Evangelical activist David Lane, at 60, has stepped up his game in encouraging pastors nationwide to run for public office. Lane’s impressive grassroots American Renewal Project, which aims to restore “our Christian heritage” by rekindling Moral Majority sentiments, has already contributed to the removal of three Iowa State Supreme Court justices who favored same-sex marriage. Lane forewarns of a “moral crisis” and claims that evangelicals must unite to “save the nation from the pagan onslaught imposing homosexual marriage [and] homosexual scouts.”
Although sad, it seems only appropriate that within U.S. politics a Christian evangelical would attempt to flood the 2016 Republican primaries with moral doctrine. And yet reading such headlines oddly gives me a visceral sense of assuredness, at least, at first glance. Despite federal progress on marriage equality, and the government's growing trend toward social liberalism, this is the same America we ambivalently love — a nation driven by healthy, productive debate. We are a people whose love for democracy reconciles ideological difference through political cooperation, or in Rawlsian terms, “overlapping consensus,” the socio-political fabrics of public reason. So naturally we make room for religious radicals, and somehow that inclusivity seems to reflect our fundamental democratic culture. But let evangelical charm fool us not — Lane lacks the reasonability to contribute to that culture, period.
His agenda is one of fervent religious rationalism that leaves no room for the kind of social cooperation and liberal sensitivity so key in today’s politics. By religious rationalism I mean the absolute elevation of a single moral doctrine over alternative moral interests. For instance, it may be rational for a fundamentalist Christian to outright condemn gay marriage so as to lead a morally consistent life, but such an attitude clearly wants for reason and should have zero sway on senate floor, or any floor for that matter. And yet, at present only seven Republican Congressman support gay marriage.
While the political evangelical campaign spearheaded by Jerry Falwell during the Reagan era fizzled with the last George W. Bush presidency, the implications of an evangelical resurgence are serious. New York Times writer Jason Horowitz confirms that Lane attempts to revive hope in congregations across the country who have become “disheartened by the repeated failure of socially conservative candidates, and by a party that has softened its opposition to same-sex marriage.” With over 100,000 pastors enlisted in the American Renewal Project, we ought to be concerned.
On surface level, his campaign should seem constitutionally sound, for even religious evangelicals have a right to voice their opinions. But upon deeper reflection, any political movement with the potential to hinder social progress toward ensuring the extension of basic liberties to all citizens is unquestionably unjust. There may be a generational divide between normative conceptions of what constitutes basic human freedoms. But perhaps the greatest lesson of our political era is that those conceptions that seem most normal, and therefore somehow moral, are often times the most perniciously oppressive.
The norms we associate with American politics by no means suggest a fair and inclusive system. We are a nominally democratic plutocracy that often fosters overbearing corporate influence in the name of human liberty. In other words, our system is structured in a way that favors rationality over reasonability, and consequentially, individuals such as David Lane find room to operate. For example, Princeton historian Kevin M. Kruse brilliantly explains how in the 1930s corporate America forged an ideology of Christianity and anti-federalist libertarianism to gain public support in response to the “creeping socialism” of Roosevelt’s New Deal reforms. Ever since, capitalists and soapbox Christians have been intimately associated. Consider Lane — anyone with billionaire best friends is surely packing millions himself. Point being, our political world runs rampant with insensitive economic rationalism and religious pandering, and all members of our society should be aware of it.
My overall point is simple: to advocate for the suppression of one person’s love for another is unreasonable, and therefore, has no place in a healthy democratic society. It goes against our moral intuition, and insults our remarkable capacity for emotional reasoning. And perhaps most peculiarly, it disregards the very core virtues of Christian philosophy — namely, empathy and unconditional love for one’s neighbor — that political evangelicals allegedly espouse. In other words, while Lane’s moral doctrine may prove internally consistent, he apparently suffers from a confused ideology, one that has surely led him down a self-defeating path.
Christian virtues such as modesty and neighborly love are without a doubt the kinds of elemental ideas diverse political actors can and should mobilize around. But when such values are packaged into an evangelical, Bible-bearing agenda, problems ensue. While I am uncertain about the degree to which we ought to be concerned about one Christian zealot further hampering social progress, Lane’s campaign should serve to remind us that one liberty, if left unchecked, has the potential to squelch another. Unless he digs deeply within his own faith to find reasonable grounds for public reconciliation, Lane’s only contribution to the American political system will be the poor example he is setting for us all.
Will Evans is an Opinion columnist for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at w.evans@cavalierdaily.com.
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