This is an awesome conversation. My thanks to David and to Faith in Public Life for hosting and instigating it, and to Randall and Bruce for their thoughts & their voices.

Also, dear readers, be sure to check out Mainstream Bapsist's radio show this weekend for a real life exchange between these two. Also, dear readers, be sure to check out Mainstream Bapsist's radio show this weekend for a real life exchange between these two. Check here for more info, and listen in on the web!

I have an answer to your question. We live who we say we are, and forget about the Christian Right. I am tired of responding to them; that only gives them the advantage of setting the terms for any public debate. Rather than responding to them, we should be and do who God calls us to bes and do; let those on the right be and do who they are called to be. They are not monsters or demons; they are children of God, like us, and the political dimension will take care of itself. We must remember this little thing called faith, and that in the end, in the middle, and from the beginning, God is in control.

I bow to both our experts (and I define expert as one who can confound the IRD), and I would like to hear more on the relationship of culture and the religious right. Mr. Balmer, I appreciate the laissez faire argument against gov'ment enforcement no-wall cons.

If we apply Geertz's definition of culture and Tillich's definition of religion than we see how "school prayer/decalogue" gains symbolic meaning via context. (I'd suggest that they have no inherent meaning, but then I'd sound like a grad student.)

But before that let's assume that symbols create/increase meaning via binary opposition/context, e.g. God-Satan, ACLU-ACLJ, or Lynn-Land, if you will.

Contexts create symbols and symbols provide definitions. One of the few things that seems to slip away from the right is art; I would argue because it relies so much on subversion of meaning/ambiguity. If you see irony in conservatives deploying the gov. to save carved tablets or Terri Schiavo than you are not one, con. that is. It seems that religious folks can help best here by shifting the context, but not head on. For example, in the 1880s, Sunday laws got more congressional attention than they do today.

I'd be interested to hear some lessons that apply today that are extrapolated from examples of symbols used by the religious right which lost their power. What changed and why?

In other words, how do we, as folks of faith, get beyond the dichotomy? Because each one is merely and ultimately an historical accident, and the Spirit is supposed to transcend that.

Alexander's comment is an example of exactly the wrong way to think about these issues. Dichotomies are false, because reality is not a simple "Yes/No" choice. We live in a world with a multitude of realities, a multitude of truths, a multitude of everything. By reducing everything to a simple choice between "symbols", we forget that reality is not a cymbol, God is not a symbol, human life is not a symbol. We dwell in some hypostasized Platonic Universe where all the circles are 360 degrees and no cats are gray at night.
By the way, this isn't "Can't we all get along," but rather, "Can't we do what God has sent us to do - love one another"?

Yo Geo,

Ah, the blogosphere. . .

I think that you misunderstood the descriptive tenor of my post. I, too, agree that binaries lie, but real politick suggests that modernist textual readers (and much else by rightist religion) function to shift power by artificially forcing religious folks into either/or. (What was Kierkegaard thinking?) It is, in fact, a false construction, but a "real" one. So, drawing from history, how does a sharp religious world subvert it for the common good?

Because you admit the either/or is false, do not accept it. It's really that simple. Don't play the game at all. That's my point. Liberal and progressive Christians would be much more effective if, rather than contending for power, they lived out their calling and their lives. The right is not interested in winning an argument, but in power. Don't argue, then. It's that simple. If you know the game is rigged, don't play.

'If you know the game is rigged, don't play.' I'd tweak that slightly, Geoffrey, to 'If you know the game twists those who play it into barely recognizable charicatures of themselves, don't play.' There's a real danger (which comes up on a regular basis in our discussions here) of those who are progressively inclined and religious to grow into a mirror image of the Religious Right. Not a whole lot of good would come of that. So I sympathize with your instinct to avoid the game of the Right.

There's a pragmatism in Alexander's posts that also has to be taken seriously. (the summer in DC has turned you into a regular Machiavelli). The Christian Right frame cannot be ignored entirely; it's well-funded and won't go away. But, I think there's reason to hope that it can be weakened, not by striking the integrity-sapping political alliances of the Religious Right, but by living out a version of faith that embraces the common good and rejects the dichotomies they try to impose.

I guess that's what I was saying, David. Incarnate (a word Christians should be familiar with) a way of being politically engaged without falling into the honey-trap of power. I hate to sound either self-important or pretentious, but the discussion here dovetails with my own soul-searching on this very topic that I am engaging in over at my blog (to which you link! Thank you so much; I have returned the favor). I have too often been critical here, but it is a criticism based in love and thankfulness that there are others out there like me. Your site is a great source of news and views to which I turn several times a day. Keep up the great work!

Great discussion. I think all of you will add depth to your thoughts if you step back just a little and take James Ault's final chapters in his 04 well received Spirit and Flesh. Gus Niebuhr, one of Reinhold's great nephews, endorses the book.
Will help us all nuance the discussion for 08.
In meantime keep an eye on how the Baptists in Alabama position themselves as Governor Riley tries to whitewash his Baptist Identity while the State Baptist Convention President, Rick Lance tries to look the other way between now and the first Tuesday in November.
Amy Sullivan had a great piece in the Washington Monthly earlier this year about the peculiarities of Alabama's predicament