Faith in Public Live Part 8: Thoughts on Steinfels in American Prospect?
Dear Randall and Bruce,
Again, thanks much for this exchange. We've been going for the better part of a week now, and it's still fascinating stuff. We're due to wrap up soon, and was wondering if you two could give us some closing thoughts, and perhaps consider the following excerpt from Peter Steinfels' book review essay in the latest edition of the American Prospect.
He doesn't take up your book in particular, Randall, but does raise issues on which I think both of you would have opinions. Reviewing books from Kevin Phillips, Michelle Goldberg, and Jim Rudin, he argues:
But the idea, increasingly voiced by left-of-center activists and intellectuals, that religion is the driving force of the administration's policies and the leading threat to American democracy is exaggerated and misplaced. Phillips, Rudin, and Goldberg themselves regularly stick qualifying phrases into their declarations of alarm. They know that fanaticism and nuttiness, including downright dangerous nuttiness, can be found all over the place in a religious and political landscape as vast and diverse as America's. And they know better than to equate hardcore religious-right leaders and organizations, let alone the still smaller kernel of literal theocrats, with evangelical Americans in general, who constitute between 30 percent and 40 percent of the population and who have swung massively into the Republican camp in the last three decades.
The task, in other words, is not simply to shine light on faith-based antidemocratic currents but to map context, patterns, proportions, and trends, tracing not only real connections but also deep differences between what's marginal and what's central.
His point seems to me to be that we risk alienating the broad 30-40% of Americans who are evangelical if we overstate the degree of control that ultra-conservative Religious Right leaders exert over them. I agree with that point when broadly applied to the evangelical community, but based on the current state of the Southern Baptist Convention, it seems overly optimistic. Are there, to use his words, context, patterns, proportions, and trends that can give hope that a large chunk of Baptists is not actually under the sway of the Religious Right? And if so, how do leaders like yourselves go about trying to engage and inspire that community?
Thanks agian for taking the time to join us this week, and best of luck as your work continues.
Cheers,
David
Comments
David: Couple thoughts. I would encourage you, Bruce and Randall to consider Baptist Historian Buddy Shurden's in his News or Issues link of August 4 at his site centerforbaptiststudies.org
Shurden does a quick analysis of several EJ Dionne's columns, the political obit of Ralph Reed in particular, as well as Goldberg and Rudin's work and is not quite as comfortable and dismissive as the
American Prospect.
Long as grassroots Southern Baptists continue blindly to underwrite the counterfeit baptist Richard Land through their cooperative program dollars, the humongous SBC through it's mediocrity is fertile ground for the demagoguery that made it such a political brothel for Harry Dent, Atwater and Rove.
You put the two theocrats together in the SBC Presidential election this last time, Floyd and Sutton, and they got 49% of the vote. And they represent the wishes of the leadership of the SBC and it's seminary presidents.
So this is a very serious matter, and Prescott and Balmer, and the witness of David Montoya and the displaced profiled in Carl Kell's worthwhile book Exiled; it is no small matter.
I encourage the American Prospect to get hold of Nancy Ammerman's edittedbook of the mid 90's Southern Baptist Observed. Read the essay by Helen Lee Turner on the demagoguery of the SBC Pastor's Conference of the 80's and 90's.
Prescott and Balmer are close to the ground on this one. It is Steinfels who is pontificating from some detachment.
In my experience, Prescott and Balmer have the much better sounding here as we go into the next election cycle.
Stephen Fox
Collinsvile Alabama
Baptist.
Preacher's son.
Saved at Truett Memorial BC in Hayesville,NC. birthplace of George Truett
Posted by: Stephen Fox | August 24, 2006 06:45 PM
David: Forgive me but I thought putting the Mjones link in the url slot may make it clickable.
Steinfels needs to know that the Jesse Helms of this article was given an award in 1990 by Judge Pressler and Richard Land as they were in the heat of battle displacing the kind of Baptists Randall Balmer applauds in his book. That is why all this matters very much.
I made a motion at the 1990 SBC in New Orleans bringing attention to Pressler's right wing hubris. Pressler was inflamed. Helms's nominee to head the NC GOP in 1986, Barry McCarty was on the podium as SBC convention parliamentarian. Joe Ferguson and Ellen Rosenberg 20 years ago understood the seriousness of the SBC takeover and its incestuous relationship with the Birch Right and CNP.
I hope Steinfels gets the picture soon.
Posted by: Stephen Fox | August 24, 2006 09:27 PM
This is just too sweet. If you click on my name on the comment above about Jesse Helms, it brings up the 1995 Mother Jones piece on Jesse Helms. Help me, help Steinfels to remember and get the picture about the Council for National Policy and www.visionamerica.us
And that is not clue enough, Google up the several pieces by Bill Moyers the last few years in www.christianethicstoday.org among other periodicals.
Posted by: Stephen Fox | August 24, 2006 09:33 PM
David: I do hope you are bringing all these comments to the attention of Peter Steinfels so he can get his lesson for the day.
Even better call the New Republic and ask them to follow this.
Just click on my name attached to this specific post and hopefully it will bring up a great survey from Buddy Shurden, behind Wake Forest's Bill Leonard, likely the best Baptist Historian out there these days, with Auburn's Wayne Flynt thick in the pack; the upper eschelon.
I would only add to Buddy's list these last 7 or so posts here at this site in re Balmer's book; and the ongoing discussion about all this started just today in the faith and practice discussion group at www.baptistlife.com/forums
Shurden's associate at Mercer is in charge of that site.
Bonnie Payne and Jennifer Wilkins with the Library system in Collinsville, Alabama will tell you I in no way have any official capacity with Mercer University; never have, and never said so.
I do love the Allman brothers however, Leon Russell, Little Richard and the Movie Paris Trout.
If Steinfels has never seen Paris Trout starring Dennis Hopper, then he don't know that twenty two fifty, Now that's a real number.
Unlike Steinfels, Trout has been to Makin, not far from where his wife went to the clinic on him.
Posted by: Stephen Fox | August 24, 2006 10:14 PM