were fighting a war against satanic forces, and looked forward to the defeat of popery. “The War of Independence had become part of God’s providential design for the destruction of the Papal Antichrist, which would surely herald the arrival of God’s millennial Kingdom in America,” writes Karen Armstrong (p. 84).
This, of course was in stark contrast with the beliefs of the Founding Fathers, who were guided by the Enlightenment principles, rather than the religious beliefs of the masses. In 1782, Thomas Jefferson wrote that the government had no authority in the area of religion except to prevent “such acts only as are injurious to others” colonists (Sherrow, Separation of Church and State, p. 28). Jefferson wrote his ideas about church-state separation in the Virginia Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom. The bill provided that nobody should be legally forced to attend or support a religious institution, nor should anyone suffer the loss of personal property or civil liberties because of religious beliefs and opinions (Sherrow, Separation of Church and State, p. 28).
Another Founding Father, James Madison, wrote the Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments, in which he wrote “Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians in exclusion of all other sects? That the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support of any one establishment, may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever?” (Sherrow, Separation of Church and State, p. 28).
The Constitution was shaped by men like Madison and Jefferson, deists who declined to support any particular religion. The Constitution contains no references to God or a Supreme Being. The one reference to religious liberty appears in Article VI, clause 3, which forbids religious tests as a qualification for public office. In other words, it says the government cannot require public servants to belong to a particular church or synagogue (Sherrow, Separation of Church and State, p. 30).
That idea of separation of Church and State became the First Amendment, which states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The ways the First Amendment was interpreted by the Founders was very different, however. George Washington declared national days of prayer, and approved the use of public funds to pay congressional chaplains. John Adams also declared national days of prayer and thanksgiving. On the other hand, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson said that the First Amendment prohibited them from proclaiming national days of thanksgiving, from exempting religious organizations from taxation, and from using government funds for any religious activities. Neither gave land grants to religious groups (Sherrow, Separation of Church and State, p. 32). While Jefferson was president, he used the phrase “wall of separation.” In January 1802 the Connecticut Baptists Association of Danbury received a letter from President Jefferson. It said:
(quote) Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church and State (Sherrow, Separation of Church and State, p. 32). (/quote)

Although Thomas Jefferson believed in the separation of church and state, others did not. Religious restrictions remained in many states. Often they discriminated against Catholics, Jews, or other minorities, and were not repealed until the late nineteenth century. A Massachusetts law, repealed in 1833, for example, required each town to pay Protestant teachers to teach religion and morality. Only Protestants had full civil rights in New Jersey until 1844. Jews could not hold public office in North Carolina until 1868. Connecticut citizens’ taxes were used to support the Congregational church until 1868. In New Hampshire, Jews and Catholics could not hold public office until 1876. Maryland did not grant full political rights to Jews and Unitarians until 1876 (Sherrow, Separation of Church and State, p. 33). This, and the fact that most public schools were run by Protestants, proves that separation of church and state was almost nonexistent in the 19th century.
However, as the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1868, this began to change. The relevant portion of the Amendment, contained in section 1, states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any person deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws” (Sherrow, Separation of Church and State, p. 40). This Amendment gave the federal government the right to interfere in state matters, and for the Supreme Court to strike down state laws that violated the separation of church in state.

[fgalkin]

IV.
While most American cities were experiencing the profound changes that the Industrial Revolution was bringing to society, the rural America was experiencing a change of its own. At that time, America experienced what historians have called the Second Great Awakening, or, simply, the Great Revival. The first phase of this revival, the southern and western camp meetings, turned the American South into the most distinctively and self-consciously religious region in. The second phase came remarkably close to achieving the evangelical dream of making America a Christian nation (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 4).
The most important theological product of this revival was an emphasis on “sanctification,” often called “perfectionism”: the belief that Christians should live sinless lives. Perfectionists opposed such vices as alcohol, gambling, fornication, profanity, and dishonesty (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 4).
It is difficult to overstate the impact of the Great Revival on the development of Southern culture. Southern religion, which thoroughly permeated and informed Southern culture, was characterized by its absolute and unquestioning confidence in the Bible, its emphasis on piety and purity, and its unswerving dedication to the primary task of revivals; the winning of lost souls. It tended to ignore or slight intellectual currents that might conflict with evangelical dogma, and to support slavery with the belief that the Bible sanctioned it (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 4).

In the North, after a series of successful revivals in upstate New York and in major population centers along the Eastern Seaboard, Charles Finney came to New York City to write a new chapter in evangelical history. During the first half of the nineteenth century, evangelical Christians were so convinced that their efforts could ring in the millenium, a thousand years of peace and prosperity that would culminate in the glorious Second Advent of Christ, that they threw themselves into fervent campaigns to eliminate war, drunkenness, slavery, subjugation of women, poverty, prostitution, Sabbath-breaking, dueling, profanity, card-playing, and other impediments to a perfect society (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 4). In the vanguard of these millennialists was a group of wealthy New York entrepreneurs and bankers calling themselves the Association of Gentlemen, who persuaded Finney to join their cause. With their support, Finney preached that “the great business of the church is to reform the world—to put away every kind of sin,” and that true Christians must be “useful in the highest degree possible” and are “bound to exert their influence to secure legislation that is in accordance with the law of God” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 5). Finney’s converts became participants in most of the progressive social movements of the era.
By the mid nineteenth century, America had become, more fully than ever before or again, a Christian Republic, and the dominant expression of Christianity was Protestant, evangelistic, and revivalistic. Church membership stood at record levels, with virtually all growth occurring in evangelical ranks (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 5).

However, as the forces of the Great Revival met the forces of the Industrial Revolution, the combines forces of urbanization, industrialization, and immigration, evangelism began to stumble (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 6). Immigration brought an influx of Jews, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox Christians, who weakened the Protestant control of the nation. This brought an increasing amount of secularism, which also alarmed the Protestant leaders (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 6).
Two challenges stood out above others as posing singular threats to American Christianity. The first was the theory of evolution, developed by Charles Darwin, which constituted not only a direct challenge not only to the biblical account of creation, but also to traditional Christian understanding of human nature and destiny. An even more serious threat was came in the form of historical criticism of the Bible. This approach challenged the inspiration and credibility of the entire corpus of the scripture, the bedrock foundation of evangelical Christianity (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 6). Many Protestants managed to adjust to the changes by creating theories of “theistic evolution,” and interpreted “days” in Genesis as “ages.” However, most evangelicals chose to ignore the modernist ideas and to declare that they could not possibly be true, no matter what. They became ultra-conservatives, and this led directly to the emergence of the fundamentalism movement.
When the twentieth century brought about the Great War, followed by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, Christian fundamentalism received another aspect it needed to survive: religious nationalism (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 11). Fundamentalist preachers declared that Satan himself was directing the German war effort, and hinted strongly that it was part of the same process that began with the development of biblical criticism in German universities. Modernism, they asserted, turned Germany into a godless nation, and it would do the same thing to America (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 11). Of course, when Russia became Communist in 1917, and the Red Scare began, their movement received a very powerful boost, which it needed to become a dominant force.

Dwight Lyman Moody was the first leader of the anti-modernist revival, which gave birth to the fundamentalist movement. Dwight Moody did not believe that America was getting any better, and that the era of the millenium is coming any time soon, which was the belief of Charles Finney, and other earlier revivalists. This view was known as postmillenialism, because the Second Coming of Christ would occur after the millenium (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 7). Instead, Moody believed that the only real hope for Christians lay in Christ’s coming back to personally inaugurate the millenium—that is, that the Second Coming would be premillenial. This doctrine holds that careful attention to biblical prophecies can yield clues as to exactly when the Second Coming will occur. In all versions, the relevant “signs of the times” are bad news—political anarchy, earthquakes, plagues, etc. (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 7). As a result, premillennialism fared better in bad times because it offers its followers a shining ray of hope in an otherwise dismal situation. It has also acted as a brake on reform movements, since it regards such efforts as little better than fruitless attempts to thwart God’s plan for human history (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 7). Another idea that became part of the theology of the fundamentalist movement was dispensationalism. According to this idea, human history was divided into a series of distinct eras (“dispensations”) in God’s dealing with humanity. The triggering action for the beginning of the last dispensation will be “the Rapture,” at which point the faithful Christians will be “caught up together to meet the Lord in the air,” while the rest of humanity will be forced to face an unprecedented series of calamities known as “the tribulation” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 7). The main protagonist of the tribulation will be the Antichrist, who will seek total control by requiring every person to wear a number (probably 666, “the mark of the beast”). The tribulation period will end with the Second Coming of Christ and the battle of Armageddon, to be followed by the millenium, the Final Judgement, and an eternity of bliss for the redeemed and agonizing punishment for the wicked (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 7). One of the most important aspects of dispensationalism is its insistence on biblical inerrancy. The Scripture must be absolutely reliable an all aspects, if it is to provide a precise blueprint for the future. Closely related to this was the encouragement of separatism from all sorts of error. To be fit to ride the Rapturing cloud, one must identify those whose doctrine is impure and “come out from among them” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. . This became one of the most important aspects of the Fundamentalist movement.
Moody disagreed with some details of dispensationalism, but he accepted the view that the world was heading toward disaster, so he tried to help as many people as possible to prepare for the event. He started the Chicago Evangelization Society, which was to prepare people to “stand in the gap” for God (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. . Other evangelists followed Moody’s train, most notable of them being Billy Sunday.
In 1909, another important event took place. Cyrus Scofield, an evangelist working with Dwight Moody published his work on a project to provide notes for the King James Version of the Bible. The work was called the Scofield Annotated Bible, and it had an enormous impact on the fundamentalist movement (Utter and Storey, The Religious Right: A Reference Handbook, p. 72). Since its publishing in 1909 to 1967, an estimated five to ten million copies have been sold, and a revised edition published in 1967 sold an additional three million copies (Utter and Storey, The Religious Right…, p. 72). It had outlined the basic ideas of dispensationalist premillennialism in an understandable way for all, which greatly increased the appeal of fundamentalism. The Scofield Annotated Bible became “the Bible” for many fundamentalists (Utter and Storey, The Religious Right…, p. 24).
Another important document that had a great impact on early fundamentalism was the publishing of The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth, a set of twelve pamphlets each about 125 pages long, which were distributed free of charge to ministers, seminary professors, theology students, Sunday school directors, and YMCA leaders throughout the country. These booklets, written by prominent religious conservatives, reaffirmed the “essentials” of dispensationalist premillennialism, and denounce evolution, Bible criticism, Catholicism, Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Science, Spiritualism, and much more (Utter and Storey, The Religious Right…, p. 25). Also, in 1919 the World’s Christian Fundamentals Association was formed and became the most important fundamentalist organization of the time.
By 1920, the fundamentalist movement, which was thought to be dying in the early 1900s, was gaining momentum due to the energetic sermons of Billy Sunday. Sunday was born in Iowa, and played major league baseball until 1891, when he found Jesus by listening to a street preacher outside a saloon (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. . Sunday became one of the most influential ministers of the early 20th century. His sermons were filled with jokes, mimicry, mockery, dialects, homey illustrations, and slangy outbursts which the newspapers called “Sundayisms” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 9). Sunday preached the same simple Gospel that the more serious and dignified Moody had proclaimed: “With Christ you are saved, without him you are lost” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 9). He also resented any kind of higher learning, saying that “When the Word of God says one thing and scholarship says another, scholarship can go to hell” and by observing that if he had a million dollars, he would give all but one to the church and the rest to education (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 9). He was also very supportive of the Prohibitionist movement, and his “booze” sermon was often the high point of his revivals. When the 18th Amendment was passed, Sunday celebrated by having a mock funeral for John Barleycorn. All in all, Billy Sunday revitalized the fundamentalist movement and prepared it for the tests that lay ahead.
The first major test came in 1925, when John T. Scopes, a teacher from Dayton, Tennessee decided to challenge the law that prohibited the teaching of evolution with the help of the ACLU. These kinds of laws were passed in many states due to the fundamentalists’ fear of the evolution theory, and any modern ideas (in Kentucky, for example a teacher was dismissed from his job for teaching that the earth was round when the plaintiff proved to the judge that it was flat using the Scripture) (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 14). Scopes was represented by Clarence Darrow, a famous lawyer. The fundamentalists’ prosecution consisted of William Jennings Bryan and other noted fundamentalist leaders. The trial turned into a public carnival and media circus. Darrow made Bryan look shallow and foolish, and journalists, led by the arch-cynic H. L. Mencken sent derisive reports of Southern and fundamentalist backwardness to newspapers throughout America and Europe (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 15). Since both judge and jury were solidly against Scopes, he was convicted and ordered to pay a fine of $100. The impact that this trial had on the fundamentalist movement, was hard to underestimate, however. Bryan died within days after the trial, and all laws banning the teaching of evolution disappeared within five years (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 15).
Another challenge, which was less visible to the general public, was the fundamentalists’ struggle for dominance of the Presbyterian Church in the USA and the Northern Baptists (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 16). The fundamentalists, had set about to root out error wherever they found it and to separate themselves from its perpetrators. Throughout both denominations, fundamentalists demanded public tests of orthodoxy for ministers and seminary professors, called on liberal editors and officers to resign their posts, and succeeded in getting their denominations to withdraw from the ecumenical Interchurch World Movement. However, the fundamentalists eventually failed in their efforts to cleanse the Presbyterian Church in the USA failed, and in 1929 a group of fundamentalist scholars led by Gresham Machen withdrew from Princeton to establish Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. With him was a young man named Carl McIntire. Together, they continued to attack their denomination until they were expelled in 1936. They formed the Presbyterian Church in America, later renamed the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Within a year, McIntire found Machen to be insufficiently pure and split off to form the Bible Presbyterian Church and Faith Theological Seminary (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 16).
A similar process was observed in the Northern Baptist Church. As the denomination’s leading seminaries moved more and more to the liberal camp, the fundamentalists tried to control the denomination and to eliminate the heretics from the mission fields and seminaries (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 16). They failed, and were kicked out just like their Presbyterian counterparts.
By the end of the 1920s, the fundamentalist movement seemed to be defeated and near death. It lost virtually every confrontation it created, and it was widely ridiculed by mainstream America. In addition to that, the onset of the Great Depression diverted attention from theological wrangling, and it was becoming clear that the victory of Prohibition would soon be overturned (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 17). It, however, not only escaped the grave, but emerged even stronger by the end of the 1930s.
There were several reasons for that. Since they lost all battles for control of their denominations, they established their own independent congregations, and formed alliances that they hoped will strengthen their movement (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 17). The fundamentalists also began using publications and the new medium of radio (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 18). This, however, gave certain fundamentalists an opportunity to spout racist, anti-Semitic, and pro-fascist views virtually without check.
One of these individuals was Gerald Winrod. In 1925, he and a small group of followers founded an association known as the Defenders of the Christian Faith, with the Defender magazine as the primary outlet for his views (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 20). Winrod called the New Deal a “Red program,” and claimed that the Elders of Zion were behind the Depression, and the New Deal, and praised Hitler for “defying Jewish occultism, communism, and finance” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 20). Although he toned down his anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi views when World War II began, he was still regarded as a threat to national unity security, and was the lead defendant in United States v. Winrod, which ended in a mistrial.


V.
The event that marked the reemergence of the fundamentalist movement, and became instrumental in the emergence of the Religious Right was the split between the Old Fundamentalism and the New Evangelicalism. As the events of the 1930s have shown, the fundamentalists have grown increasingly separatist, and pessimistic, due to their failure in the post-Scopes Trial era. This brought a split between the old fundamentalists, such as Carl McIntire and the new evangelicals, such as Billy Graham. The main difference between fundamentalist and evangelicals was that the evangelicals were more tolerant to minor ideological differences, while most fundamentalists tried to separate themselves from those suspected from even the slightest version of orthodoxy (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p, 40). Carl McIntire became one of the leaders of the Religious Right. His first important action on the religious arena has been the founding of the American and International Councils of Christian Churches (ACCC-ICCC) as the opposition to the liberal National Council of Churches in the 1940s. The ACCC-ICCC was very active in rooting out communists in various churches around the nation, and McIntire himself was very was very friendly with a certain Senator from Wisconsin. McIntire continued to search for communists even after McCarthy’s death, and he opposed the civil rights movement.
McIntire was certainly not the only member of the Religious Right to be on friendly terms with McCarthy. Almost every fundamentalist preacher was joining him for witch hunt. But, although McCarthy was supported by Billy Graham and most other preachers, very few were as loyal as Billy James Hargis. He was one of the few preachers who worked directly with McCarthy. In 1947, Hargis established the Christian Echoes Ministry, which later became the Christian Crusade, and proceeded to attack communists, even after the Red Scare was over. Hargis was also opposed to the civil rights movement, and even called Martin Luther King a “stinking racial agitator” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p, 79).
Other fundamentalists of the period included Fred Schwarz, who founded the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade, Edgar Bundy, and others (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p, 39). An interesting note belongs to the John Birch Society. Named after a young Baptist missionary to China allegedly killed by Chinese Communists, the John Birch Society became one of the most rabid anti-Communist organization America has ever known (Utter and Storey, The Religious Right…, p. 73). One of its most well-known statements was calling President Eisenhower “a dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p, 75).
An interesting parachurch organization came into existence in 1951. It was started by a young man named Bill Bright, who, as a student of Fuller Seminary fell under the influence of an enigmatic Sunday school teacher, and decided to create a sort of ministry for college students. This idea came to him while he was studying for a Greek exam during his last year at the seminary (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p, 28).
Bright regarded the experience as a definite commission from God, and set to act upon it immediately. Bright believed that committed Christian young people can provide the strongest bulwark against secularism, moral decay, and Communism. Thus, he formed a group of eager young preachers, and set them loose upon UCLA (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p, 28).
Thus, the Campus Crusade for Christ was born. Eventually, it will eclipse Billy Graham’s Youth For Christ, and become the largest organization of its kind. Bill Bright put a high value on organization, technique, and straightforward attempts to move people to a rational decision. The Bright installed and still maintains a tight chain of command, in which lieutenants defer to captains and all ranks acknowledge that Bill Bright holds the ultimate power of decision (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p, 28). The Crusade often adopts military terms—enlist, advance, rally, campaign, blitz, warrior, etc.—when referring to its recruitment operations. The CCC representatives pursue a four-point strategy of evangelism: Penetration, Concentration, Saturation, and Continuation (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p, 28). Each member is required to lead a life of moral and spiritual discipline, and spend many hours a week talking to individuals about their need to be saved, as well as attend a continual round of meetings to strengthen faith and maintain commitment (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p, 28).
The Campus Crusade for Christ has been active since the 1950s. Its most important role, however, was during the 1960s, when most evangelical organizations failed to recruit new members. During that time, the CCC emerged as the biggest challenge to the radical student movement (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p, 91). In 1966, a musical group known as New Folk, began holding largely secular concerts, during which the musicians gave a low-key pitch for establishing a personal relationship with Christ. The following year, a CCC ministry called Athletes in Action formed a basketball team that traveled around the country, playing local college teams, and presenting a Christian message at half-time (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p, 92). Although most people thought such approaches old-fashioned and corny, many students who did not want to “Tune in, turn on, and drop out” heeded them (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p, 94). However, Bill Bright thought that the CCC was falling behind in recruiting, so he attempted to make a comeback.
This comeback became known as the Berkeley Blitz of 1967. Just as the CCC targeted the campus leaders in its campaigns—the student body president, the editor of the school newspaper, the captain of the football team, the fraternity or sorority president—expecting that others will follow their lead, Bright decided to take the most important campus in the UC system (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p, 93).
Under the aegis of the campaign’s slogan, “Solution: Spiritual Revolution”, over six hundred crusaders carried their message to
athletic teams, clubs, fraternities and sororities, dormitories, student centers, coffee-shops, and open-air meetings. Jon Braun recalled, with some amusement, addressing several thousand young people from the steps of Sproul Hall. “The day before, the [regents] had dismissed the chancellor of the entire system, and these kids were out there because they thought it was a demonstration against the university. They hadn’t really come to hear someone preach the gospel. But we had relatively little choice. I remember being surrounded by a group of very large football players from various universities around the country, and that comforted me a little bit. But that was probably the worst experience I’ve ever had in my life in my life in evangelism” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p, 94).

The climax of the blitz came at the end of the week, when Billy Graham addressed a large audience at Berkeley’s Greek Theater. On the surface, the effort seemed to be a moderate success, since more than seven hundred students and faculty members seemed to have “received Christ”. The surface, however, was thin. Peter Gillquist, another CCC staffer admitted, “we know of only two [students] who really followed through” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p, 94). As such, the blitz was a fiasco.

In the 1960s and 70s, the Religious Right was facing an increasingly uphill battle. As the Berkeley fiasco of the CCC shows, not many people were attentive to the Religious Right’s efforts. In addition, the Supreme Court struck down the laws requiring school prayer, and Bible reading in school, which angered the Religious Right even more. Finally, the issues that were preoccupying the nation’s attention: the ERA, gay rights, abortion, sex education, and others were all a thorn in the Religious Right’s side. The fundamentalists, however, did not give up, and attempted to gain power at the local level to fight the evils of their new enemy, “Secular Humanism,” which, in their opinion was responsible for all those “evils.”
Humanism was a very old philosophy, associated with the Renaissance, and the classical ideals which gave that era its name. Many Renaissance thinkers, such as Erasmus, were Christians, who saw no conflict between a high view of God and a high view of humanity, since humans were the capstone of God’s glorious creation (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p, 195). Other humanists, however, saw little need for God. In 1933, a group of thirty-four American humanists, including educator John Dewey signed the Humanist Manifesto, which asserts that “the traditional dogmatic or authoritarian religions that place revelation, God, ritual or creed above human needs and experience do a disservice to the human species” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p, 195). Although most people ignored this, the fundamentalists paid very close attention. In their eyes, secular humanism was a godless religion, and the Humanist Manifesto was its bible. Thus, in the fundamentalists’ eyes, all “attacks on religion” by the government in the 60s were a result of this “evil religion.” A special report published in a Christian magazine stated that:
To understand humanism is to understand women’s liberation, the ERA, gay rights, children’s rights, abortion, sex education, the “new” morality, evolution, values clarification, situational ethics, the separation of church and state, the loss of patriotism, and many of the other problems that are tearing America apart today (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p, 196).

The replacement of communism by secular humanism as the # 1 enemy of Christianity is due to the efforts of one man, Francis Schaeffer. Just as he brought the abortion to the attention of the fundamentalist community with his film Whatever Happened to the Human Race?, he demonized secular humanism in How Should We Then Live?, a film/book combination that stressed that surrender to secularity would lead mankind to a dreadful future devoid of ethical an moral restraint (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p, 195).
This led the Religious Right to counterattack in the 1970s by banning “godless” books from local schools, opposing the ERA and abortion, and by getting involved in politics via organizations like the Moral Majority. Most of these issues can be found in the next section of this Paper.

Another thing that happened in the 70s was the so-called Electronic Revival. Evangelical ministers realized the opportunities that the media offered, and proceeded to utilize them to reach the unsaved. This brought remarkable results. The Christian Broadcasting Network, owned by Pat Robertson reached 35 million viewers in 1987, and had the highest Nielsen ratings of any cable network (Weyrich, “Television Evangelism is Legitimate”. Religion In America: Opposing Viewpoints, p. 157). However, many people doubted the sincerity of these televangelists, and eventually the public opinion turned against them.

The 1980s were the era of the Moral Majority, the activities of which are described in the next section of this Paper. It had influenced President Reagan enough to nominate C. Everett Koop a staunch anti-abortionist as Surgeon General. Reagan also proposed an anti-abortion and a school prayer Amendment to the Constitution, both of which failed. In addition, the Religious Right suffered major defeats when Wallace v. Jaffree (1981) banned silent prayer in school and when Edwards v. Aguillard (1987) banned the teaching of Biblical creationism.

[fgalkin]

Now, on to the main subject of the paper:





Now that the history of the Religious Right has been discussed, it is time to examine this phenomenon as it exists today.

Many people today are ignorant about the numbers and views of the Religious Right and tend to dismiss it as a phenomenon confined to some areas. This view could not be farther from the truth. The Religious Right is not only extremely numerous and powerful, its numbers are, in fact, growing. In 1979, according to the Gallup poll, 40% of America’s population considered themselves “‘born-again’ Evangelical Christians” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 221). By 1994, this number had increased to 42% (Utter and Storey, The Religious Right…, p. 79). Finally, in December 2002, 46% of Americans identified themselves as evangelical or born-again Christians (Kristof, “God, Satan and The Media”, p. A25). Of those people, the vast majority live in the South (63.7%) and the Midwest (24.3%) (Utter and Storey, The Religious Right:…, p. 81). Most of the born-again evangelical Christians come from rural areas, lower socio-economic background (under $30,000), and tend to be less educated (most of them did not attend college) (Utter and Storey, The Religious Right:…, p. 79).

Most evangelical Christians tend to support the Republican Party (38.6%). It is also interesting that a large number of them tend to be Independent (30.1%)(Utter and Storey, The Religious Right:…, p. 82). Nonetheless, most of the Religious Right tend to support conservative candidates. This is confirmed by surveys that state that 50% of the evangelical Christians consider themselves conservative, and 30% think of themselves as “moderate” (Utter and Storey, The Religious Right:…, p. 83). This shows that most evangelicals today tend to support conservative candidates. In fact, many of them think that liberalism equals to Communism (Banuchi, “How Shall I Vote?”).

The Religious Right’s support for conservative candidates undoubtedly comes from the conservative attitudes of its members towards most social issues. For example, 81 percent of evangelical Christians believe that marijuana should not be legalized, a belief held by only 48 % of non-evangelicals (Utter and Storey, The Religious Right:…, p. 87). Their attitudes towards premarital sex are similarly conservative. 86 % of them believe that premarital sex is “always wrong”, and 12% believe that it’s “almost always” wrong (Utter and Storey, The Religious Right:…, p. 87). In addition, 63% of evangelicals believe that homosexuality is a matter of choice, a belief held by only 27% of non-evangelicals (Utter and Storey, The Religious Right:…, p. 89).
In addition to holding conservative beliefs on social issues, most members of the Religious Right hold a firm belief that American society must be changed to reflect Christian values. When surveyed on this issue, 92% of Evangelical Christians and 87% of Fundamentalist Christians said that American society should be changed to better reflect God’s will (Smith, American Evangelicalism: Embattled and Thriving, p.37). When asked about strategies that can be used to accomplish this, 91% of evangelicals and fundamentalists said that converting people to Jesus Christ is “very important,” and 9% of Evangelicals and 8% of Fundamentalists said that it was “somewhat important” (Smith, American Evangelicalism…, p. 38). In addition, 97% of evangelicals and 96% of fundamentalists said it was important that Christians live a way of life that is “radically different from mainstream America”. Also, 98% of evangelicals thought that it was important to work for political reforms in the US, and 95% of fundamentalists agreed with them. In addition, 96% of evangelicals and 95% of fundamentalists thought that they must defend a Biblical worldview in intellectual circles (Smith, American Evangelicalism…, p. 38). Other methods of changing America are giving money to charity (supported by 92% of evangelicals and 89% of fundamentalists), and volunteering for local community organizations (supported by all evangelicals surveyed and by 98% of fundamentalists) (Smith, American Evangelicalism…, p. 38).
In addition to believing that action is necessary, many members of the Religious Right have actually contributed time and money to their cause. 92 percent of evangelicals vote in every election (Smith, American Evangelicalism…, p. 41), and a great deal of evangelicals and fundamentalists participate in activities described in the paragraph above. Table 1 of this paper, which is a copy of a part of Table 2.6, which is found in Christian Smith’s book on page 40, describes this in greater detail:

Table 1: Religious Activism in Previous Two Years (percent).
Evangelicals Fundamentalists
Given Money or Time to Help Spread the Gospel in US or Overseas
A lot 51 35
Some 41 49
None 8 16
Told Others About How to Become a Christian
A lot 32 25
Some 56 61
None 12 14
Defended a Biblical Worldview in Intellectual Circles
A lot 44 38
Some 48 45
None 8 17
Volunteered fir a Church Program That Serves the Local Community
A lot 32 26
Some 47 46
None 21 28
Worked Hard to Set a Christian Example
A lot 82 73
Some 16 26
None 2 1

[Superman]

Make sure you include a section about fundies and buttlove. See, many fundies think that they can cheat the old fornication rule by having butt sex. They seem to think that, as long as the penis does not go into the vagina, God will have to overlook it and they got him on a technicality. No joke, I knew a guy who did this.

My solution? A behymen. You know how God gave girls a hymen? Well, if they had one on their asses it would prevent these situations and God would have something to fall back on.

God: "Did you break her hymen?"

Follower: "No, God."

God: "Did you break her behymen?"

Follower: "Uhhh, uhhh..."

[fgalkin]

There are several theories that try to explain the vitality of religion in America. The first theory is the Sheltered Enclave Theory.; It was developed by James Davison Hunter in the 1980s. According to this theory, religions are relatively cohesive moral orders, which are “constituted and bounded by their distinctive cognitive content and symbolic boundaries” (Smith, American Evangelicalism…, p. 68). Therefore, a religious tradition is not merely an organized population of people who share the same religious belief, but is a “socially maintained sacredly defined cultural milieu that sustains a distinct worldview or ‘sacred cosmos’” (Smith, American Evangelicalism…, p. 68). Therefore, according to this theory, the force that threatens the religious enclave the most is the force of modernization, and things that accompany it: functional rationality, cultural pluralism, and structural pluralism (Smith, American Evangelicalism…, p. 68). This theory thus says that a religious community can maintain its strong beliefs and prevent assimilation into the modern world only by isolating itself from modern society and its technology.
The flaws of this theory are obvious. It fails to explain the political and religious activism of the Religious Right, and the vast involvement of its leaders in politics and social life.

Another theory that attempts to explain religious vitality in America is the Status Discontent Theory. This theory was originally developed to explain right-wing political extremism, but “theories of status discontent have evolved over the years into explanations for a broader array of religious and political phenomena (Smith, American Evangelicalism…, p. 70). According to this theory’s latest proponent, Lester Thurow:
The rise of religious fundamentalism is a social volcano in eruption. Its connection to economics is simple. Those who lose out economically or who cannot stand the economic uncertainty of not knowing what it takes to succeed in the new era ahead retreat into religious fundamentalism. (Smith, American Evangelicalism…, p. 70).

Another theory that attempts to explain religious fundamentalism in America is the Strictness Theory. In short, this theory argues that “strict” religious groups thrive, while “lenient” religious groups do not (Smith, American Evangelicalism…, p. 71). There are two different theories why this happens. One theory was developed by Dean Kelley and states that “the business of religion is meaning”, and that religions will only thrive when they can deliver substantial meaning to their adherents (Smith, American Evangelicalism…, p. 71). They produce this “meaning” by demanding that their followers by demanding that their followers respond to their ideas by committing their time, money, energy, reputations, and their very selves in a way that validates those ideas. Therefore, this view, put simply is “meaning = concept + demand” (Smith, American Evangelicalism…, p. 71). Strict religions, according to Kelly, provide their followers with meaning because they are demanding, while “lenient” religions do not (Smith, American Evangelicalism…, p. 72).
The second theory, developed by Laurence Iannaccone, uses economics to explain why strict religions thrive while lenient ones do not. He argues that stricter religions thrive because they screen out “free riders”– people who enjoy many of the benefits of the religious group, while contributing almost nothing to it. Therefore, strict religious groups enjoy high degrees of commitment, while lenient religious groups are full of free riders who want to take a lot more than they give, thus causing the religious group to decline (Smith, American Evangelicalism…, p. 72).

Another theory that attempts to explain religious vitality in America is the Competitive Marketing Theory of Roger Finke and Rodney Stark. This theory’s basic claim is that religious regulation and monopolies create lethargic religions, but that capable religions thrive in pluralistic and competitive environments (Smith, American Evangelicalism…, p. 73). According to this theory, capable religions thrive because their religious “entrepreneurs” capitalize on unregulated religious environments to aggressively market their religions to new “consumers”. Thus, religious “firms” (denominations and traditions) that possess superior organizational structures (denominational polities), sales representatives (evangelists and clergy), products (religious messages), and marketing (evangelistic) techniques flourish, while those that cannot successfully compete decline numerically (Smith, American Evangelicalism…, p. 73).

Finally, there is the “Subcultural Identity” Theory developed by Christian Smith himself. This theory states that religious fundamentalism has thrived in America because of its struggle with the pluralistic modernity (Smith, American Evangelicalism…, p. 88). This theory argues that evangelicalism “capitalizes on its culturally pluralistic environment to socially construct subcultural distinction, engagement, and tension between itself and relevant outgroups, and that enhances evangelicalism’s religious strength” (Smith, American Evangelicalism…, p. 153)


The impact of the Religious Right on American society is indisputable, however, even though some of the theories attempting to explain it are not. It is impossible to deny the fact that the Religious Right has influenced American politics tremendously since the 1950s. This was due to the Second Red Scare, and by the fundamentalists’ tendency to demonize Communism, much like their ancestors demonized the English army during the American Revolution.

In fact, this fear of Communism brought many leaders of the Religious Right to cooperate with Senator Joseph McCarthy, and his witch hunt.
Billy Graham, the great evangelist, was an ardent supporter of McCarthy. Graham stirred fears of communist sympathizers. He warned of “over 1,100 social sounding organizations that are communist or communist-operated in this country” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 34). In a 1953 sermon, he said, referring to McCarthy:
While nobody likes a watch dog, and for that reason many investigation committees are unpopular, I thank God for men who, in the face of public denouncement and ridicule, go loyally on in their work of exposing the pinks, the lavenders, and the reds who have sought refuge beneath the wings of the American eagle and from that vantage point, try in every subtle, undercover way to bring comfort, aid, and help to the greatest enemy we have ever known–Communism (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 35).

However, once McCarthy became even more intemperate, Graham started to back away from him. He still said that there was some Marxist thinking in American churches, as McCarthy had charged at one point, but he said that he did not know of any such cases personally. When he was asked about his opinion of McCarthy in 1954, he said that he had never met or spoken to McCarthy and that he has no opinion of him (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 38).

Another leader of the Religious Right who supported McCarthy was Billy James Hargis. He said that “Christian people had to be political as well as religious” and that they’re not “full Americans” if they are not concerned with politics (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 37). Hargis established the Christian Echoes Ministry, which later became the Christian Crusade. He also offered his services to the Senator from Wisconsin, and McCarthy publicly credited him with providing him with research and speech writing assistance (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 37). Even forty years later, Hargis thought favorably of McCarthy:
After I wrote the speech for him, exposing the World Council and the National Council of Churches, he invited me out to his home. He lived in a very humble house in Washington. He did not have anything that looked like riches. He was like my dad. He wasn’t a Harvard voice. He didn’t speak in the terms of Princeton. But he had convictions. And you know, when they put his body in the Rotunda, it drew the biggest crowd ever to see a body there, other than MacArthur, I think. So you can’t say he was hated by the majority of the people in the United States. He was a wonderful man (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 38).

Billy James Hargis was not the only leader of the Religious Right who worked directly with McCarthy. Carl McIntire, the arch-fundamentalist and leader of the ACCC-ICCC also offered his services to McCarthy, and worked closely with Hargis to provide McCarthy with material exposing communists in the World and National Councils of Churches, whom he believed to be the Whore of Babylon identified in the Bible (Martin, With God on Our Side…, pp. 36-37).


Senator McCarthy was not the only politician supported by Billy Graham. He supported General Eisenhower during the 1952 presidential campaign. Graham encouraged Eisenhower to enter the campaign, and when he did, and gained the Republican nomination, Graham visited him at the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver and presented him with a red Bible, which Eisenhower kept and read frequently throughout the campaign (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 32). Also, a few days before the November election, Graham revealed to the press, that a personal survey of nearly two hundred churchmen and religious editors from thirty states and twenty-two denominations indicated that seventy-seven percent favored Eisenhower for president, while only thirteen percent supported Adlai Stevenson (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 33).

Another President supported by Billy Graham was Richard Nixon. His relationship with Graham was much more intimate. Nixon and Graham were close friends, and this led Graham to support Nixon in his quest for power.
During the 1960 campaign, Graham did his best to allay Eisenhower’s misgivings about Nixon’s fitness to succeed him (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 48). He told Nixon to start attending church regularly to keep the “religiously minded people of America” behind him (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 48). In May 1960, Graham said: “This is a time of world tension. [It] is a time for a man of world stature. I don’t think it is a time to experiment with novices,” which was clearly an endorsement of Nixon (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 48).
As Nixon’s campaign went on, Billy Graham continued to give him advice, not always limiting himself to matters of faith.
He told Nixon that if Kennedy were nominated, he was certain to capture virtually all the Catholic vote. To counter that, the vice president would have to “concentrate on solidifying the Protestant vote”. Choosing a Catholic running mate, as some had apparently suggested, would only “divide the Protestants and make no inroads whatsoever in the Catholic vote.” It would be far better to choose a person widely respected in Protestant circles, “someone the Protestant church can rally behind enthusiastically” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 48)

Graham’s choice was Dr. Walter Judd, a former evangelical missionary, who was then serving in the House.
“With Dr. Judd,” he ventured, “I believe the two of you could present a picture to America that would put much of the South and border states in the Republican column and bring about a dedicated Protestant vote to counteract the Catholic vote.” Aware that this kind of specific political advice ran directly counter to his claim of nonpartisanship, Graham added, “I would appreciate you considering this letter in utter confidence. You would do me a favor by destroying it after reading it” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, pp. 48-49).

In addition to that, Graham urged Nixon to attempt to sway Martin Luther King to his side, feeling that the black leader would be a powerful influence. In addition, he asked the two million families on his mailing list to support Nixon (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 49). Finally, he asked Nixon to visit him in his Montreat, North Carolina, home, saying that it:
would certainly be a dramatic and publicized event that I believe might tip the scales in North Carolina and dramatize the religious issue throughout the nation, without mentioning it publicly. This is just a suggestion, and we would be delighted to cooperate in it if you think it has any merit (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 49).

After Nixon failed to become President in 1960, Graham did not give up on him, and supported him during the 1968 presidential campaign. At a “crusade” in Pittsburgh in September 1968, Graham invited Nixon to take a prominent seat in the VIP section, where the cameras could easily find him, and lauded him from the platform as “one of his most cherished friends” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 97).
When Nixon was elected President, his friendship with Graham continued. Nixon became the first President to sponsor a regular schedule of Sunday services in the White House, which he initiated on the first Sunday after his inauguration. The preacher was Billy Graham (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 98). Graham continued to help out his friend. In 1970, as another election was on the horizon, Graham invited the president to address a huge stadium audience during his Knoxville crusade, and then included the appearance in a nationally televised broadcast of the event, but deleting the vigorous protests from a segment of the audience(Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 145). In 1971, White House chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman wrote himself a memo:
Graham wants to be helpful next year…Point him to areas where do most good. He thinks there are real stirrings in religious directions, especially re young people. I call him and set up date. No other level– can’t have leak (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 145).

In response, Nixon gave draft exemptions to the staff of the Campus Crusade for Christ, and traveled to Graham’s hometown of Charlotte in 1971 to help celebrate Billy Graham Day. Even some of the Southern Baptists, who were ardent supporters of Billy Graham were worried that he was “too close to the powerful and too fond of the things of the world” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 145).
At first, Billy Graham tended to disregard the Watergate break-in. H e was confident that the President’s “moral and ethical principles would not allow him to do anything illegal like that” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 146). However, as the situation became clearer, and it was obvious that Nixon was involved, Graham said that he was surprised by him. “Those tapes revealed a man I never knew,” Graham admitted. “I never saw that side of him” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, pp. 146-147). Still, Graham did not abandon Richard Nixon, and they remained friends until Nixon’s death in 1994.

Billy Graham’s relationship with President Johnson seems modest in comparison to Graham’s long friendship with Nixon. He did not endorse Lyndon Johnson in the way he endorsed Nixon. He was, however, a frequent guest in the White House and the President’s Texas Hill country ranch (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 96). The advantages Johnson gained from being a friend of Billy Graham should not be underestimated, however.
If Billy Graham was the president’s friend, then millions of Americans would conclude that the president must be a good man, a decent man, a noble man, perhaps even a Christian man. And if he possessed those qualities, then his causes—his War on Poverty, his Civil Rights act, his effort to preserve freedom and democracy in Southeast Asia—must also be good, decent, noble, perhaps even Christian, and therefore precisely the causes Christian folk ought to support (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 96).

After the Watergate scandal, however, Billy Graham had learned his lesson. In 1975, in an interview to Newsweek, Graham announced that he was “opposed to organizing Christians into a political bloc” and that he would endorse no candidate in the 1976 election (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 153).

Other leaders of the Religious Right continued to support conservative candidates, before and after Watergate. Billy James Hargis and Carl McIntire, together since the times of McCarthy violently blasted JFK, calling him a socialist, and reminding that Khruschev himself said that “socialism is the first phase of communism” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 76). When Kennedy was assassinated, they claimed that it was because he was not sufficiently effective in carrying out the Kremlin’s assignment to convert America to communism (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 78).
Leaders of the Religious Right continued to endorse right-wing candidates, like Barry Goldwater, for as long as the movement had existed. However, some members had done even more. In 1975, an organization called Intercessors for America, which was associated with Bill Bright, had sent a letter to 120,000 clergymen, urging them to order materials that would teach them how to take over local precincts and elect only “godly” candidates (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 153).
Another candidate that received the backing of the Religious Right was Jimmy Carter. However, he alienated most of the religious community by giving an interview to Playboy magazine. Jerry Falwell summed up the reaction of the fundamentalist community when he said: “Like many others, I am quite disillusioned. Four months ago the majority of the people I knew were pro-Carter. Today that has totally reversed” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 158).

The organization that got the most fame, however, was Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority. On July 4, 1976, Jerry Falwell made a speech:
The idea that religion and politics don’t mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country…If [there is] any place in the world we need Christianity, it’s in Washington. And that’s why preachers long since need to get over that intimidation forced upon us by liberals, that if we mention anything about politics, we are degrading our ministry (Utter and Storey, The Religious Right:…, p. 3)

The Moral Majority was very active in the 1980 presidential race. It established chapters in 47 states, and began conducting voter registration drives and educational seminars for religious conservatives (Utter and Storey, The Religious Right:…, p. 10). It also opposed liberal Democrats, such as Senators George McGovern of South Dakota, Frank Church of Idaho, Alan Cranston of California, John Culver of Iowa, and Birch Bayh of Indiana (Utter and Storey, The Religious Right:…, p. 10). The Moral Majority also spread misinformation about President Carter. In a famous incident, Jerry Falwell said at a Moral Majority rally in Alaska, “I was at the White House not long ago and I asked the President, ‘Sir, why do you have homosexuals on your staff in the White House?’”, and claimed that Carter answered that he wanted to represent everyone, so he had to hire homosexuals. Later, it was printed in the Moral Majority Report. However, the conversation never occurred. When Falwell was confronted by reporters, he claimed that what he said was a “parable” and an “allegory” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 211). As evidence shows, this is not the only time when Jerry Falwell lied.
Although analysts proved that Reagan had won by a large enough margin that he would have won even if he didn’t have the votes of the Religious Right, the fact that their energetic support for his candidacy made other voters consider him seriously is clear (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 220).
Ronald Reagan did not take the Moral Majority seriously at first. He did not appoint a representative of the Moral Majority to a major administration post, and disregarded Falwell’s objections to the appointment of Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court (Utter and Storey, The Religious Right:…, p. 11). However, tried to soothe the Religious Right before the midterm elections by appointing C. Everett Koop, an evangelical anti-abortionist, as Surgeon General and by taking a stronger stand against abortion and favoring a Constitutional amendment allowing prayer in public schools (Utter and Storey, The Religious Right:…, p. 11).

However, there was a man who tried to break the separation of church and state even harder than Graham or Falwell. That man is the televangelist Pat Robertson, who attempted to capture the presidency in 1988.
He had very little chance. By 1987, a Gallup poll had showed that he was viewed in a negative light by 50% of Americans (Utter and Storey, The Religious Right:…, p. 14). In addition, other leaders of the Religious Right opposed Robertson. “Preach, influence, speak out,” Jerry Falwell recommended, but “don’t ever take an office, don’t ever ask for a favor. Be an outsider hammering on the door, but don’t get inside playing the game with them” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 278). Robertson met with ridicule from the press. Once at an editorial meeting of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, he was asked, “If the Russians launch a nuclear bomb, and one is falling on America, what would you do, start praying?” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 279). During the campaign, Robertson did very well in the caucus states, but fell far behind Bush in the primaries states, and was forced to withdraw from the race (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 290).
The 1988 Presidential campaign was not the only political involvement of Pat Robertson. In 1989, he started the Christian Coalition. Unlike the Moral Majority, the Christian Coalition was largely a grassroots movement, and focused on local, rather than national elections. By 1994, the Christian Coalition had more than 1,500,000 members (Utter and Storey, The Religious Right:…, p. 14). It calls upon its members to elect:
…God-fearing leaders who understand the principles of the Bible and how they relate to every day life in America;
leaders who understand that every life is precious whether born or unborn;
leaders who understand that it is the responsibility of the church and the local community to take care of the needy;
leaders who understand that marriage is a holy institution ordained by God. He defines it. It’s within His realm of authority. Marriage is the union between one man and one woman unrelated by blood. That was God’s idea. No person has the right to redefine what God has created.
We must select God-fearing leaders who understand that as a nation, under God, we acknowledge that our rights are given to us not by the generosity of the state but by the hand of God. It is the job of government not to dispense rights, but to administer those rights already given by God;
leaders who understand that we must always, and in every place, publicly declare our allegiance to Almighty God;
leaders who understand that our national Motto is not a figure of speech, or worse yet, an obscenity that must not be muttered in our schools or public institutions, but the very essence of the American Spirit: “In God We Trust.” (Banuchi, “One Nation Under God”).

The political views of the Christian Coalition are made clear in the following chart:
LIBERALISM CONSERVATISM
Basic Philosophy: Socialism Basic Philosophy: Liberty
Government Control Individual Control
Highest Authority: Man’s Law Highest Authority: God’s Law
Life is an evolutionary accident Life is a sacred gift from God
The government is parent of the people The government is servant of the people
Government controls people People control government
Centralized federal control Local community control
Fosters competition between groups and races Sees all as Americans, equal under the law
Always looking to increase size of government Believes big government leads to abuse and tyranny
Government needs more of your money to take care of you People need more of their own money to take care of themselves, their families and their communities.
Government can solve human problems People working together solve human problems
Family is whoever the government says is family including same-sex couples God defines family. Marriage is the union between one male and one female.
(Banuchi, “How Shall I Vote?”)

It is clear that the Christian Coalition favors conservatism over liberalism. It has been amazingly successful. In 1993, of the 95,000 members of school boards around the nation, 7,153 were conservative Christians (Utter and Storey, The Religious Right:…, p. 15). Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Billy Graham were not the only leaders of the Religious Right to call for Christians to be involved in politics. Take, for example, the following statement by Gary North:
Everyone wants to be in the “big time” politically. Everyone wants to run for governor. Let them. Meanwhile, we take over where today’s politicians think that nothing important is happening. We should get our initial experience in ruling on a local level. We must prepare ourselves for a long-term political battles. We start out as privates and corporals, not colonels and generals. We do it God’s way (Utter and Storey, The Religious Right:…, p. 100).

Other leaders of the Religious Right go even further than that.
Friends, we re in real trouble right now, and it is time to take a stand and tell the authorities: “We can not and will not obey you when it means to surrender the lordship of Christ.” Then we should be read to defend ourselves in court and go to jail if necessary for our convictions. After all, we would be in pretty good company since much of the New Testament was penned in prison! (Utter and Storey, The Religious Right:…, p. 99).

It is clear that the Religious Right feels very strongly about this and is ready to take action to make America a Christian nation.

Yet the direct involvement in politics is not the only way the Religious right influences the direction in which this nation is going. The bulk of the Religious Right’s power comes from its tremendous lobbying power and political activism. And, once again, the Christian Coalition is the spearhead of the Religious Right’s advance. It provides voting guides and Senatorial and House scorecards, and then urges its members to contact their representatives in Washington, and provides their contact information (“How to Use This Scorecard”). According to the Christian Coalition’s website:
Our hallmark work lies in voter education. Prior to the November election the Christian Coalition of America distributed a record 70 million voter guides throughout all 50 states. These non-partisan guides gave voters a clear understanding of where various federal candidates stood on the issues important to them. With this knowledge, millions of voters went to polls ready to make their voices heard.

Our efforts, however, do not stop with voter guides. We actively lobby Congress and the White House on numerous issues, hold grassroots training schools around the country, host events in Washington that draw thousands of pro-family supporters from around the nation and organize community activists regarding issues facing their local government (“About Us”).

However, the Christian Coalition of America is not the only organization that does this. Other organizations from the Religious Right that do this are the Family Research Council, the American Life League, the American Family Association, American Renewal, Concerned Women for America (CWA), the National Right to Life Committee, the Focus on the Family, and other organizations (People for the American Way, “Right Wing Organizations”). Some of these organizations have hundreds of thousands of members, and their yearly budgets are in the millions. For example, the Family Research Council has 455,000 members, and its revenue for the year 2000 was $10 million (People for the American Way, “Right Wing Organizations: Family Research Council”). The American Life League claims to have 300,000 members, and its year 2000 budget was $6.9 million (People for the American Way, “Right Wing Organizations: American Life League”).

However, the religious right’s involvement in politics is only one side of the coin. Their grassroots movement is just as powerful. And, once again, it is Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition that is leading the way. In 1994, it had more than a million members, today, however, it could have as little as 300,000 members (People for the American Way, “Right Wing Organizations: Christian Coalition”). Contributions also declined from $26.5 million in 1996 to $3 million in 2000 (People for the American Way, “Right Wing Organizations: Christian Coalition”). Other organizations mentioned above, are however increasing in numbers and power.
There is, however, another type of grassroots organization that is peculiar to the Religious Right. That is the Evangelical organization, an organization designed to spread the Gospel and convert the “unsaved” to the fundamentalists’ brand of Christianity. There is a particular class of these Evangelical organizations that target young people. The most prominent of these organizations is the Campus Crusade for Christ, started in 1951 by Bill Bright. Its goal is to convert college students to Christianity. The recruitment methods of this parachurch organization are similar to those of most cults. Every member is required to spend a certain amount of hours a week in one-on-one discussions with people, attempting to win them over to Christ. In addition, the CCC distributes a series of brochures and pamphlets which explain the Four Spiritual Laws of Bill Bright: 1) God loves you and created you to know him personally. 2) Man is sinful and separated from God, so we cannot know him personally or experience His love. 3) Jesus Christ is God’s only provision for man’s sin. Through him alone we can know God personally and experience God’s love. 4) We must individually receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord; then we can know God personally and experience his love (Campus Crusade for Christ, Inc. Would You Like to Know God Personally?, pp. 3-8. ).
Receiving Christ involves turning to God from self (repentance) and trusting Christ to come into our lives to forgive us of our sins and to make us what He wants us to be. Just to agree intellectually that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that he died on the cross for our sins is not enough. Nor is it enough to have an emotional experience, We receive Jesus Christ by faith, as an act of our will (Campus Crusade for Christ, Inc. Would You Like to Know God Personally?, p. 9).

Despite the fiascoes of the 60s and 70s, the Campus Crusade for Christ is extremely powerful. It has chapters in 156 colleges in New York State alone, including a chapter in every branch of CUNY and SUNY, as well as in colleges like Columbia, Vassar, Pace, NYU, Cornell, as well as all campuses of Long Island University, including the Brooklyn campus(Campus Crusade for Christ. “Beyond Campus”).
Another powerful evangelical organization is Evangelism Explosion International. This organization, based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, holds “clinics” at local churches, where ministers are taught how to spread the Gospel. EEI claims to have held a clinic in 212 nations of the world (Evangelism Explosion International, “Expand Our Vision, Lord!”), and that it is the most effective evangelical organization. The following chart illustrates that (the results are based on a survey conducted by Christianity Today).<snip fundie chart>

[fgalkin]

EE International also has a budget of over $4 million (Evangelism Explosion International, “Budget”).
In addition to conducting these “clinics”, EEI is also spreading the Gospel directly. Their claim is that to get into heaven, one must be perfect. But, since that is impossible, the love of Jesus is the only way for Man to get into heaven (Evangelism Explosion International, Do You Know For Sure That You Have Eternal Life?).
Most evangelical organizations, however, are nowhere near as big and powerful. Many of them operate on the local, rather than on the state, national, or international levels. The majority of people distributing leaflets in the subway and on street corners belong to those small missions. Most of them lack the resources to produce the colorful brochures of the larger organizations, and their pamphlets are of inferior quality. For instance, consider the following excerpt (boldface added).
What is most important to you in the world? You, of course! You are the most precious. Jesus Christ asks, “What will you be profited, if you gain this whole world and lose your soul? What will you give in exchange for your soul?” This idea of the prime value of an individual-life has shaped our American society. Now you know the real value of America. Sadly, we all have to die. Why? Because of sin. But here is the good news; we can be saved, the Savior (Christ, Messiah) has come. You may think you know yourself very well. Then, can you answer this?--- Who are you? Where are you from? Where are you going? What will the end of your life be like? Why do you live?---Where can you find the answer?

The Bible! The Bible says, “God created man in His image.”
Have you ever read the Bible, especially the New Testament? It’s not a religion. [It’s] a book that has shaped human history, the founding principles of our country, and our American culture. You have to read it…To discern the real creator from all man-made-religious-gods is not difficult. They preach religious freedom… (Mission for Jesus, Good News for Your Salvation)

Apart from the inept English of the author, the problem seems to be with the statement that the Bible, and thus Christianity, is not a religion. While that sounds absurd at first, there is nothing wrong with the statement from a fundamentalist’s point of view. Because of the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy, which is one of the cornerstones of Christian fundamentalism, to a fundamentalist it is a fact that God exists and Jesus is his son. In the CCC’s booklet has an illustration of a train pulling a caboose. The booklet claims that the diagram illustrates “the relationship among fact (God and His Word [the Bible]), faith (our trust in God and His Word), and feeling (the result of our faith and obedience) (Campus Crusade for Christ, Inc. Would You Like to Know God Personally?, p. 12). As you can see, it is saying the same thing. However, its message is much more likely to reach the prospective convert than the clumsy message of Mission for Jesus.
Another example of the poor quality of writing in most of the pamphlets distributed by members of the local evangelical organizations is the following excerpt, which is describing sin (original spelling and grammar kept)
THEN WHAT IS SIN?
It is not trusting the fact that Jesus Christ can only be able to save the world from sins as savior.
It is all Hell to worship to other idols like buddihsm, socerers, idolaters, except Jesus Christ(Revelation 21:8)
It is to commit adultery, being greedy with money, shall not respect parents and devilish thinking and vehavors.

Remember the fearful judgement of God is waiting for the men in the sins without turning out by himselves in repentance.
You must know that an everlasting judgement is ahead for you if you do not believe Jesus Christ. However you can find gracious life forever, if you accept Him as your savior.

It is the time you can choose the choice by yourself now. Wishing you the luck to choose right selection (Jesus Coming Soon!)

It is clear that anyone who reads this will “choose the choice by himselves now”, and will choose “right selection” and stop worshiping “buddihsm,” “socerers,” and doing other “devilish vehavors.”
This section of the Paper has demonstrated the wide range of recruitment techniques of the Religious Right, from the very effective to the outright ridiculous. And while these techniques are only as good as the people that are using them, they, in general, are quite effective and have contributed to the growth of the fundamentalist community.


The stance of the Religious Right on abortion is clear. “While people on one side of the issue stress a woman’s right to choose whether or not to give birth, people of the other side stress the right of the unborn child to be born,” says the Billy Graham Christian Worker’s Handbook (p. 15). Yet, surprisingly enough, that has not been always the case. Originally, the Religious Right had no official position on the issue, and it was only through the work of several dedicated pro-lifers that the larger evangelical community turned its sights on abortion. This Paper will describe the change in the position of the Religious Right on this issue, and will show how far some Religious Right pro-lifers will go for their cause.

In the United Stars, the history of the abortion struggle was a long, and often violent one. The first anti-abortion laws began appearing in the United States by the mid 19th century. By the early 1900s, abortion has been outlawed in the United States , which led to many illegal abortions. Most early feminists opposed it, claiming that by eliminating the inequality between the genders will eliminate the need for abortions (Lewis, “Abortion History”). Then, most feminists began defending safe and effective contraceptives as they became available.
By 1965, all fifty states have banned abortion. However, in 1973, the Supreme Court, in the case of Roe v. Wade, declared most existing state abortion laws unconstitutional. This decision ruled out any legislative interference in the first trimester of pregnancy and put limits on what restrictions could be passed on abortions in later stages of pregnancy (Lewis, “Abortion History”).
Surprisingly enough, the fundamentalist community took almost no notice of the issue until much later. Jerry Falwell, for example, did not preach a sermon on abortion until 1978, five years after the Supreme Court decision (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 193). In fact, many Protestants were for abortion because Catholics were opposed to it (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 193). However, due to the efforts of Harold O.J Brown and C. Everett Koop, a prominent pediatric surgeon who later became Surgeon General under the Reagan administration, this started to change. Initially, the conservative Christian community proved unresponsive to their efforts. “Many people,” said Brown, “would like to see abortion as a trivial sort of issue—one among many” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 194). However, Brown and Koop soon found themselves a powerful ally. Francis Schaeffer held the same views on abortion, and when the three men met, the result was a five-segment film and a companion book, both titled Whatever Happened to the Human Race? (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 194). The central theme of the film and the book was that abortion is both the cause and the result of the loss of appreciation for the sanctity of human life, and that widespread acceptance of abortion would eventually lead to widespread acceptance of infanticide and euthanasia (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 194). As the film started to circulate widely in evangelical circles, its impact was tremendous. It caused most evangelicals to develop a revulsion for abortion, but also caused them to feel a desire for social action (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 194). Thus, the Religious Right joined the abortion struggle.
Today, most evangelicals hold a pro-life position. Powerful organizations like the Family Research Council, which, in addition to holding a strong pro-life position, believes that American society was founded on Judeo-Christian principles (“FRC Mission Statement”) hold massive lobbying campaigns to ban abortion.
The FRC’s views on abortion are clear from this article, which appeared in the Washington Times on January 26, 2003. The article begins with the following paragraph
In the three decades since the U.S. Supreme Court hijacked the Constitution and legalized abortion in all stages of pregnancy, for any reason whatsoever, 42 million unborn babies have been slaughtered. Whatever one's position on the so-called "right to choose" is, this death toll is something to mourn, not celebrate. Even Bill Clinton said he wanted to keep abortion legal, safe and rare although he did nothing to make it so. At least Mr. Clinton paid lip service to the moral reservations so many Americans harbor about the availability of abortion-on-demand (Connor, “NARAL’s Godless Religion”).

And then proceeds to blast the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League for celebrating the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
Rather than marking the bloody anniversary of Roe with somber and sober observances suitable to the fact that every abortion stops a beating heart, NARAL and the Democratic hopefuls eager to pander to the pro-abortion extremists, whooped it up at a gala banquet, as though 42 million dead babies were a mere trifle. In the 30 years since Roe, abortion has been transmogrified from a lamentable evil to a positive good, something to be toasted and cheered….But it is literally true that, for NARAL and its pandering politicians, abortion has become a godless religion, in which free sex unimpeded by consequences is the chief sacrament (Connor, “NARAL’s Godless Religion”).

In addition to that, the FRC claims that the International Women’s Day, celebrated on March 8, is “nothing more than a radical feminist celebration of abortion” (Family Research Council. “'International Women's Day,' A Pro-Abortion Agenda In Disguise”). The position of the FRC is clear. It also has the means to carry out its agenda. With more than 450,000 members, it is one of the largest pro-life organizations in the country. The voices of its lobbyists are heeded in Washington, and even the largest newspapers are ready to publish their articles, (see Ken Connor’s article, which was published by the Washington Post).

Not all members of the Religious Right, however, choose to use peaceful means to achieve their goals. Randy C. Alcorn, the founder of the Eternal Perspective Ministries, writes in his book, Is Rescuing Right? (1990):
Beliefs have no credibility when unaccompanied by sacrifice. We must stubbornly refuse to remain silent in the face of the holocaust of God’s unborn children. Not all of us in the church will be called upon by our Lord to do the same thing in the same way. All of us can, however, be supportive of sacrificial intervention that gives credibility to our words. This must involve much more than peaceful civil disobedience at abortion clinics to save the lives of unborn children. But surely, it can include it (Utter and Storey, The Religious Right:…, p. 95).

Many members of the Religious Right have embraced those words and began doing “more than peaceful civil disobedience.” But nothing illustrates this more than the story of Randall Terry and his Operation Rescue.
Randall Terry was born in upstate New York and was reared in a nominally Christian home, but he didn’t take his religion until his mid-teens when exposure to students from a fundamentalist Bible Institute led him to a born-again conversion experience (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 320). At first, Terry thought that it was necessary to spread the gospel, not become involved in controversial social issues. However, when he was a junior in a Bible college, he had watched the film Whatever Happened to the Human Race?, and began to believe that God chose him to fight abortion (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 321).
1987, Randall Terry founded Operation Rescue (OR), which was based in Binghamton, NY. Its premise was simple: “Babies are being murdered. We have a duty to save them” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 321). In a typical “rescue,” usually carried out against a well-known abortion clinic, demonstrators divided themselves into three groups. The first group consisted of the actual “rescuers,” who tried to limit access to the clinic by blocking driveways and doors. The second group of “sidewalk counselors” tried to dissuade women from having an abortion. Finally, the third group prayed, sang, and quoted Scripture to support their colleagues and bear witness to women seeking abortions (Martin, With God on Our Side…, pp. 321-322)
Operation Rescue had support from most of the fundamentalist community. Jerry Falwell compared Terry to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., intending it as a compliment, and had Terry as a guest on their programs. Terry also received endorsements from Pat Robertson. D. James Kennedy, and New York Catholic prelate John Cardinal O’Connor (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 322).
The most important campaign of Operation was the “Summer of Mercy,” which the media called the “War in Wichita.” OR targeted Wichita, Kansas for a week-long siege against abortion clinics (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 322). The siege, however, lasted forty-six days. OR members chained themselves to clinic doors, blocking cars trying to enter clinic grounds, harassing abortion doctors, and singing:
Be a hero, save a whale;
Save a baby, go to jail.
Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on.
(Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 323)

The campaign gained nationwide attention as hundreds of protesters were arrested, and thrown in jail. The people of Wichita, who grew tired of the protesters, held rallies of their own, chanting: “Born-again bigots, go away! Racist, sexist, anti-gay!” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 323). Finally, the War in Wichita ended with a huge rally at which Pat Robertson gave a stirring speech about the moral imperative to rescue the innocent who are being led to slaughter (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 324).
Randall Terry’s fight against abortion did not end with the end of the War in Wichita, however. In 1992, Terry tried to embarrass President Clinton by attempting to hand him a fetus during the Democratic National Convention in New York. Later, he distributed materials to 27,000 pastors asseritng that “to vote for Bill Clinton is to sin against God” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, pp. 324-325).
However, as time passed, Terry started to be more and more militant, and moderate pro-lifers began to distance themselves from Operation Rescue. In January 1993, Operation Rescue began holding twelve-week training sessions which they called the Institute of Mobilized Prophetic Activated Christian Training (IMPACT). In addition to that, Terry began using increasingly inflammatory rhetoric. Terry called the pro-choice Supreme Court justices “enemies of Christ” and had compared them to Hitler and Stalin. At an IMPACT training session, he said, “Intolerance is a beautiful thing. We’re going to make [abortionists’] lives a living hell” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 355).
Then, on March 10, 1993, Michael Griffin, who had participated in several OR rallies assassinated Dr. David Gunn outside the Pensacola clinic where Gunn performed abortions. He was sentenced to life imprisonment(Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 355). Terry, however, became even more violent. At a July rally in Denver, he urged Christians to become “intolerant zealots [regarding] baby killers, sodomites, condom-pushers and that pluralism nonsense.” Two weeks, he told an Indiana congregation, “I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 355). Another OR activist went even further. “It isn’t always wrong to kill,” he said. “Violence doesn’t always beget violence. Sometimes it solves violence” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 356).
While most Religious Right leaders have distanced themselves from Randall Terry and Operation Rescue, it is clear that most of them believe that abortion is murder, and must be stopped.


When protesters in Wichita, Kansas chanted “Born-again bigots, go away! Racist, sexist, anti-gay!” they were correct in many respects. The Religious Right has a long history of ignoring equal rights for minorities, from opposing Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement, to opposing the ERA and equal rights for homosexuals. This Paper will describe this history and the current sentiment of the Religious Right.

Most of the leaders of the Religious Right were opposed to the civil rights movement. There is nothing surprising about that, considering that most of the Religious Right’s support comes from white Southerners. Still, the bigotry and outright racism of some fundamentalist ministers is staggering.

Jerry Falwell, the leader of the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia was opposed to integration. In 1958, he preached a sermon titled “Segregation and Integration: Which?,” in which he asserted that integration is not only wrong, but will lead to the destruction of the white race (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 57).
Later, as racial tension was increasing in the South, Jerry Falwell attacked the civil rights movement. He resented feeling “bullied and attacked by white Northern demonstrators” who “demand we follow their dictates.” He also resented Martin Luther King, and distributed anti-King literature, which was supplied to him by J. Edgar Hoover (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 69). Finally, his biggest attack on the civil rights movement came in his March 1965 sermon, “Ministers and Marches”, in which he questioned “the sincerity and nonviolent intentions of some civil rights leaders, such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mr. James Farmer, and others, who are known to have left-wing associations. It is very obvious that the Communists, as they do in all parts of the world, are taking advantage of a tense situation in our land, and are exploiting every incident to bring about violence and bloodshed” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 69). Then, he asserted that preachers should spread the gospel, and it is wrong for them to “begin doing anything else—including the fighting of communism or participating in the civil rights reform…Preachers are not called to be politicians, but to be soul winners” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 70). Later, however, he repudiated that sermon, even calling it a “false prophecy,” and said that he meant that “pastors should not be involved politically” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 70). An interesting statement from a man who started the Moral Majority to force the Reagan administration to carry out his agenda.
So, what was Jerry Falwell’s opinion on segregation? He tells this story:
Within a year’s time from preaching [the “Segregation”] sermon, I was coming to different conclusions, until I finally told the congregation, “I’ve been wrong on that.” That wasn’t a popular thing to say. But the real test came—it was probably 1960 or ‘61—when a black family came forward to join our church and wanted to be baptized. I said. “All right, I’ll baptize you,” and I did. But I told them that night, as we were about to go down in the water, I said, “Neither one of us may come up out of the water, so I hope you’re right with the Lord. I am.” And I baptized them. We lost a couple of families over that, but just that quickly it was all over. And as far as I know, we became the first church in this town to aggressively begin ministering to everyone (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 58).

This is a truly inspiring story. It gives Falwell the appearance of a progressive minister, who was eager to overstep the boundaries of race, and spread the gospel to everyone. There is, however, one problem with this story: it is false. Thomas Road Baptist Church remained segregated until 1968, and the first baptism of an African-American did not occur until 1971, ten years after the date given in the story (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 58). In fact, in 1966 Falwell created the Lynchburg Christian Academy, a whites-only private school (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 70). But then, again, this is not the first time Falwell had lied, so it shouldn’t be surprise to anyone.
While Jerry Falwell proved to be a liar and a hypocrite, others proved to be much more than that. Billy James Hargis declared that segregation is “one of Nature’s universal laws. No intermingling or crossbreeding with animals of widely different characteristics takes place except under abnormal or artificial conditions. It is my conviction that God ordained segregation” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 78). When accused of being a racist, Hargis rejected the label, and insisted that he knew it was “wrong to deprive the Negroes of their constitutional rights”, and then proceeded to call Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “a stinking racial agitator” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, pp. 78-79). Carl McIntire and the ACCC also stipulated that “Segregation within the church on racial, linguistic, and national lines is not unchristian nor contrary to the specific commands of the Bible…Segregation or apartheid is not sin per se…The love which Christians have for one another does not in itself demand an integrated church” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 79). As for love between Christians and non-Christians, both Hargis and McIntire repudiated the notion of “the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man” as unbiblical, and McIntire explicitly declared that the golden rule to be irrelevant to civil rights legislation (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 79).

Equal rights for women was another bitter issue for the Religious Right. There, most of the opposition came from fundamentalist women. Phyllis Schlafly began opposing the Equal Rights Amendment in 1972, and founded the Eagle Forum in 1975. Her arguments for not ratifying the ERA were that it is degrading to women. The Eagle Forum was also opposed to it because
ERA would put "gay rights" into the U.S. Constitution, because the word in the Amendment is "sex" not women. Eminent authorities have stated that ERA would legalize the granting of marriage licenses to homosexuals and generally implement the "gay rights" and lesbian agenda. These authorities include the Yale Law Journal, the leading textbook on sex discrimination used in U.S. law schools, Harvard Law Professor Paul Freund, and Senator Sam J. Ervin, Jr. Other lawyers have disputed this effect, but no one can guarantee that the courts would not define the word "sex" to include "orientation" just as they have defined "sex" 'to include pregnancy (The Phyllis Schlafly Report, “A Short History of E.R.A.”).

Another group opposing the ERA was Beverly LaHaye’s Concerned Women for America. Their list of negative effects of State ERAs includes the fact that “States have to provide child care in order to allow women to work outside the home. The role of homemaker is denounced, while financially lucrative positions are favored for women” (CWA, “‘Equal Rights’ or Gender Reconstruction?”). While this might be bad for Southern states, it is highly doubtful that most women today dream of a career of a housewife, which is what the CWA is supporting.
And, of course, Jerry Falwell had something to say about the issue as well. He declared:
Of course, Christians believe in equal rights. As a matter of fact, Christians believe in superior rights for their women. We believe in opening the door for our women, helping them with their coats, providing them with their living, and protecting them from their enemies. We are against the Equal Rights Amendment because we believe it degrades womanhood, and may one day cause our women to use unisex toilets and fight in the trenches on the battlefield, where men belong. Yes, we believe in superior rights for our women (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 163).

Since it has already been established that any statement by Jerry Falwell should not be taken at face value, this Paper will attempt to uncover the true meaning of Falwell’s words. Falwell spoke of “superior rights for Christian women.” What did he mean? The Bible says: “Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything” (Ephesians 5:24), and “As in all the congregations of the saints, women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church” (I Corinthians 14:33-35), and “A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent” (1 Timothy 2:11-12), and “But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety” (1 Timothy 2:15). Are those the superior rights Jerry Falwell spoke of? Since Falwell holds the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy to be true, then yes, they are. And, more importantly, the CWA’s concern about women not becoming housewives because of the ERA now seems make sense. And, since women’s involvement in politics and in business, which would put them in a position of authority over men, would be a violation of the inerrant Bible, the fundamentalists , who opposed the suffrage movement a generation before, are doing everything possible to stop it.

Finally, there is the very controversial question of homosexual rights. This became a very big issue during the Reagan administration, as the AIDS epidemic began, although the fundamentalists were certainly opposed to homosexuals even before that(an example of that would be Jerry Falwell’s comment about homosexuals being on the staff of President Carter). To understand why the Religious Right is so vehemently opposed to homosexuality, one must remember the fact that in their eyes it is a terrible sin that is punishable by death: “'If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads” (Leviticus 20:13). Knowing this, it easy to understand the reasons behind some of the comments made by leaders of the Religious Right.
In 1985, Jerry Falwell called AIDS “the wrath of God upon homosexuals” and said that quarantining people with AIDS is no more unreasonable than quarantining cows with brucellosis, but acknowledged that such a measure is not likely to be taken because “homosexuals constitute a potent voting bloc and cows do not” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 243). Even today, Falwell will not change his views on homosexuality. A press release by the Jerry Falwell Ministries said that:
…our position HAS NOT and WILL NOT change! We believe, as is stated in God's Word, that homosexuality is a sin…How do we know homosexuality is a sin? In Genesis 19:1-28, there is the account of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah because of the sin of homosexuality. Verses 4 and 5 describe how the men of the city desired that Lot send his two guests out to them that they might "know" them (the word "know" meaning "to have sexual relations with"). God destroyed the two cities because of the wickedness of homosexuality.

Many homosexuals, however, defend their lifestyle by claiming that God "made them that way." To suggest that homosexuality is a physical condition caused by biological facts rather than an emotional and mental condition is highly blasphemous. The Bible tells us that the cause of homosexuality is sin. A person is not born a homosexual; he becomes one according to his sinful will (“What We Believe: JFM’s Definitive Stance on Homosexuality”).

In addition to that, Falwell had this to say on the September 11 tragedy:
I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen (“Falwell Apologizes to Gays, Feminists, Lesbians”).

This statement was made on Pat Robertson’s The 700 Club, and the founder of the Christian Coalition wholeheartedly supported it. Although Falwell apologized for it, it is an illustration of the fundamentalists’ view on the 9/11 attacks, and that homosexuals, among other “godless” people are to blame.
The statement that homosexuality is a matter of choice is common in fundamentalist circles. Almost the same thing has been said by almost every fundamentalist minister. Reverend Banuchi, for example, thinks that
Homosexuality is neither normal, nor healthy –It is an unhealthy addiction.
The average male homosexual has over 100 partners in his lifetime. The average lifespan is 42 years. That’s a full 35 years off the natural lifespan of 77 years. We make a big stink about cigarette companies because their product takes from 1-2 years off the average lifespan, yet we give no warnings about homosexuality, and in fact, our present public policy encourages it. If we continue down this road our children will pay the price.
The compassionate thing to do is to say no to a destructive lifestyle, and offer help for those who want to live healthy normal lives. I would offer the same help to a brother who wanted to marry his sister, or a son who wanted to marry his Mother. Love is not the sole determining factor.
We recognize that this is the basis of a healthy society and anything other serves to unravel the fabric of orderly culture (“Same-Sex Marriage—A Threat to the Church and the American Way of Life”)

Of course with such abnormal hatred of homosexuals by the Religious Right, there are bound to be extremists. Reverend Fred Phelps, of the Westboro Baptist Church is proud of accomplishments in combating against gay rights:
WBC engages in daily peaceful sidewalk demonstrations opposing the homosexual lifestyle of soul-damning, nation-destroying filth. We display large, colorful signs containing Bible words and sentiments, including: GOD HATES FAGS, FAGS HATE GOD, AIDS CURES FAGS, THANK GOD FOR AIDS, FAGS BURN IN HELL, NO NOT MOCKED, FAGS ARE NATURE FREAKS, GOD GAVE FAGS UP, NO SPECIAL LAWS FOR FAGS, etc.
Perceiving the modern militant homosexual movement to pose a clear and present danger to the survival of America, exposing our nation to the wrath of God as in 1898 B.C. at Sodom and Gomorrah, WBC has conducted some 20,000 such demonstrations during the last nine years at homosexual parades and other events (including funerals of impenitent sodomites, like Matthew Shepard). WBC teams have picketed major fag parades in San Francisco, New York, Washington D.C., Miami, San Diego, Dallas, Orlando, Kansas City, etc. The unique picketing ministry of Westboro Baptist Church has received national attention, and WBC believes this gospel message to be America's last hope (www.godhatesfags.com).

Phelps is an ultraconservative preacher who pickets funerals of homosexuals and is convinced that America is doomed because of its immorality. He had this to say about 9/11:
How can a person look at the pile of rubble that once was not one, but TWO 100+ story buildings and not see the Hand of God? The same day that God struck this nation with the greatest act of terrorism ever committed on American soil, America was busy spitting in the face of God by appointing a militant, out of the closet fag to be the Ambassador to Romania, with his lover standing next to him on the podium as though they were man and wife. The only mystery to this event is why God refrained from turning the whole country into a giant pile of burning, twisted steel and concrete. Nineveh repented at the preaching of Jonah, and was spared, America defies God even while He punishes her. America is doomed (www.godhatesamerica.com)

It is also interesting the Westboro Baptist Church consists only of Phelps’s children and grandchildren (Phelps has 13 children and 52 grandchildren) (“Brief Bio of Pastor Fred Phelps”). While it is clear that Phelps is an extremist, who, at one point called Jerry Falwell, Billy Graham, and other leaders of the Religious Right “false prophets” and said that they will burn in hell, many fundamentalists share his opinions on homosexuals.
Thus, we can congratulate the good residents of Wichita, Kansas for their knowledge of the Religious Right and its policies of intolerance towards others. Unfortunately, as this Paper has shown, the “born-again bigots” are not going to go away any time soon.


Abraham Lincoln once said, “The philosophy of the classroom in one generation is the philosophy of government in the next” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 92). The Religious Right has taken this to heart, and this is why they have led a massive assault on the public school system, trying to make the classroom their podium, from which they can indoctrinate the children of America with their beliefs, their morality, and with the “science” that the universe was created in six days.

Perhaps the clearest attempt by the Religious Right to push its beliefs on others was the teaching of the Bible in schools. While this was the standard practice in the 19th century, it is unacceptable now, since America is much more diverse now than it was in the 1800s.
The history of Bible study in public schools has begun a long time ago. The first case dealing with this issue dates back to 1872, when the Ohio State Supreme Court had decided that the Cincinnati Board of Education had the right to forbid the teaching of the Bible in the city’s public schools (Sherrow, Separation of Church and State, p. 42). The case arose when parents from different faiths protested the religious reading in schools.
In 1910, the Illinois Supreme Court considered another Bible reading case. In that case, the Catholic parents protested the reading of the Protestant Bible during the school day. Once again, the Court banned the reading of the Bible (Sherrow, Separation of Church and State, p. 43).
By 1960, eleven states had declared Bible reading unconstitutional, five states had laws that ordered the Bible to be read to all students, seven states required that it be read, but permitted students to be excused from the reading, and the other states either let the school districts make the decision, or did not include any provision for Bible reading in their laws (Sherrow, Separation of Church and State, pp. 43-44).
Finally, in 1963, a case involving Bible reading in school reached the US Supreme Court. This case, Abington School District v. Schempp, had arisen in Pennsylvania, when Unitarian parents Edward and Sydney Schempp had protested a state law requiring the Bible to be read daily in public schools (Sherrow, Separation of Church and State, p. 44). They argued that this conflicted with their specific religious beliefs. The school board argued that the Bible contained important moral lessons, and that the students could be excused from reading the Bible, if they brought a written excuse from a parent or guardian (Sherrow, Separation of Church and State, p. 44). The Court struck down the Pennsylvania law, ruling that the Bible is a religious book, with a devotional character, so that reading it in school is a religious exercise, and thus, unconstitutional.
An interesting issue that must be pointed out, however, is the argument that the Bible contains important moral lessons. Not all of the Bible is “family-friendly,” especially many parts of the Old Testament. For example, “If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death-the girl because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man's wife. You must purge the evil from among you” (Deuteronomy 22: 23-24). If a rape victim does not scream loud enough, she is to be stoned to death. Not a lesson you would want to teach in elementary school. “Judah got a wife for Er, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. But Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the LORD put him to death. Then Judah said to Onan, "Lie with your brother's wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to produce offspring for your brother." But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his; so whenever he lay with his brother's wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from producing offspring for his brother. What he did was wicked in the LORD's sight; so he put him to death also” (Genesis 38:6-10). A man is killed by God because he refuses to impregnate his dead brother’s wife. Or, “When Israel had finished killing all the men of Ai in the fields and in the desert where they had chased them, and when every one of them had been put to the sword, all the Israelites returned to Ai and killed those who were in it. Twelve thousand men and women fell that day-all the people of Ai. For Joshua did not draw back the hand that held out his javelin until he had destroyed all who lived in Ai. But Israel did carry off for themselves the livestock and plunder of this city, as the LORD had instructed Joshua” (Joshua 8:24-27). An entire town was leveled and its inhabitants were massacred, all because God told them to do it. Once again, is this something to be taught in school? However, the Religious Right believes the Bible to be correct in everything, and thus try to impose teaching all parts of it in school.

Another issue that is even more controversial is the issue of school prayer. The first Supreme Court case that put this to the test, was the case of Engel v. Vitale, which had reached it in 1962. In this case, the New York State Board of Regents had written a brief prayer, which it regarded as denominational, and suggested that it was used in schools: “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers, and our country” (Sherrow, Separation of Church and State, p. 49). Since the prayer was created by the Regents Board, the Supreme Court has decided that it violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment. This decision only made state-sponsored prayer unconstitutional, but the Religious Right treated the event as if all religion in the United States was banned. One church even posted a sign saying “Congratulations, Khruschev” (Sherrow, Separation of Church and State, p. 50).
Another case that involved school prayer was Wallace v. Jaffree (1985). In this case, an Alabama resident complained that teachers in his children’s elementary school led classrooms in prayer. The federal court struck down this law, but Alabama appealed to the Supreme Court defending a law that allowed silent prayer (Sherrow, Separation of Church and State, p. 51). Once again, the Supreme Court struck this law down, and once again, the Religious Right was outraged.
It is required to point out, however, that voluntary prayer has not been deemed unconstitutional. It is merely the officially sponsored prayer that is found to violate the separation of church and state. The opinion of the Religious Right on school prayer is very clear, however.
Supporters of prayer in school seek to restore traditional values. They call for a constitutional amendment to reaffirm and reestablish the original intent of the religious freedom clause of the First Amendment, that which has been stolen, twisted, and used against them. The issue, they insist is the guaranteed preservation of religious liberty (Utter and Storey, The Religious Right…, p. 101).

An amendment that looks very much like this:
Section 1. Neither the United States nor any State shall abridge the freedom of any person or any group, including students in public schools, to engage in prayer or other religious expression in circumstances in which expression of a nonreligious character would be permitted; nor deny benefits to or otherwise discriminate against any person or group on account of the religious character of their speech, ideas, motivations or identity.

Section 2. Nothing in the Constitution shall be construed to forbid the United States or any State to give public or ceremonial acknowledgement to the religious heritage, beliefs, or traditions of its people.

Section 3. The exercise, by the people, of any freedoms under the First Amendment or under this Amendment shall not constitute an establishment of religion liberty (Utter and Storey, The Religious Right…, p. 102).

The reasons for that are interesting. Some members of the Religious Right claim that the reason for allowing school prayer is that it gives guidance to underprivileged minorities, and turns them away from things like drugs and crime (Goldberg, “Banning School Prayer Is Religious Discrimination”, Religion In America: Opposing Viewpoints, pp. 121-123). While it is unclear what kind of “guidance” can be provided by a book that is filled with accounts of rape, incest, murder, and genocide, it is obvious that the Religious Right would use the hardships inner-city minority kids are facing today to gain new converts.


Finally, there is no issue more controversial than the teaching of evolution in schools. The Scopes Trial was the first major engagement of the fundamentalists, and the Religious Right tried to outlaw the teaching of evolution ever since.

[fgalkin]

The scientist’s definition of evolution is very different from that of a lay person. “Evolution is a process that results in heritable changes in a population spread over many generations” (Moran, “What is Evolution?”). Or, an even more specific definition: “Evolution can be precisely defined as any change in the frequency of alleles within a gene pool from one generation to the next” (Moran, “What is Evolution?”).
While there is a scientific definition for evolution, there is no such thing for creationism. There is even no single type of creationism. However, the definition of creationism that most creationists came to agree on is this:
Creation denotes abrupt appearance of basic categories of life without any basic type having descended from some other category, and with no extensive change once the category appears. Lack of change is known as stasis. Fish have always been fish, ever since they first appeared, and dogs have always been dogs. Fish and dogs and all else may have varied a little, but did not come from a common ancestor (Morris, “What You May Not Know About Evolution”).

The cause of this “abrupt appearance” can be either God, or a mysterious “Intelligent Designer,” which is nothing more than a “scientific” term for “God.”
Now that a working definition for creationism has been established, this Paper will proceed to the different types of creationism.
The first type of creationism is Flat Earth creationism. The followers of this type of creationism believe that the earth is flat and is covered by a solid dome or firmament. Waters above the firmament were the source of Noah's flood. This belief is based on a literal reading of the Bible, such as references to the “Four Corners of the earth” and the “circle of the earth” (Isaak, “What is Creationism?”). The only organization that holds this view is the International Flat Earth Society, which is based in Lancaster, CA, and was run by Charles Johnson up until his death in 2001. It has published 100 “proofs” that the Earth is flat. An example of their “proof” can be examined below:
If the Earth were a globe, there certainly would be -- if we could imagine the thing, to be peopled all around-'antipodes:' 'people who,' says the dictionary, 'living exactly on the opposite side of the globe to ourselves, having their fee [sic] opposite to ours' - people who are HANGING DOWN, HEAD DOWNWARDS while we are standing head up? But since the theory allows to travel to those parts of the earth where the people are said to hand head downward, and still to fancy ourselves to be heads upwards, and our friends whom we have left behind us to be heads downwards, it follows that the WHOLE THING IS A MYTH - A DREAM - A DELUSION - and a snare, and, instead of there being any evidence at all in this direction to substantiate this popular theory, it is plain proof that the Earth is Not A Globe (Day, “The International Flat Earth Society”).

The Flat Earth Society also distributes The Flat Earth News. An excerpt has made it online, and is preserved by talkorigins.org. This is from a September 1988 issue (entered verbatim, word for word, character for character):
IN USA today, as in Russia in '20s and NAZI Germany in '40s full scale campaign to create USA ALSO A BEAST NATION... no God... no right no wrong no up no down 2 added to 2 is whatever scientists say it is... Adults today either jailed or shot down... at own homes for even teaching their own children... GOD EXISTS and Right and Wrong exists (State of Utah)... bells have been tolling for so long... for the helpless pitiful innocent 'animals' as they are tortured to death by priests of the State Religion 'GREASE BALL SCIENCE'... now ... 1988 ... no use, too late... to send to see for whom the bell tolls... THE BELL TOLLS FOR THEE!" (Day, “The International Flat Earth Society”)

Unfortunately, the Flat Earth Society undoubtedly considers the Internet a creation of the “evil state religion called Science,” and has no website of its own, and all information about it has to come from other sources. In addition, after the death of Charles Johnson who used to run the society, it seems to have ceased to operate. If that is the case, then the extinction of the flat-earther kind can be announced.
Another type of creationism, is Geocentrist Creationism. As evident from the name, the followers of this type of creationism reject the notion that the Sun is the center of the Solar System, or that the Earth moves. While this type of creationism is not very prominent, one Geocentrist, Tom Willis was instrumental in revising the Kansas elementary school curriculum to remove references to evolution, earth history, and science methodology (Isaak, “What is Creationism?”).
Another type of creationism is Young-Earth Creationism. This is the most influential type of creationism, and this view is held by the majority of the fundamentalist community. Young Earth Creationists (YEC) claim a literal interpretation of the Bible as a basis for their beliefs. They believe that the earth is 6000 to 10,000 years old, that all life was created in six literal days, that death and decay came as a result of Adam & Eve's Fall, and that geology must be interpreted in terms of Noah's Flood. However, they accept a spherical earth and heliocentric solar system (Isaak, “What is Creationism?”). YEC was defined by Henry Morris. In 1963, he and John C Whitcomb published The Genesis Flood, a book that outlined a scientific rationale for Young Earth Creationism. As the title suggests, the authors accept Genesis literally, including not just the special, separate creation of humans and all other species, but the historicity of Noah's Flood. Although efforts to make a literal interpretation of the Bible compatible with science, especially geology, occurred throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, The Genesis Flood was the first significant twentieth-century effort (Scott, “Antievolutionism and Creationism in the United States”).
There are other types of creationists as well. Old-Earth Creationists accept the evidence for an ancient earth but still believe that life was specially created by God, and they still base their beliefs on the Bible (Isaak, “What is Creationism?”).
Gap Creationists say that there was a long temporal gap between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2, with God recreating the world in 6 days after the gap. This allows both an ancient earth and a Biblical special creation (Isaak, “What is Creationism?”).
Day-age creationists interpret each day of creation as a long period of time, even thousands or millions of years. They see a parallel between the order of events presented in Genesis 1 and the order accepted by mainstream science. Day-Age Creationism was more popular than Gap Creationism in the 19th and early 20th centuries (Isaak, “What is Creationism?”).
Progressive Creationism is the most common Old-Earth Creationism view today. It accepts most of modern physical science, even viewing the Big Bang as evidence of the creative power of God, but rejects much of modern biology. Progressive Creationists generally believe that God created "kinds" of organisms sequentially, in the order seen in the fossil record, but say that the newer kinds are specially created, not genetically related to older kinds (Isaak, “What is Creationism?”).
Finally, there is the Intelligent Design theory. It is used today as an umbrella anti-evolution position under which creationists of all flavors may unite in an attack on scientific methodology in general. A common tenet of the ID theory is that all beliefs about evolution equate to philosophical materialism (Isaak, “What is Creationism?”).

As anyone can see, there is a multitude of types of creationism, however all of them are based on the Bible, and, thus are not science. There have been numerous attempts by the Religious Right to prove that the Bible is a reliable document, but all of them have filed. For example, take the proof given by Josh McDowell, who attempted to prove that Jesus is the Son of God by proving that the Bible is the accurate Word of God.
The bibliographical test is an examination of the textual transmission by which documents reach us. In other words, not having the original documents, how reliable are the copies we have in regard to the number of manuscripts (MSS) and the time interval between the original and extant copy?
We cam appreciate the tremendous wealth of manuscript authority of the New Testament by comparing it with textual material from notable ancient sources….Aristotle wrote his poetics around 343 B.C., yet the earliest copy we have is dated AD 1100, nearly a 1,400 year gap, and only five MSS are in existence.
Caesar composed his history of the Gallic Wars between 58 and 50 B.C. and its manuscript authority rests on nine or ten copies dating 1,000 years after his death.
When it comes to manuscript authority of the New Testament, the abundance of material is almost embarrassing in contrast…Over 20,000 copies of New Testament manuscripts are in existence today (McDowell, More Than A Carpenter, pp. 47-48).

So far, he has proven only that the New Testament is accurate, not that it is the Word of God. McDowell, then cites “two friends of Apostle John” as confirmation that John’s account is true, Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, who wrote his confirmation in A.D 130, and Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons (AD. 180) (McDowell, More Than A Carpenter, p. 55). However, it is absurd to cite two bishops as evidence of the Bible’s credibility, since the fact that they are Christians automatically implies that they believe that it is true. As for the numerous accounts of the life of Jesus, it has been established historically that Jesus was a real person (Legon, “Scholars: Oldest Evidence of Jesus?”). However, any independent sources have yet to confirm Jesus’ resurrection.
In addition, most of the creationist arguments consist of proving evolution to be false, assuming that creationism is the only possible alternative. This is an example of the False Dilemma logical fallacy, which states that “A limited number of options (usually two) is given, while in reality there are more options. A false dilemma is an illegitimate use of the "or" operator” (www.datanation.com). This is an example of the False Dilemma fallacy because there are other theories besides creationism and evolution, such as the theory that humans were created by space aliens, which is held by the Raelians.
While there are not too many organizations that are dedicated to evolution, there is a vast amount of creationist organizations. The most prominent of these organizations is the Institute for Creation Research (ICR). It was founded by Henry Morris and others in the early 1970s to promote scholarship in YEC science - especially Flood Geology - and to train students. It remains the flagship creationist institution to which all other YEC organizations look. It has a large publishing arm called Masterbooks, a graduate school offering masters degrees in science and science education, and a public museum. Most other YEC organizations sell and otherwise distribute ICR books, pamphlets, filmstrips, videos, movies and other materials through their newsletters, and the movement leans heavily on Morris' writings and perspectives. The ICR also organized Back to Genesis revivals sponsored by local churches, during which ICR faculty lecture for one to three days, promoting both the theology and the science of creation science. Thousands of people attend these sessions, which are held at least once a month. Other outreach activities include radio programs broadcast on several Christian radio networks, and occasional tours to the Grand Canyon and other sites (Scott, “Antievolutionism and Creationism in the United States”). Very little actual research is performed by ICR faculty, however. Their publications are almost entirely on Christian apologetics. In a review of the ICR graduate school, a visiting committee of scientists concluded that "no member of the resident faculty of the ICR has continued an active and published research program since arrival at the ICR. The Institute for Creation Research can therefore not be considered to be a scientific institution" (Scott, “Antievolutionism and Creationism in the United States”).
Other YEC organizations include the Bible Science Association, the Answers in Genesis ministry, which was started by the ex-ICR employee Ken Ham, and the Creation Science Evangelism Ministry, which was started and is run by Dr. Kent Hovind, who has earned himself the title “Arch Idiot” in evolutionist circles due to his aggressiveness towards evolution, and due to the fact that he uses evidence that has been contradicted by other creationist organizations, such as the ICR, and the Answers in Genesis ministry.
Kent Hovind is one of the most active creationists. He regularly travels around the country, debating evolutionists at various universities. He is famous, however for making the following offer, which is published on his homepage (www.drdino.com)
I have a standing offer of $250,000 to anyone who can give any empirical evidence (scientific proof) for evolution.* My $250,000 offer demonstrates that the hypopaper of evolution is nothing more than a religious belief.

The asterix (*) leads to the bottom part of Dr. Hovind’s web page, which states that:
* NOTE: When I use the word evolution, I am not referring to the minor variations found in all of the various life forms (microevolution). I am referring to the general theory of evolution which believes these five major events took place without God:
1. Time, space, and matter came into existence by themselves.
2. Planets and stars formed from space dust.
3. Matter created life by itself.
4. Early life-forms learned to reproduce themselves.
5. Major changes occurred between these diverse life forms (i.e., fish changed to amphibians, amphibians changed to reptiles, and reptiles changed to birds or mammals).

Unfortunately, if one looks up the scientific definition of evolution, “evolution is any change in the frequency of alleles within a gene pool from one generation to the next,” it becomes clear that the theory of evolution has nothing to do with the beginning of the universe, or stars and planets, or even the origin of life on earth, and Dr. Hovind’s argument makes exactly no sense whatsoever. However, that doesn’t stop Kent Hovind from attacking evolutionists, and saying that evolution is a religion, and should not be taught in schools (as if creationism should be). Dr. Hovind is also famous for a human ancestry chart, which is very popular in creationist circles (this copy is from a controversial comic book tract called Big Daddy, which will be discussed later in this paper).
<snip Chick cartoon images>

In addition to that, many evolutionists doubt Dr. Hovind’s credentials.
Hovind claims to possess a masters degree and a doctorate in education from Patriot University in Colorado. According to Hovind, his 250-page dissertation was on the topic of the dangers of teaching evolution in the public schools. Formerly affiliated with Hilltop Baptist Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Patriot University is accredited only by the American Accrediting Association of Theological Institutions, an accreditation mill that provides accreditation for a $100 charge. Patriot University has moved to Alamosa, Colorado and continues to offer correspondence courses for $15 to $32 per credit. The school's catalog contains course descriptions but no listing of the school's faculty or their credentials (Vickers, “Some Questionable Creationist Credentials”).

Another very controversial element in the evolution vs. creationism struggle is the Big Daddy comic tract, which was drawn by Jack T. Chick, and is distributed by Chick Publications. While the tract is available online at www.chick.com, only fragments of it will be shown here. In that comic, a born-again college student, who looks suspiciously “Aryan” defeats an evolutionist professor (who looks remarkably “Jewish”), who attempts to brainwash the class with his vile religion of Secular Humanism. The comic uses Hovind’s arguments, but the punch line is the following:
<snip another Chick image>
The professor does not know, and the student proudly quotes the Bible to reveal that it is Jesus who holds the universe together. This argument is so absurd, that it needs to be elaborated. Basically, what Mr. Chick is saying is that since gluons have never been observed, they don’t exist, and it must be Jesus who is holding the atoms together. This Paper would like to point out that God has not been observed, either, but that minor detail seems to have escaped the attention of Mr. Chick, Dr. Hovind, and their fellow creationists.
In addition to those arguments, the creationist movement makes an enormous number of attacks on evolution, attempting to prove that it is impossible. Most of these attacks will be covered in this section of the Paper. The source for these attacks and the rebuttals to them is an article in the July 2002 issue of Scientific American, entitled “15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense.”
1. Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law.
Many people learned in elementary school that a theory falls in the middle of a hierarchy of certainty--above a mere hypopaper but below a law. Scientists do not use the terms that way, however. According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a scientific theory is "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses." No amount of validation changes a theory into a law, which is a descriptive generalization about nature. So when scientists talk about the theory of evolution--or the atomic theory or the theory of relativity, for that matter--they are not expressing reservations about its truth.
2. Natural selection is based on circular reasoning: the fittest are those who survive, and those who survive are deemed fittest.
Evolution can be summed up by the phrase "survival of the fittest" and the extinction of the unfit. -Dr. Morris (President of ICR) in “What You May Not Know About Evolution”.

"Survival of the fittest" is a conversational way to describe natural selection, but a more technical description speaks of differential rates of survival and reproduction. That is, rather than labeling species as more or less fit, one can describe how many offspring they are likely to leave under given circumstances. Drop a fast-breeding pair of small-beaked finches and a slower-breeding pair of large-beaked finches onto an island full of food seeds. Within a few generations the fast breeders may control more of the food resources. Yet if large beaks more easily crush seeds, the advantage may tip to the slow breeders. The key is that adaptive fitness can be defined without reference to survival: large beaks are better adapted for crushing seeds, irrespective of whether that trait has survival value under the circumstances.

3. Evolution is unscientific, because it is not testable or falsifiable. It makes claims about events that were not observed and can never be re-created.
Evolution, it has been noted, can't truly be tested, and certainly not repeated, thus it falls outside of empirical science and into the realm of a philosophy, or history- Dr. Morris in “PBS and ‘Evolution’-Tax Dollars Diverted for Religious Teaching.”

This blanket dismissal of evolution ignores important distinctions that divide the field into at least two broad areas: microevolution and macroevolution. Microevolution looks at changes within species over time--changes that may be preludes to speciation, the origin of new species. Macroevolution studies how taxonomic groups above the level of species change. Its evidence draws frequently from the fossil record and DNA comparisons to reconstruct how various organisms may be related.
The historical nature of macroevolutionary study involves inference from fossils and DNA rather than direct observation. Yet in the historical sciences (which include astronomy, geology and archaeology, as well as evolutionary biology), hypotheses can still be tested by checking whether they accord with physical evidence and whether they lead to verifiable predictions about future discoveries. For instance, evolution implies that between the earliest-known ancestors of humans (roughly five million years old) and the appearance of anatomically modern humans (about 100,000 years ago), one should find a succession of hominid creatures with features progressively less apelike and more modern, which is indeed what the fossil record shows. But one should not--and does not--find modern human fossils embedded in strata from the Jurassic period (144 million years ago). Evolutionary biology routinely makes predictions far more refined and precise than this, and researchers test them constantly.
4. Increasingly, scientists doubt the truth of evolution.
There are scientists all over the world who know that evolutionary theory is bankrupt. Such men as Charles Darwin, Thomas and Julian Huxley, and Steven Jay Gould have admitted it-Kent Hovind in “What Do Scientists Think about Evolution?”

No evidence suggests that evolution is losing adherents. Pick up any issue of a peer-reviewed biological journal, and you will find articles that support and extend evolutionary studies or that embrace evolution as a fundamental concept.
Conversely, serious scientific publications disputing evolution are all but nonexistent. In the mid-1990s George W. Gilchrist of the University of Washington surveyed thousands of journals in the primary literature, seeking articles on intelligent design or creation science. Among those hundreds of thousands of scientific reports, he found none. In the past two years, surveys done independently by Barbara Forrest of Southeastern Louisiana University and Lawrence M. Krauss of Case Western Reserve University have been similarly fruitless.

5. The disagreements among even evolutionary biologists show how little solid science supports evolution.
Although [evolutionists] close ranks when doing battle with creationists, they wrangle bitterly among themselves…If space permitted, these internal squabbles among biologists could be elaborated at great length. Similar bitter in-house arguments are common among evolutionary geologists and evolutionary astronomers- Dr. Morris in “A House Divided”

Evolutionary biologists passionately debate diverse topics: how speciation happens, the rates of evolutionary change, the ancestral relationships of birds and dinosaurs, whether Neanderthals were a species apart from modern humans, and much more. These disputes are like those found in all other branches of science. Acceptance of evolution as a factual occurrence and a guiding principle is nonetheless universal in biology
Unfortunately, dishonest creationists have shown a willingness to take scientists' comments out of context to exaggerate and distort the disagreements. Anyone acquainted with the works of paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard University knows that in addition to co-authoring the punctuated-equilibrium model, Gould was one of the most eloquent defenders and articulators of evolution. (Punctuated equilibrium explains patterns in the fossil record by suggesting that most evolutionary changes occur within geologically brief intervals--which may nonetheless amount to hundreds of generations.) Yet creationists delight in dissecting out phrases from Gould's voluminous prose to make him sound as though he had doubted evolution, and they present punctuated equilibrium as though it allows new species to materialize overnight or birds to be born from reptile eggs.
When confronted with a quotation from a scientific authority that seems to question evolution, insist on seeing the statement in context. Almost invariably, the attack on evolution will prove illusory.

6. If humans descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?
This surprisingly common argument reflects several levels of ignorance about evolution. The first mistake is that evolution does not teach that humans descended from monkeys; it states that both have a common ancestor.
The deeper error is that this objection is tantamount to asking, "If children descended from adults, why are there still adults?" New species evolve by splintering off from established ones, when populations of organisms become isolated from the main branch of their family and acquire sufficient differences to remain forever distinct. The parent species may survive indefinitely thereafter, or it may become extinct.

7. Evolution cannot explain how life first appeared on earth.
The single biggest problem facing evolution is the origin of even the simplest form of life from non-living chemicals. The gap between life and non-life is greater than the gap between a single cell and a human.- Dr. Morris in “How Did Life Originate?”

The origin of life remains very much a mystery, but biochemists have learned about how primitive nucleic acids, amino acids and other building blocks of life could have formed and organized themselves into self-replicating, self-sustaining units, laying the foundation for cellular biochemistry. Astrochemical analyses hint that quantities of these compounds might have originated in space and fallen to earth in comets, a scenario that may solve the problem of how those constituents arose under the conditions that prevailed when our planet was young.
Creationists sometimes try to invalidate all of evolution by pointing to science's current inability to explain the origin of life. But even if life on earth turned out to have a nonevolutionary origin (for instance, if aliens introduced the first cells billions of years ago), evolution since then would be robustly confirmed by countless microevolutionary and macroevolutionary studies.

8. Mathematically, it is inconceivable that anything as complex as a protein, let alone a living cell or a human, could spring up by chance.
Evolutionists contend that various chemicals (conveniently collocated) bonded producing complex chains of enzymes, proteins, fats and fatty acids, among many other compounds, that eventually formed the first living cell…It would seem obvious and perhaps gross understatement to say that a miracle would be required to randomly or accidentally arrive at the correct combination –Kent Hovind in “Probability of Evolution.”

Chance plays a part in evolution (for example, in the random mutations that can give rise to new traits), but evolution does not depend on chance to create organisms, proteins or other entities. Quite the opposite: natural selection, the principal known mechanism of evolution, harnesses nonrandom change by preserving "desirable" (adaptive) features and eliminating "undesirable" (nonadaptive) ones. As long as the forces of selection stay constant, natural selection can push evolution in one direction and produce sophisticated structures in surprisingly short times.
As an analogy, consider the 13-letter sequence "TOBEORNOTTOBE." Those hypothetical million monkeys, each pecking out one phrase a second, could take as long as 78,800 years to find it among the 2613 sequences of that length. But in the 1980s Richard Hardison of Glendale College wrote a computer program that generated phrases randomly while preserving the positions of individual letters that happened to be correctly placed (in effect, selecting for phrases more like Hamlet's). On average, the program re-created the phrase in just 336 iterations, less than 90 seconds. Even more amazing, it could reconstruct Shakespeare's entire play in just four and a half days.

9. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that systems must become more disordered over time. Living cells therefore could not have evolved from inanimate chemicals, and multicellular life could not have evolved from protozoa.
The main scientific reason why there is no evidence for evolution in either the present or the past (except in the creative imagination of evolutionary scientists) is because one of the most fundamental laws of nature precludes it. The law of increasing entropy—also known as the second law of thermodynamics—stipulates that all systems in the real world tend to go "downhill," as it were, toward disorganization and decreased complexity.-Dr. Morris in “The Scientific Case Against Evolution”

This argument derives from a misunderstanding of the Second Law. If it were valid, mineral crystals and snowflakes would also be impossible, because they, too, are complex structures that form spontaneously from disordered parts.
The Second Law actually states that the total entropy of a closed system (one that no energy or matter leaves or enters) cannot decrease. Entropy is a physical concept often casually described as disorder, but it differs significantly from the conversational use of the word.
More important, however, the Second Law permits parts of a system to decrease in entropy as long as other parts experience an offsetting increase. Thus, our planet as a whole can grow more complex because the sun pours heat and light onto it, and the greater entropy associated with the sun's nuclear fusion more than rebalances the scales. Simple organisms can fuel their rise toward complexity by consuming other forms of life and nonliving materials.

10. Mutations are essential to evolution theory, but mutations can only eliminate traits. They cannot produce new features.
Mutations, random changes in the DNA information code, are observed, but never do these "birth defects" add any innovative and beneficial genes to the DNA. Instead, mutations are either repaired by the marvelous mechanisms elsewhere in the DNA, or are neutral, harmful, or fatal to the organisms. –Dr. Morris in “What You May Not Know About Evolution”.

On the contrary, biology has catalogued many traits produced by point mutations (changes at precise positions in an organism's DNA)--bacterial resistance to antibiotics, for example.
Mutations that arise in the homeobox (Hox) family of development-regulating genes in animals can also have complex effects. Hox genes direct where legs, wings, antennae and body segments should grow. In fruit flies, for instance, the mutation called Antennapedia causes legs to sprout where antennae should grow. These abnormal limbs are not functional, but their existence demonstrates that genetic mistakes can produce complex structures, which natural selection can then test for possible uses.
Moreover, molecular biology has discovered mechanisms for genetic change that go beyond point mutations, and these expand the ways in which new traits can appear. Functional modules within genes can be spliced together in novel ways. Whole genes can be accidentally duplicated in an organism's DNA, and the duplicates are free to mutate into genes for new, complex features. Comparisons of the DNA from a wide variety of organisms indicate that this is how the globin family of blood proteins evolved over millions of years.

11. Natural selection might explain microevolution, but it cannot explain the origin of new species and higher orders of life.
Natural selection occurs all around us, but this only chooses from among the variety that already exists, it can't create anything new-Dr. Morris in “What You May Not Know About Evolution”.

Evolutionary biologists have written extensively about how natural selection could produce new species. For instance, in the model called allopatry, developed by Ernst Mayr of Harvard University, if a population of organisms were isolated from the rest of its species by geographical boundaries, it might be subjected to different selective pressures. Changes would accumulate in the isolated population. If those changes became so significant that the splinter group could not or routinely would not breed with the original stock, then the splinter group would be reproductively isolated and on its way toward becoming a new species.
Natural selection is the best studied of the evolutionary mechanisms, but biologists are open to other possibilities as well. Biologists are constantly assessing the potential of unusual genetic mechanisms for causing speciation or for producing complex features in organisms. Lynn Margulis of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and others have persuasively argued that some cellular organelles, such as the energy-generating mitochondria, evolved through the symbiotic merger of ancient organisms. Thus, science welcomes the possibility of evolution resulting from forces beyond natural selection. Yet those forces must be natural; they cannot be attributed to the actions of mysterious creative intelligences whose existence, in scientific terms, is unproved

12. Evolutionists cannot point to any transitional fossils--creatures that are half reptile and half bird, for instance.
[Evolutionists] used to claim that the real evidence for evolution was in the fossil record of the past, but the fact is that the billions of known fossils do not include a single unequivocal transitional form with transitional structures in the process of evolving.-Dr Morris in “The Scientific Case Against Evolution”

Actually, paleontologists know of many detailed examples of fossils intermediate in form between various taxonomic groups. One of the most famous fossils of all time is Archaeopteryx, which combines feathers and skeletal structures peculiar to birds with features of dinosaurs. A flock's worth of other feathered fossil species, some more avian and some less, has also been found. A sequence of fossils spans the evolution of modern horses from the tiny Eohippus. Whales had four-legged ancestors that walked on land, and creatures known as Ambulocetus and Rodhocetus helped to make that transition Fossil seashells trace the evolution of various mollusks through millions of years. Perhaps 20 or more hominids (not all of them our ancestors) fill the gap between Lucy the australopithecine and modern humans.

13. Living things have fantastically intricate features--at the anatomical, cellular and molecular levels--that could not function if they were any less complex or sophisticated. The only prudent conclusion is that they are the products of intelligent design, not evolution.
The design we see in living things is far too complex, too designed, too engineered to be the result of mere undirected, random forces. Even the simplest thing we could call "living" is vastly more complex than a super computer and super computers don't happen by chance. Every cell is composed of many constituent parts, each one marvelously designed and necessary for the whole. Without any one of its parts, the cell could not live. All of it is organized and energized by the magnificent DNA code, an encyclopedia of information which, even though modern scientists can't read it, it is read and obeyed by the cell. Surely some things need a Designer/Author.- Dr. Morris in “What You May Not Know About Evolution”.

This "argument from design" is the backbone of most recent attacks on evolution, but it is also one of the oldest. In 1802 theologian William Paley wrote that if one finds a pocket watch in a field, the most reasonable conclusion is that someone dropped it, not that natural forces created it there. By analogy, Paley argued, the complex structures of living things must be the handiwork of direct, divine invention. Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species as an answer to Paley: he explained how natural forces of selection, acting on inherited features, could gradually shape the evolution of ornate organic structures.
Generations of creationists have tried to counter Darwin by citing the example of the eye as a structure that could not have evolved. The eye's ability to provide vision depends on the perfect arrangement of its parts, these critics say. Natural selection could thus never favor the transitional forms needed during the eye's evolution--what good is half an eye? Anticipating this criticism, Darwin suggested that even "incomplete" eyes might confer benefits (such as helping creatures orient toward light) and thereby survive for further evolutionary refinement. Biology has vindicated Darwin: researchers have identified primitive eyes and light-sensing organs throughout the animal kingdom and have even tracked the evolutionary history of eyes through comparative genetics. (It now appears that in various families of organisms, eyes have evolved independently.)
Today's intelligent-design advocates are more sophisticated than their predecessors, but their arguments and goals are not fundamentally different. They criticize evolution by trying to demonstrate that it could not account for life as we know it and then insist that the only tenable alternative is that life was designed by an unidentified intelligence.

Thus, it can be seen that every major argument made by creationists can be refuted by evolutionists. Creationists, however, have no argument to explain life today or the existence of the universe, other than “God created everything.”

The theory of evolution has long been a thorn in the side of the fundamentalists. They have argued that evolution is opposite to Christianity, and that it is a religion. This Paper will examine the history of the evolution controversy and the fundamentalists’ efforts to destroy it.
In 1859, Charles Darwin published his On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. It became an instant success, with every copy being sold on the first day.
It took several years, but eventually the scientific community began to rally behind Darwin, who was quietly writing letters and working on his "larger book" at his home in the country. He was not strong enough to go and debate his ideas, so he had others do it for him. Darwin spent the rest of his life expanding on different aspects of problems raised in the Origin. His later books were detailed expositions of topics that had been confined to small sections of the Origin.
The theory of natural selection, and later, the theory of evolution angered the fundamentalist community. The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth were published to, among other things, denounce evolution. William Jennings Bryan declared that
all the ills from which America suffers can be traced back to the teaching of evolution. It would be better to destroy every other book ever written, and save just the first three verses of Genesis (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 13).

As a result of the efforts of the fundamentalists, several states have banned the teaching of evolution. The most prominent of these was Tennessee, in which any mention of evolution in class was outlawed. This set up the stage for one of the famous trials of the century, the Scopes Monkey Trial, when John T. Scopes, a biology teacher from Dayton, Tennessee decided to challenge the law with the help of the ACLU. Scopes was defended by Clarence Darrow, a famous lawyer, and by Maynard Shipley, the most noted fundamentalist fighter of the time .The prosecution consisted of many leaders of the fundamentalists, and was headed by William Jennings Bryan himself.
Although the fundamentalists won the case, their movement a blow their movement suffered a terrible blow, when the media exposed their backwardness, and an even greater blow when Bryan died within days of the trial’s end (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 13). Within five years, all legislation forbidding the teaching of evolution was repealed, and no further serious efforts to legislate the content of scientific instruction was mounted for half a century (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 13).
Forty years later, in December 1965, Little Rock, Arkansas, found itself in the news as Susan Epperson, a twenty-four-year-old high school teacher challenged a law that banned the teaching of evolution in Arkansas public schools (Sherrow, Separation of Church and State, p. 58). The case of Epperson v. Arkansas reached the Supreme Court, and it stated that a state cannot ban the teaching of a scientific theory because it conflicts with a particular religious viewpoint.
The issue was not put to rest, however. While it became illegal for states to ban the teaching of evolution, they could give equal time to creationism. In 1987, however, the equal time law was struck down by the Supreme Court in Edwards v. Aguillard, when 72 Nobel laureates filed a brief saying that creationism is not based on scientific research (Sherrow, Separation of Church and State, p. 60).
However, the creationists did not give up even then. They have renamed creationism as the theory of Intelligent Design, and proceeded to attack evolution as false. They have scored several victories. In 1999, the Kansas board of Education loosened the science standards to make the teaching of evolution optional (“Evolution-creation debate grows louder with Kansas controversy”). And, in 2002, the Ohio Board of Education allowed the teaching of the Intelligent Design theory alongside evolution (Onion, “Design vs. Darwin”). The struggle goes on.

The place where the biggest struggle takes place, however, is the Internet. There are hundreds of websites dedicated to evolution vs. creationism debates. Every major creationist organization, excluding the Flat Earth Society has a website, and so do most evolutionists. There are literally hundreds of message boards and newsgroups dedicated to the subject.
The biggest website supporting evolution is that of the talk.origins newsgroup, which is located at www.talkorigins.org. The talk.origins newsgroup was one of the earliest newsgroups dedicated to evolution vs. creationism debates. That newsgroup was home to debates among the leaders of the evolution and the YEC factions on the Internet. The talkorigins.org website has the biggest collection of evidence against creationism, and it is considered to be the least biased of all the evolutionist websites. While its staff lacks any major scientists, it is extremely knowledgeable about the subject, due to years of debating experience (earliest mentions of this group date back to 1993). Talkorigns.org also has links to other locations where evolution vs. creationism debates take place. It also has the Net’s biggest directory of evolutionist and creationist websites.
The creationist side has no website analogous to talkorigins.org. Instead, it has the websites of the major YEC organizations, such as the ICR, the Answers in Genesis Ministry, and Kent Hovind’s Creation Science Evangelism. These websites have hundreds of articles by the founders of the organizations. That way, www.icr.org has articles by Dr. Henry Morris, many of which have been used in writing this Paper, www.answersingenesis.org has articles by Ken Ham, and www.drdino.com has resources by Kent Hovind. The advantages of this method are that it provides resources directly from the fathers of the YEC movement. The disadvantages are, however, that the creationist side is very disorganized. There have been numerous instances where the websites of the different organizations contradicted each other. For example, Answers in Genesis (AiG) published a list of arguments not to use. Not surprisingly, many of Kent Hovind’s arguments found their way into the list. As a result, Hovind published his rebuttal to the list, saying why those arguments are perfectly good and valid, and of course, completely neutralized AiG’s effort. AiG’s list of arguments can be found at <http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/ar ... nt_use.asp>, and Hovind’s rebuttal at <http://www.drdino.com/cse.asp?pg=articles&specific=41>. The most amusing part is that while the creationists accuse evolution biologists of arguing among themselves, they are doing the exactly same thing.
It is unclear, however, which side is winning. Most evolution vs. creationism debates end in evolutionist victory, due to the fact that they use real science, as opposed to the pseudoscience used by YECs, however, the creationists just seem to be coming back for more. So far, no side has scored a clear victory. Just like in the real world, the battle on the Internet goes on.


The previous sections of this Paper have shown how uncomfortable the Religious Right is with the mainstream culture. This brings up a question: “What do the fundamentalists do with ideas they don’t like?” The answer is simple: they try to get rid of them. There have been many cases of book banning in the Unites States, and most of them took place because of the Religious Right. Mel and Norma Gabler wrote:
When a student reads in a math book that there are no absolutes, every value he’s been taught is destroyed. And the next thing you know, the student turns to crime and drugs…
Crime, violence, immorality and illiteracy...the seeds of decadence are being taught universally in schools (Utter and Storey, The Religious Right:…, p. 98).

The Religious Right then launched a massive campaign return God into the local schools.
In the mid 1970s, Kanawha County, West Virginia became the site of the struggle between the fundamentalists and those who were “anti-God” and “anti-family” when “Sweet” Alice Moore, the wife of a fundamentalist minister was elected to the local school board. She was opposed to “non-standard” or ghetto English, and to sex education. Both disappeared from the Kanawha County schools within the year. However, Ms. Moore’s objections to the books ran deeper than that.
Since one aspect of a fearsome world is the absence of reliable road signs, the textbook critics assailed readings that smacked of moral relativity, that is, the belief that there are no right or wrong answers. Closely related was a distaste for symbolism, irony, satire, ambiguity, or role-playing, since all those invite interpretations that diverge from a literal reading of the text. In their view, schoolbooks—like the Bible—should have one meaning and one only, and it should be obvious to all. Cultivating a taste and talent for multiple interpretations can only increase the likelihood of thought and behavior that call into question the settled and dependable nature of one’s community and religion (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 125).

An example of that was brought by Alice Moore herself. She used the familiar story of Androcles and the Lion as an example of what not to teach:
the teacher explains to the children that some stories are true, and some stories are just fables and make-believe. One way we can tell the difference is if an animal in a story doesn’t act like an animal would really act, then we know it’s a fable or make-believe story. For example, would a lion really remember Androcles, and remember that he pulled the thorn from his paw, and then not kill him in the arena? And the conclusion is obvious: of course not. Therefore, we know this is a fable. Now, then, let’s discuss the story of Daniel in the lions’ den, which every one of these children had heard from the time they’d just been little things. In the Bible, the lions don’t kill Daniel, because he was under the protection of the Lord. And they’re saying, because the lions don’t act as they do in real life, we know it’s a fable (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 125).

As Alice Moore began to gain supporters, the controversy increased. Most parents were divided into the “pro-book” and “anti-book” factions. When the books were approved, violence began. Cars were set on fire, and bombs were set off on empty school busses (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 128). One of the people convicted for that confessed that he had considered bombing carloads of children as a way to stop “people that was sending their kids to school, letting them learn out of books when they knew they was wrong” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 129). However, much of the alleged “pornographic” material was not even in the books, but no one bothered to check (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 127).
The conflict spread, and gained nationwide media attention. It soon escalated, and various groups became involved. The Heritage Foundation was supporting the anti-book side, and so was the John Birch Society. Even the KKK supported the book banning, and held a rally at the steps of the state capitol, where Imperial Wizard James Venable darkly predicted that “Communist, socialist, nigger race is going to dominate this nation” (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 138).
While the conflict in Kanawha County might have been the most violent case, it was certainly not the only case of this sort. Hundreds of school districts throughout the nation had protests by fundamentalist Christians against textbooks and other books assigned in class, or available to students in school libraries. Books like John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, Shel Silverstein’s A Light in the Attic, Judy Blume’s Forever, Judith Guest’s Ordinary People, Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 139).
However, no one illustrates the Religious Right’s power to ban “godless” books more than Mel and Norma Gabler of Longview, Texas. The Gablers were at one point called the two most powerful people in American education (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 120). They had an enormous influence over the content of the Texas textbooks, by scrutinizing every line and submitting “bills of particulars” which sometimes ran to hundreds of pages. In some years, their objections were instrumental in getting more than half the books under consideration stricken from the Texas list. (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 121). They even began a campaign to “get God back into the schools” and objected to the “liberal slant” in the textbooks, which could be seen in:
open-ended questions that require students to draw their own conclusions; statements about religions other than Christianity; statements that they construe to reflect negatively on the free enterprise system; statements that they construe to reflect positive aspects of socialist or communist countries (e.g., that the Soviet Union is the largest producer in the world of certain grains); any aspect of sex education other than the promotion of abstinence; statements that emphasize contributions made by blacks, Native American Indians, Mexican-Americans, or feminists; statements which are sympathetic to American slaves or are unsympathetic to their masters; and statements in support of the theory of evolution, unless equal space is given to explain the theory of creation (Armstrong, The Battle for God, p. 315).

The courts ruled against the Gablers, but the publishers were so alarmed by the prospect of damage to the big Texas market, where the state chooses the textbooks for all the schools, that they amended the books themselves (Armstrong, The Battle for God, p. 315).
This battle is not over yet. Now, the Religious Right objects to books like the Harry Potter series, and to media programs that are deemed to be “pro-gay” or “anti-family” and they still object to the teaching of evolution. However, no subject has been as heavily censored as sex education.
When sex education was started in the 1960s, the Religious Right was outraged. The biggest battle took place in California, as religious conservatives began opposing Family Life and Sex Education (FLSE) program. The Religious Right demonstrated a film called Pavlov’s Children, which stated that Russian communists, through UNESCO, were using Pavlovian conditioning techniques, in sex education, and elsewhere, to render American youth more susceptible to totalitarianism (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 107). Anti-Communist groups like the John Birch Society became involved, and asserted that sex education advocates were communists, communist sympathizers, or dupes of clever communist manipulators, while the fundamentalists said that sex-ed was a ploy of Satan, and communists were merely tools of his evil will . (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 107). No one stressed that point more than Billy James Hargis. In addition to that, the Religious Right was claiming that sex-ed was “making homosexuals” because it did not portray homosexuality as a sin . (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 106). Eventually, the conservatives gained control of the Board of Education, and destroyed the FLSE.
The battle for sex education is far from over. Powerful conservative organizations like the Family Research Council are lobbying for the replacement of sex-ed with abstinence till marriage programs. They believe that by teaching students about safe sex, sex-ed programs are encouraging students to have sex, and thus, they are tying to ban them all.


Another interesting aspect of the Religious Right is its intolerance towards other religions. Since the Religious Right is driven by the fundamentalist movement, the natural urge of which is to separate themselves from all those that are in error, there is nothing surprising about the fact that the Religious Right considers other religions to be false. Pat Robertson has said:
The concept that one God, "Thou shall have no other gods before me", will somehow upset a Hindu, that's tough luck! America was founded as a Christian nation. Our institutions presuppose the existence of a Supreme Being, a Being after the Bible. And we as Americans believe in the god of the Bible. And the fact that somebody comes with what amounts to an alien religion to these shores doesn't mean that we're going to give up all of our cherished religious beliefs to accommodate a few people who happen to believe in something else (People for the American Way, “Right Wing Organizations: Christian Coalition”).

Most of the Religious Right’s power is coming from Southern WASPs, and from hate groups like the John Birch Society, and the fundamentalists have a long history of anti-Semitism, racism, and bigotry. In the 1920s, the fundamentalists said that to be 100% American, one has to be Christian, which meant that all other religions were not “pure” Americans. In the 1930s, Gerald Winrod touted his anti-Semitic drivel, and praised Hitler. Later, Billy James Hargis called Martin Luther King a “stinking racial agitator,” and said that segregation is a God-ordained law. It is not surprising that the Religious Right considers Judaism to be a false religion. Dr. Bailey Smith, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, said at the National Affairs Briefing in 1980, which was attended by the presidential candidate Reagan, and covered by over 400 journalists and all the major television networks, that:
It is interesting at great political rallies how you have a Protestant to pray, a Catholic to pray, and then you have a Jew to pray. With all due respect to those dear people, my friends, God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 215).

This, however, does not denote anti-Semitism, but merely states that Judaism is a false religion. And, as this Paper will show, it is not the only false religion.
With regard to Islam, the position of the Religious Right is clear: God and Allah are not the same thing. Pat Robertson says, on his program, The 700 Club:
Under no circumstances is Jehovah, the God of the Bible, and Allah, of the Koran, the same. First of all, the God of the Bible is a God of love and redemption, who sent His Son into the world to die for our sins. Allah tells people to die for him in order to get salvation, but there is no understanding of salvation. Allah was the moon god from Mecca. That is why Islam has the crescent moon. The flag of Turkey has a crescent moon with a star in it. Well, the crescent moon is because Allah was the moon god, and that is the deal. But we don't serve a moon god. We serve the God of creation, the Creator of everything…To translate Allah as God is wrong. When you see something in there and it says Allah, you translate it Allah. Don't call it God because it is different. God is Elohim. He is the Creator, the Jehovah God, Yahweh. Yahweh of the Old Testament was the Father who brought forth Jesus into the world (“Are God and Allah the Same?”).

This statement, that “Allah tells people to die for him in order to get salvation,” is common among the Religious Right, especially after September 11, since the fundamentalists try to portray Islam as a “bad” religion. Jack T. Chick, the creator of Big Daddy, and other comic book tracts, also has an opinion about Islam. In his tract Allah Had No Son, a Christian fundamentalist defies an angry Muslim, and converts him to Christianity. The Muslim is portrayed as evil and greedy, and Islam is portrayed as dangerous. According to Chick, Muslims expect to have “a Muslim flag to fly over the White House by 2010,” and England was brought “to her knees” by Islam.
Another religion the Religious Right hates is Catholicism. According to them, the Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon. Jack Chick has another tract dedicated to that. According to him, “Neither the great Whore nor the pope cares for your soul…it’s just religious show biz” (Man in Black). This hatred of Catholics comes from the Protestant tradition of viewing the Pope as the Antichrist, and the Catholic Church as the Whore of Babylon.
Finally, the “religion” that worries most fundamentalists is atheism. Because atheism is essentially the lack of a belief in a Supreme Being, the fundamentalists consider it the antipaper of Christianity, and are opposed to it. In their opinion, atheism is the creation of the devil.
According to the Religious Right, Satan’s first attack on Christianity happened when he created communism. Billy James Hargis illustrates this view by saying
Make no mistake about it. The Communists are winning. Hitler died; Nazism died with him. Mussolini died; Fascism died with him. Tojo died; Japanese militarism died with him. Stalin is dead; COMMUNISM LIVES ON. Lenin is dead; COMMUNISM LIVES ON. Why? Because Communism is a satanic weapon more powerful than the atom bomb, hydrogen bomb, cobalt bomb, or all of them combined, to bring about the seven-year Tribulation Period in which the whole world will worship Satan and his son, the anti-Christ, who will be the leader of a godless world government, and his religious counter-part, the “false prophet,” the false Messiah (Utter and Storey, The Religious Right…, p. 95).

However, as it became clear that American democracy is in no danger of collapsing due to the subversive activities of the communists, the Religious Right had found itself a new enemy. Tim LaHaye speaks:
If the atheistic, amoral, one-world humanists succeed in enslaving our country, that missionary outlet [America] will eventually be terminated. As a Christian and a pastor, I am deeply concerned that this ministry be extended. The eternal souls of millions of people depend on us to supply them with the good news. In addition, I am concerned that the 50 million children who will grow up in America during the next generation will have access to the truth, rather than the heresies of humanism (Utter and Storey, The Religious Right…, p. 102).

The Religious Right is very adamant about the “evils” of secular humanism. They claim that it is responsible for all the moral decay in America. Obviously, the reason for that is because humanism does not endorse the Judeo-Christian values. So, what is the solution for this problem? Tim LaHaye goes on to give the answer.
A humanist is a humanist is a humanist! That is, he believes as a humanist, thinks as a humanist, acts as a humanist, and makes decisions as a humanist. Whether he is a politician, government official, or educator, he does not think like a pro-moral American, but like a humanist. Consequently, he is not fit to govern us or to train our young (Utter and Storey, The Religious Right…, p. 103).

Bill Banuchi seems to agree: “We must love and pray for the Atheists and Agnostics but we must never allow them into positions of leadership in our nation ‘under God,’” he writes in “One Nation Under God.” It is clear that the Religious Right feels threatened by secular humanism, and is willing to go to great lengths to stop it.

But what exactly does the Religious Right have in mind? They are unable to distinguish the difference between “God” and “morality,” and in their opinion America is a Christian nation. “The Constitution, as far as we are concerned, is a Christian document,” writes Gary Jarmin in the 1980 issue of Christian Century. Once again, Bill Banuchi of the Christian Coalition agrees: “Only someone who purposely refuses to see truth would say God has no place in our public institutions” (“Separation of Church and State”). The Religious Right does not recognize the separation of church and state. They do not tolerate ideas that contradict their ideas of what’s right, and try to silence them. They do not tolerate religions other than Christianity. There was another group in American history that tried to do the same things: the Puritans. Like the Religious Right, they ostracized those that did not fit in, and like the Religious Right, they tried to build the perfect nation. Is this where America is heading?
There is, however, an even scarier prospect. In the 1970s, a group known as Christian Reconstructionists emerged. Their basic premise was that belief that the moral laws of the Old Testament are still binding today. This idea states that only Old Testament laws specifically fulfilled in the New Testament are non-binding (such as sacrificial laws, ceremonial laws and dietary laws). The moral Law of God is still the ethical standard for governing individuals and society (Rogers, “What is Theonomy?”). The Reconstructionists are seeking to establish a form of government called a “theonomy,” that is that society should be governed by Biblical law. William Martin describes how a reconstructed America might look:
The federal government would play no role in regulating business, public education, or welfare. Indeed, if it survived at all, its functions would likely be limited to delivering the mail and providing some measure of national defense. Some government would be visible at the level of counties, each of which would be protected by a fully armed militia, but citizens would be answerable to church authorities on most matters subject to regulation. Inheritance and gift taxes would be eliminated, income taxes would not exceed ten percent—the biblical tithe—and social security would disappear. Public schools would be abolished in favor of home-schooling arrangements, and families would operate on a strict patriarchal pattern. The only people permitted to vote would be members of “biblically correct” churches. Most notably, a theonomic order would make homosexuality, adultery, blasphemy, propagation of false doctrine, and incorrigible behavior by disobedient children subject to the death penalty, preferably administered by stoning (p. 353)

And the Reconstructionists seem to confirm this theory. Jay Rogers writes:
Are you saying that all of the moral laws of the Old Testament are applicable to modern society? What about Old Testament laws that require stoning, such as Exodus 21:17, "And he who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death."
The question about incorrigible children is a common one. The so-called "harshness" of this punishment is often posed to refute the idea of theonomy as the basis for civil law. However, I know that this law and its punishment under the Old Covenant was just because God is just. Therefore, I ask, what has changed under the New Covenant so that the law and its punishment are now unjust? Has God changed? No! Has the Law changed? Jesus said: Not one jot! Therefore I ask: Why not now? Perhaps the problem is with us and not with the law?
However, I will attempt to explain this. We are talking about incorrigibility here. Cursing one's parents does not mean simply swearing. What is implied here is far more serious. Incorrigibility would be required to be proven before the local civil elders before the child could be executed. It would need to be demonstrated that the child is out of control and will not obey his parents even when the most serious punishment -- death -- is threatened.
In the United States of America, in this century, there were laws on the books in some states that said that a thief could be put to death for repeat offenses. This goes beyond what the Bible prescribes, but we see the same principle at work -- capital punishment for incorrigibility.
Rebellion against one's parents is listed together with the most heinous crimes in Romans. In this case, if he persisted in his rebellion against God, it would be the responsibility of the civil elders to deal with him. Isn't it likely that such a rebel would ultimately be put on trial for some other capital offense and be put to death?
The family is one of God's governmental units. Rebellion against the government is commensurate to treason. Today, we have

[fgalkin]

The family is one of God's governmental units. Rebellion against the government is commensurate to treason. Today, we have no problem with seeing treason against the civil government as a capital crime. The problem is that we have a low view of the family today. The family is actually a higher form of government than the state and deserves greater protection. Rebellion against the family is an expression of rebellion against God's first established form of government and therefore against God himself.
Capital crimes against the family include rebellion to parents, homosexuality and adultery. Sound harsh? Then what you are saying, in effect, is that God is harsh and that treason against the family is "not as bad" as treason against the state

The Reconstructionists wish to establish a barbaric theocracy, and they have the level of tolerance of Pastor Fred Phelps:
We are not looking for a "voice a the table" nor are we seeking "equal time" with the godless promoters of pornography, abortion, safe-sodomy subsidies, socialism, etc. We want them silenced and punished according to God's Law-Word (Rogers, “What is Theonomy?”).

Which, as we have learnt before, means stoning. It is safe to say that the Reconstructionist movement is the American equivalent of the Taliban, and their views on modern civilization are the same. But, if one wonders, what does this have to do with the Religious Right? The answer to that becomes clear in the next paragraph:
It is difficult to assess the influence of Reconstructionist thought with any accuracy. Because it is so genuinely radical, most leaders of the Religious Right are careful to distance themselves from it. At the same time, it clearly holds some appeal for many of them. One undoubtedly spoke for others when he confessed, “Though we hide their books under the bed, we read them just the same.” In addition, several key leaders have acknowledged an intellectual debt to the theonomists. Jerry Falwell and D. James Kennedy have endorsed Reconstructionist books. Rushdoony [the founder of the movement] has appeared Kennedy’s television program and the 700 Club several times. Pat Robertson makes frequent use of “dominion” language; his book The Secret Kingdom, has often been cited for its theonomic elements; and pluralists were made uncomfortable when, during his presidential campaign, he said he “would only bring Christians and Jews into the government,” as well as when he later wrote, “There will never be world peace until God’s house and God’s people are given their rightful place of leadership at the top of the world (Martin, With God on Our Side…, p. 354).

This shows that the Religious Right is quite favorable to the Reconstructionist ideas. And why shouldn’t they be? They both believe that America should be governed by Judeo-Christian ideals.
However, one thing is clear. Neither the Puritan “City upon a Hill,” nor the Reconstructionist theonomy, are endorsed in the Constitution, which was established on the secularist ideals of the Enlightenment, not the religious ideals of the Bible. “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church and State,” wrote Thomas Jefferson, and no matter how the fundamentalists stress that the Constitution is a Christian document, it is not.
While more than 80 pages of this Paper have been spent on describing the problem, there are very few solutions. To paraphrase Jerry Falwell, the Religious Right is a potent voting bloc, and cows are not, so any solution that attempts to restrict their influence will fail. In addition, their strength comes from their ability to label their opponents “anti-God,” which means a lot in a country where people are more than twice as likely to believe in the devil as in evolution (Kristof, “God, Satan and The Media”, p. A25). Thus, any solution is extremely difficult.

One possible solution involves improving the quality of education in the United States. As the statistics given in the beginning of the previous section show, most of the evangelical Christians have an income below $30,000, and many of them did not attend college, and most of those who did attended Bible college. This lack of a science education is the exact reason why the fundamentalists are able to gain new converts. However, this solution faces many problems, and it is unlikely that it can be implemented. First of all, the Religious Right is wary of any new ideas that contradict the Bible. Billy Sunday said, “When the Word of God says one thing and scholarship says another, scholarship can go to hell,” and that certainly has not changed for many fundamentalists. Any attempts to bring a real education to the Bible belt would undoubtedly end in more book banning, and more claims that the evil “secular humanists” are spreading their godless lies to the “true” born-again Christians. Thus, it is highly unlikely that this solution has any chance of success.

Another solution that is possible is to increase the attention of the mainstream America to the Religious Right. The importance of the Religious Right is increasing, yet most of America is out of touch with them. There are only 3% of mainline Protestants, 4% of Roman Catholics, and 7% of people who described themselves as “non-religious” that are “very familiar” with what evangelicals stand for (Smith, American Evangelicalism:…, p.181). Almost half of those surveyed had no idea what evangelicals stood for (Smith, American Evangelicalism:…, p. 181). This shows that most of mainstream America is ignorant of the Religious Right and what they stand for. This probably due to the lack of media coverage of the Religious Right activities. The problem with this solution is that most of the time the Religious Right does not make interesting news, and, thus, is unlikely to gain the attention of today’s media corporations. Also, since the fundamentalists shun the outside world, most of their contact with mainstream America is limited to attempts to convert the “unsaved.” As a result, there are very little fundamentalists in positions that are known to the general public, and, as a result the public is ignorant of the Religious Right. And, even if some brief event tied to the Religious Right does make the news, it is dismissed as nothing out of the extraordinary and quickly forgotten.
The only way to change this is for the media to pay closer attention to the happenings in the Bible belt, and to alert mainstream America of the growing danger. Robert Fogel of the University of Chicago argues that America is now experiencing a fourth Great Awakening (Kristof, “God, Satan and The Media”, p. A25). If this is true, then it is likely that the Religious Right will grow even more powerful before its power declines.

Another possible solution to this problem is to rally the political left. If more progressive lobbying groups, like the People for the American Way are created, the fundamentalists’ influence might be held in check. This solution seems to be the best option, however, even it is likely to face some difficulties. For one thing, the Religious Right is able to portray its opponents as “godless” secular humanists, who seek to corrupt American society. Another thing that is just as important is that the majority of the people seem to support the godly fundamentalists rather than their opponents. And, finally, even if the fundamentalists’ power is held in check in Washington, there is nothing to prevent them from gaining power on the local level.

As the situation is today, there is no absolute solution to this problem. It is impossible to stop the onslaught of the Religious Right without violating the Constitution.
The Religious Right today is continually growing stronger, and is attempting to impose its ideas of what’s right on America. However, they do not realize that they are doing that. In their opinion, the only thing they are doing is defending the Christian values expressed in the Constitution from the onslaught of the secular humanists. In their own opinion, they are not attacking mainstream America, they are counterattacking. According to them, it were the humanists that fired the first shot by abolishing school prayer, bible study in school, legalizing abortion, and giving equal rights to homosexuals. It is the secular humanists who attacked biblical morality in their textbooks, and seek to undermine the true story of creation in Genesis by their false theory of evolution. In their opinion, taking God out of the classroom will lead to Communism and brutal dictatorships. In fact, it was foretold in the Bible. The Religious Right sees the Left as the weapons of Satan to bring about the Tribulation period, and they are trying to slow it down, to “save” as many people as possible before the Rapture comes. So, it is no wonder why they are fighting the “godless” religion. The only problem is: no one is attacking them. What they perceive to be a conscious attack by the “evil” secular humanists, is in reality, the inevitable process of modernization and response to the changing times. The theory of evolution is not some clever lie purposefully created by the devil to ensnare and corrupt the minds of unsuspecting Christians, it is a fact that has been discovered. The idea of pluralism arose as a response to the increasing diversity in America, not because Satan is trying to create a world government. The problem of the Religious Right, however, is that they are living in the past. It is impossible to apply biblical standards to today’s world, but they continue to try. They reject modern science, and they are continually trying to return to simpler times. Unfortunately, this is not possible. However, the Religious Right does not understand this. Prayer in schools might have worked when most of America was Protestant. However, when there are Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other groups, this is not possible. It is completely beyond the Religious Right’s capacity to understand this, however.
What the Religious Right views as a perfect society, is not only imperfect, it is deeply flawed. The Puritans thought that only their way of worshipping God, and the rest were heretics. The Religious Right has similar ideas. This Paper has proven that by the level of intolerance, the Religious Right is equal, if not surpasses the Puritans, and their goals are similar. Thus, the Religious Right is the biggest threat to American democracy today.


And that is the end.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[fgalkin]

The Bibliography:

Books:
1. Armstrong, Karen. The Battle for God. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001.
2. Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. The Billy Graham Christian Worker’s Handbook: A Topical Guide with Biblical Answers to the Urgent Concerns of Our Day. Ed. Charles G. Ward. Minneapolis, Minnesota: World Wide Publications, 1996.
3. Goldberg, George. “Banning School Prayer Is Religious Discrimination.” Religion In America: Opposing Viewpoints. Eds., Julie S. Bach and Thomas Modl. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1989.
4. Kleeberg, Irene Cumming. Separation of Church and State. New York: Franklin Watts, 1986.
5. Martin, William. With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America. New York: Broadway Books, 1996.
6. McDowell, Josh. More Than A Carpenter. Wheaton, Il.: Tyndale House, 1977.
7. Sherrow, Victoria. Separation of Church and State. New York: Franklin Watts, 1992.
8. Smith, Christian. American Evangelicalism: Embattled and Thriving. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
9. Utter, Glenn H., and John W. Storey. The Religious Right: A Reference Handbook. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 1995.
10. Weyrich, Dawn. “Television Evangelism Is Legitimate.” Religion In America: Opposing Viewpoints. Eds., Julie S. Bach and Thomas Modl. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1989.

Dictionaries:
11. “Atheism,” Random House Webster’s College Dictionary. 2d ed. 1999.
12. “Evangelism” Random House Webster’s College Dictionary. 2d ed. 1999.
13. “Fundamentalism,” Random House Webster’s College Dictionary. 2d ed. 1999.
14. “Lobby” Random House Webster’s College Dictionary. 2d ed. 1999.
15. “New Right,” Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online. Online. 4/26/03. <http://www.webster.com/cgi-bin/dictionary>

Encyclopedias:
16. “Great Awakening”, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 99.
17. “Hutchinson, Anne”, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 99.
18. “The Mayflower Compact”, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 99.
19. “Pilgrims”, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 99.
20. “Puritanism”, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 99.

The Holy Bible (New International Version):
21. I Corinthians 14
22. Deuteronomy 22
23. Ephesians 5
24. Genesis 38
25. Joshua 8
26. Leviticus 20
27. 1 Timothy 2

Internet:
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30. _____________. “One Nation Under God”. 4/24/03. <http://www.nychristiancoalition.org/One ... r_God.html>
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38. Christian Coalition. “About Us”. 4/18/03. <http://www.cc.org/aboutcca/index.html>
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50. _______________. “'International Women's Day,' A Pro-Abortion Agenda In Disguise”. 4/20/03. <http://www.frc.org/get/p03c03.cfm>
51. <http://www.godhatesamerica.com/html/wrath/NY.html> 4/18/03.
52. <http://www.godhatesfags.com/main/faq.html#Who> 4/18/03.
53. Hovind, Kent. “Bad Creation Arguments?”. 4/23/03. <http://www.drdino.com/cse.asp?pg=articles&specific=41>
54. __________. “Probability of Evolution”. 4/23/03. <http://www.drdino.com/cse.asp?pg=articles&specific=49>
55. __________. “What Do Scientists Think about Evolution?”. 4/23/03. <http://www.drdino.com/cse.asp?pg=articles&specific=28>
56. Isaak, Mark. “What is Creationism?”. 4/23/03. <http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/wic.html#continuum>
57. Jerry Falwell Ministries. “What We Believe: JFM's Definitive Stance on Homosexuality”. 4/18/03. <http://www.falwell.com/press%20statemen ... elieve.htm>
58. Legon, Jeordan. “Scholars: Oldest Evidence of Jesus?”. 4/23/03. <http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/10/21/jesus.box>
59. Lewis, Jone Johnson. “Abortion History”. 4/17/03. <http://womenshistory.about.com/library/ ... 012200.htm>
60. Moran, Laurence. “What is Evolution?”. 4/23/03. <http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evoluti ... ition.html>
61. Morris, Henry M. “A House Divided”. 4/23/03. <http://www.icr.org/pubs/btg-a/btg-134a.htm>
62. ____________. “How Did Life Originate?” 4/23/03. <http://www.icr.org/pubs/btg-b/btg-092b.htm>
63. ____________. “PBS and ‘Evolution’: Tax Dollars Diverted for Religious Teaching”. 4/23/03. <http://www.icr.org/pubs/president/prz-0112.htm>
64. ____________. “The Scientific Case Against Evolution”. 4/23/03. <http://www.icr.org/bible/tracts/scienti ... ution.html>
65. ___________. “What You May Not Know About Evolution”. 4/23/03. <http://www.icr.org/newsletters/btg/btgapr02.html>
66. Onion, Amanda. “Design vs. Darwin”. 4/24/03. <http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/ ... 20401.html>
67. People for the American Way. “Right Wing Organizations”. 4/20/03. <http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=3147>
68. ___________. “Right Wing Organizations: American Life League”. 4/20/03. <http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=3792>
69. __________. “Right Wing Organizations: Christian Coalition”. 4/26/03. <http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=4307>
70. __________. “Right Wing Organizations: Family Research Council”. 4/20/03. <http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=4211>
71. The Phyllis Schlafly Report. “A Short History of E.R.A”. 4/21/03. <http://www.eagleforum.org/psr/1986/sept86/psrsep86.html>
72. Rennie, John. “15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense”. 4/23/03. <http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articl ... DF&catID=2>
73. Robertson, Marion Gordon. “Are God and Allah the Same?”. 4/25/03. <http://www.cbn.com/700club/askpat/BIO_040203.asp>
74. Rogers, Jay. “What is Theonomy?”. 3/5/03. <http://www.forerunner.com/theofaq.html>
75. Scott, Eugenie C. “Antievolutionism and Creationism in the United States”. 4/23/03. <http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articl ... _2001.asp9>
76. Vickers, Brett. “Some Questionable Creationist Credentials”. 4/23/03. <http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/credentials.html>

Newspapers:
77. Kristof, Nicholas D. “God, Satan and The Media”. The New York Times. 4 Mar. 2003: A25.
Pamphlets:
78. Anonymous. Jesus Coming Soon!
79. Campus Crusade for Christ, Inc. Would You Like to Know God Personally?
80. Evangelism Explosion International. Do You Know For Sure That You Have Eternal Life?.
81. Mission for Jesus. Good News for Your Salvation

[Majin Gojira]

...WOW...I am rendered temporarily inarticulate by that...great work!

[fgalkin]

erm...*bump*

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi]

Great work! When I was done reading, I wanted more.

See, 116 pages isn't that long when you post it here.

[fgalkin]

Great work! When I was done reading, I wanted more.

See, 116 pages isn't that long when you post it here.

Yes, I see that now.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[fgalkin]

Erm, another bump?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Bug-Eyed Earl]

Bravo!

[Raptor 597]

Quite good, worthy of recognition and a possible thesis to shove in their faces.