(236)S11E3/4: The Racist Underpinnings of the Religious Right w/Dr. Randall Balmer
Welcome back to the Fourth Way podcast. In this episode, I had the privilege of interviewing Randall Balmer. Doctor Balmer has been a part of evangelicalism his whole life, and he had experienced its political transformation from the inside. I wanted to talk with doctor Balmer because his insights are going to be helpful for us in a number of different ways. I wanna point out some of those ways now so that as you listen to the episode, you can hone in on the meat of our discussion.
Derek Kreider:First, I want you to see the face of propaganda in our discussion. There are a number of times throughout the interview where we talk about the religious right being genuine, holding on to a true belief, advocating for an appropriately moral stance, etcetera. But as we've discussed throughout the season, propaganda as we know it today isn't about lies and deception, though it may often include that. It's really about eliciting a response, as Elul identified. That means that propaganda is often less about the truthfulness or falsity of an idea and more about how such an idea is presented.
Derek Kreider:A fact, in and of itself, may not be all that meaningful without context and presentation. Some of my favorite commercials, which I'll make sure to link in the in the, show notes, highlights this. These, these don't judge too quickly commercials take viewers through a scene where we get the whole context, but an actor within the scene only gets a snapshot, and hilarity ensues. Because while the actor and the viewer are seeing the same snapshot, only the viewer has the given context through which to interpret the snapshot. So as you listen to this episode, after first watching those funny commercials, puts it aside this notion that we're arguing about whether abortion is moral or not.
Derek Kreider:We're not discussing that at all, really. And if you wanna hear why I think abortion is a travesty, you can go ahead and listen to my season on abortion. But what we're really discussing here is not the moral truth surrounding abortion, but how the information is wielded and towards what end it has been wielded. 2nd, I want you to see the creative power of propaganda. Part of what we discussed in this episode is the transformation of evangelicalism.
Derek Kreider:It's disheartening to know where we've come from in regard to social justice and where we are now. But that's due in part to the way that propaganda polarizes communities, isolates them, and transforms them. So listen out to how propaganda does that throughout this episode. Finally, as this episode is placed in the middle of our discussion on how propaganda works within the the racism discussion, I want you to listen out for how propaganda has insulated the evangelical community from repentance in regard to racism and allowed us to foster racist ideas and policies by lumping all race issues under the umbrella of woke or liberal. This dismissive power of propaganda has perhaps been one of the strongest weapons in the arsenal of racists who are aware that they're racist, as well as those of us who don't see the racist that propaganda has created us to be.
Derek Kreider:I hope this gives you a good guide on some of the major discussion points to look out for. So here it is, the interview with Randall Balmer. Thank you so much for I'm sure your schedule's really busy, so, I appreciate you taking taking time to to talk to somebody that you've never even met before. I appreciate it.
Randall Balmer:That's fine. I'm happy to do it.
Derek Kreider:Yeah. So just a a little bit of background about why I contacted you. You know, 2016 was a was a really big time for me. I I grew up in a Christian school, went to Christian college, taught in a Christian school for a while, and, you know, taught all this integrity stuff. And then 2016 comes around, and my mind was just absolutely blown.
Derek Kreider:You know?
Randall Balmer:What happened to integrity? Yeah.
Derek Kreider:Yeah. So, I mean, that that just sent me on a path a good path. So so in some ways, I'm I'm sort of glad that happened, from from my walk with Christ. But at the same time, it's it's very it was very disconcerting, to me. And so that that sent me down a path, you know, searching through a lot of things.
Derek Kreider:But, you know, the this this final thing that I'm kind of grappling with is truth and, propaganda. So I I've been trying to figure out how do we know what's true. Like, how do we
Randall Balmer:how
Derek Kreider:do we know what's, you know, how people are using us and manipulating us. And so, after reading your book, I was, I thought you'd be a great person to contact because I wanna talk about how our group, has has propagandized and to help us to discern through some of those things. So before we get into some of those questions about, our group's propaganda, I would love for you to kind of I don't want you to spend too much time on your qualifications in evangelicalism because I know you can find that elsewhere, and I'll put links there. But if you could just give a a brief overview of of how you're qualified to talk about, evangelicals from the inside, that would be great.
Randall Balmer:Sure. I grew up in what I call the evangelical subculture. I didn't call it that at the time but looking back on it, this past interlocking network of institutions and mores and folkways that constitute evangelicalism in America. So, I was born in Chicago when my father was a student at Trinity Seminary now known as Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and then as his career proceeded, over the course of 40 years while I was still, at home, we lived in various places as he, was pastor at various churches in the evangelical free church of America. So I gave my heart to Jesus for the first time, very early, very young, first of many times, and, attended, vacation bible school, bible camp, Sunday school, church many times, several times a week.
Randall Balmer:And then and then, really, kind of finished off my my formation by becoming a, an undergraduate at Trinity College in Deerfield, Illinois, and then, seminary student, where I actually worked as well at Trinity evangelical divinity school. Then I headed off to graduate school for a doctorate and, onto a teaching career. But, I I often say that I'll put my evangelical credentials up against anybody, including Franklin Graham, although I concede his father might have been a bit more famous than mine.
Derek Kreider:Alright. Perfect. And, I will make sure to put some links to some of your lengthier, discussions on on your background. But we we can talk about a lot of ways that, you know, our community has propagandized us and and, others. But I I don't think that there's there's a much more formative issue than than the abortion issue and the way that that's been been wielded.
Derek Kreider:And that's something that you spend a lot of time talking about in your books. So so first of all, you know, I I wanna kinda zoom in on the the timing of abortion becoming a significant issue for evangelicals. And I think the first time that I was exposed to that idea was reading Cruz and and Fitzgerald on their works on evangelicals, And they quoted, Jerry Falwell in his his sermon, ministers and marches, and I finally tracked down a copy of that and and read it for myself. And, I I couldn't believe what he was saying. Like, he was he was saying, you know, Christians don't involve themselves in politics.
Derek Kreider:And a decade later, he's he's at the head of a political charge. And so I think that that kind of transformation believes a lot of people thinking, well, yeah, he transformed right after Roe versus Wade. The timing fits, the abortion narrative. Could you talk a little bit about the the timing of, Falwell's political conversion and and the religious right?
Randall Balmer:Sure. I'm happy to do that. And I will point out something that, I think nobody else has observed or noticed, but, so I'll take some credit for it unless somebody calls me off of this claim. But, I think that I'm the 1st historian to notice that that famous sermon you mentioned of ministers and marches, Jerry Falwell preached on a Sunday evening at Thomas Road Baptist Church on March 21, 1965. And that was the day of the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.
Randall Balmer:So he was clearly directing his, fire against Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders for being involved in politics. And as you say, then a decade later, he utterly flips away from that. Falwell himself claims that what got him mobilized politically was the Roe v Wade decision of January 22, 1973. However, he also concedes that he did not preach his first anti abortion sermon until February 26, 1978. That's more than 5 years after the Roe v Wade decision.
Randall Balmer:So that should, you know, cause people to scratch their heads a little bit and wondering if that's a real honest narrative on his part. And I'm not making any accusations because I don't know, I don't know a person's heart, and so I can't really say that. But I'm a historian, and I do know I can recognize facts when I see it. And in the case of the abortion issue, what I've come to call the abortion myth, I will point out that in 1968, this is before the Roe v Wade decision, of course. 1968 Christianity Today, the flagship magazine of evangelicalism together with another evangelical group called the Christian Medical Society convened a conference to discuss the morality of abortion.
Randall Balmer:And 23 heavyweight 23 heavyweight theologians from the evangelical world gathered for several days, hashed out the issue. At the conclusion of that gathering, they issued a statement saying, we can't agree that abortion is a moral issue, but we think it should be available. 2 successive editors of Christianity Today Magazine concurred with that sentiment. 1971 meeting in Saint Louis, Missouri, the, messengers or the delegates, they call them messengers, but delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention, meeting in Saint Louis, Missouri, if I didn't say that already, passed a resolution calling for the legalization of abortion. Now the Southern Baptist Convention is not generally known as a redoubt of liberalism, but they reaffirmed that resolution in 1974, the year after Roe v Wade, and again in 1976.
Randall Balmer:When the Roe decision was handed down, evangelicals by and large were silent on the matter. The evangelical voices who did weigh in actually praised the Roe v Wade decision, including w a Criswell, pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas and a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention. So, that is just I mean, I'm you know, there's more evidence, but, you know, that's that's what I call the abortion myth. And the abortion myth is the fiction that evangelicals rallied or galvanized as a political entity in the 19 seventies in direct response to Roe v Wade. And I'll ask I'll add a personal anecdote to that as well.
Randall Balmer:I spent the 19 seventies, really cocooned in what I call the evangelical subculture. That is to say, I was a freshman in college at Trinity College, Deerfield, Illinois in 1972. That's just before the Roe v Wade decision. And then I graduated in 1976. And then after the, the remaining years of the 19 seventies, I was a, actually an employee of Trinity Divinity School as well as a a master's student there.
Randall Balmer:And, you know, again, abortion simply wasn't part of the conversation. Now this was just not an issue that evangelicals cared about. They considered it a Catholic issue throughout the 19 seventies.
Derek Kreider:Yeah. I I, before we kind of get into that more evidence, because you've got you've got something that was priceless for me that I I wasn't able to get somewhere else. But before we get to that, I do want to, when I looked at of ministers and marches, so the copy that I got was I think it was a digital from Liberty's library. So I was kind of skeptical. I don't know if if that was altered at all.
Derek Kreider:But it it looks it looked like it was it was legit, but it had the date. And, yeah, the the summer thing is interesting, and it was I believe it was also, like, 4 weeks to the day after Malcolm x was assassinated. So you've got all of these historical events that are going on at that time. And and if you look in his his sermon, he even mentions Alabama. Like, he he specifically mentions it, which is, you know, where the march was going on.
Derek Kreider:So, yeah, I think I think that's too coincidental for sure. So the the thing that that you gave me that, I think would be you know, if we were in a court of law, I think would be extremely important because, you know, like you said, we can't know people's hearts, and we hearsay and all of these other things don't make for great cases. But in your book, you talk a bit about this this experience you had. I think it was in 1990 or or right around there, where where you actually were able to talk face to face with with some of the big individuals responsible for the the Republican party and the and the the moral majority. So I would love for you to talk about that conversation, who you talked with, why that was important, what you said, and and how that kind of because that's straight from the horse's mouth.
Derek Kreider:And that that to me is, is powerful.
Randall Balmer:Yeah. I didn't say much. I listened a lot. I said I didn't say very much at that occasion. Yeah.
Randall Balmer:What happened was that in November of 1990, I was invited, I was at that time, assistant professor at Columbia University where I ended up teaching for 27 years. But I was invited to a gathering in Washington DC in November 1990. And I actually, for years, had puzzled over why I was invited to this thing because I just it just didn't make sense to me. And I almost didn't go at the last minute. I had, you know, I had, a young family.
Randall Balmer:I was, you know, busy teaching, trying to write books and so forth. And, I decided at the last minute, yes, I'm gonna go. I went to this thing. So I found myself in Washington DC in a hotel conference room with Richard Land, the Southern Baptist Convention, you know, religious right guy, Paul Wyrick, the architect of the religious right. I can't remember his first name.
Randall Balmer:I can't remember at this moment. Ed Dobson, who was at that time or was he had just left, but he had been Jerry Falwell's lieutenant at the Moral Majority. Donald Wildman, head of the American Family Association, the guy who, was responsible for a lot of boycotts of television at that time. Carl f h Henry, the founding editor of Christianity Day Magazine. Richard Viguerie, the conservative direct mail guru.
Randall Balmer:Ralph Reed, the director of the, Christian Coalition, Pat Robertson's organization. So I find myself in this conference room. I don't think I belong here. And, it turned out I I don't think I realized it before I went, but it turned out that the whole conference was meant to mark the 10 year anniversary of Ronald Reagan's reelection to the presidency, in November 1980, 10 years earlier. And so I thought, well, I, you know, I didn't celebrate 10 years earlier.
Randall Balmer:I'm not sure I'm gonna celebrate now, but I'm here. I might as well make the best of this. And so I'm there and and sitting in in these sessions. And in the first session in in the commentary, Paul Weierich made this impassioned speech. He said, let's remember that this movement, meaning the religious right, did not get organized in response to abortion or to the Roe v Wade decision.
Randall Balmer:Not at all, he said. Let's be clear about this. We got going as a political movement to defend tax exemption in evangelical institutions, including Bob Jones University, which of course, was was segregated. And, you know, again, he was emphatic about this. And so at the end of that session, in the in the break between the sessions, I went up to him and I said, I wanna make sure I understood you correctly.
Randall Balmer:Abortion had nothing to do with the genesis of this movement. He says, absolutely not. He said, I've been trying since the Goldwater campaign in 1964 to get these people, meaning evangelicals, interested in politics. He said, I tried everything. I tried the school prayer issue.
Randall Balmer:I tried the pornography issue. I tried the abortion issue. I tried the women's rights issue. Nothing got their attention until the Internal Revenue Service started coming after places like Bob Jones University. That's what got the attention of people like Jerry Falwell, who of course has started his own segregation academy in Lynchburg in 1967.
Randall Balmer:So anyway, that exchange, got me started on this sort of, decades long treasure hunt to chase down the real origins of the religious right. And I have to say that I don't agree with Paul Weierich about much of anything, but on that on that point, he was absolutely right. Abortion had nothing whatsoever to do with the genesis of the religious right.
Derek Kreider:Yeah. That's so so powerful coming straight from their mouths. And, you know, I I mean, not to say that I think that that they would be they would purposefully lie, but I can't imagine somebody in that group admitting to that today, you know, knowing how powerful the the abortion was was abortion, you know, the knowledge of one issue voting and all of that stuff, was that just not, at the forefront at that point yet? Like, did they not realize how powerful it was?
Randall Balmer:No. I think, actually, I think what happened, and I try to reconstruct this, is that I think there was a kind of a 3 part process for, evangelical, political engagement. The first was, a court re ruling. And again, it wasn't Roe v Wade. It was actually the court ruling was the district court for the district District of Columbia in a case called Green v Connolly.
Randall Balmer:And on June 30, 1971, the district court issued a a ruling that said, in effect, any organization that engages in racial discrimination or racial segregation is not by definition a charitable institution, and therefore, it has no claims on tax exempt status. So that was the catalyst because that was that prompted the Internal Revenue Service to start making inquiries about places like Bob Jones University, but also various whites only church sponsored segregation academies that had been formed to, elude or evade desegregation in in the public schools. So that was the the first step. The second step, and again this occurred later in the 19 seventies. And this I I, I credit or I blame Paul Wyrick who, I sometimes call him evil genius.
Randall Balmer:He he really was quite savvy in terms of politics and and political machinations. The second move was to say, oh, this is not a defense of racial segregation. This is not racism. This is a defense of ray of religious freedom. Thereby writing a page from the modern religious right playbook, you know, that you see in the lobby case, for example, or in the California cake maker case.
Randall Balmer:This is not a matter of defending racial segregation. We're defending religious freedom. It was a brilliant move. What he failed to mention is that tax exemption is a form of public subsidy. Right?
Randall Balmer:I and they I've there's no debating that. You know, I'll I'll I'll use a personal example. I, I'm, in addition to being a professor, I'm an Episcopal priest. And I one of my parishes, actually, my first parish was in Northwestern Connecticut in a rather affluent little town in Northwest Connecticut called Washington. And we, of course, paid no property taxes in that very affluent community, because we were a church, a tax exempt organization.
Randall Balmer:Well, that meant that the taxpayers in that town, not that they couldn't afford it, by the way. They could they could well afford it. But they had to pay extra for fire protection, for police services, for maintenance of the public parks, and so forth. So tax exemption is a form of public subsidy. So when Paul Weyrich and then Jerry Follow-up begins crying about, this is an assault on religious freedom.
Randall Balmer:They failed to acknowledge that tax exemption is public subsidy. So that was the second move. The third move brings us to the abortion question. Wyrick was savvy enough to recognize that he couldn't effectively build a grassroot grassroot movement of white evangelicals simply by defending racial segregation. Even in the late 19 seventies, that wasn't going to fly.
Randall Balmer:And so he was looking about for another issue. And what happens is that in the midterm elections of 1978, he stumbles on the abortion issue. And here's what happened. Weyrick, again, by his own account, in advance of the 1978 election went to the head of the Republican National Committee. At that time, it was Bill Brock of Tennessee, former senator from Tennessee.
Randall Balmer:And he asked for money to try to organize these evangelical voters. And according to Weierich, Brock looked across the desk at at Weierich and said, who are you? Who are these people? Are you crazy? I'm not gonna keep creating money for this.
Randall Balmer:And so Weierich, again, by his own account, resolved to go out and elect some rather improbable people to, during the midterm elections of 1978. And he focused on 4 senate races, New Hampshire, Iowa, and Minnesota. There were 2 senate races. One of them was for the unexpired term of Walter Mondale, who of course was Jimmy Carter's vice president. And in all four of those races, the final weekend of that campaign, pro lifers, Roman Catholics, because at that time, abortion was a Catholic issue, almost exclusively.
Randall Balmer:Pro lifers leafleted church parking lots. And in election with a very low turnout 2 days later, all 4 of the favored Democratic candidates lost to anti abortion Republicans. I remember very clearly running, reading through Paul Weierich's archives, which are actually out at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, and looking at his correspondence surrounding that midterm election of 1978. And I I've said this often. It's almost like the the papers began to sizzle because he realized he finally had found an issue that was going to galvanize grassroots evangelicals.
Randall Balmer:Opposition to abortion was going to work for him as a political issue. Even so even so, and we're talking then about the midterm election of 1978, so November of 1978. Frank Schaeffer has told me in in in again, very emphatically that when he and his father and c Everett Koop began touring the country in the first 3 months of 1979 with their film series, whatever happened to the human race, this anti abortion film series. He said that the crowds were very, very meager, and the response on the part of evangelicals in early 1979 on the abortion issue was quite tepid. Another bit of evidence.
Randall Balmer:In, or on August 22, 1980, Ronald Reagan, the Republican nominee, addressed a group of anywhere from 10 to 20000 evangelicals, the the numbers the, estimates of the crowd vary, In Dallas, Texas at Reunion Arena. This is the event where he famously said to this group, I know this group can't can't endorse me, but I want you to know that I endorse you in what you're doing. Brought down the house and arguably sealed the evangelical vote for the 1980 presidential election. I read through his, speech on that occasion out at the, Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California. And on that occasion, he talked about creationism.
Randall Balmer:He decried Jimmy Carter's unconstitutional agenda against evangelical schools, meaning places like Bob Jones University. He did not mention abortion even once in that address before 10 to 20000 screaming evangelicals in August of 1980. So even as late as August 1980, the Reagan Bush campaign was not persuaded that abortion was going to work for them as a political issue in November.
Derek Kreider:Alright. Yeah. I, I particularly liked how how you pulled out some of the the language, you know, this focus on on religious liberty. I grew up, like I told you, at a Christian school, and I thought for the longest time, probably until I was in high school, that literally, in a public school, you couldn't pray or read the Bible. That that was my understanding of of, you know, secular public schools.
Derek Kreider:And I I think religious liberty is used a lot, and and, but as soon as a Satanist wants to do something, or or a Muslim, you know, then there's no such thing as religious liberty. It's duplicitous. Can
Randall Balmer:I can I, interject on this?
Derek Kreider:Yeah.
Randall Balmer:Yeah. Yeah. The the the the book I'm working right now on right now is, biography of Mark Hatfield, a Republican senator from Oregon, evangelical Christian, a Baptist. And, he's he's a he's a real Baptist, by which I mean he understands the first amendment and the separation of church and state, which is founded on bedrock bad bapt Baptist principle. You don't mess with the the line of separation between church and state.
Randall Balmer:And I just found this in the congressional record. This is from back in, 1994, July 27, 1994. And he, mister Hatfield, senator Hatfield went to the floor of the senate to address the whole issue of trying to legislate public prayer in public schools. And he said I'm gonna read just a snippet here. We are dealing with, of course, a very personal issue in matter of prayer.
Randall Balmer:We're dealing with the issue of protecting religious religion and religious convictions. I must say very frankly that I oppose all prescriptive prayer of any kind in public schools as any true baptist should. By the way, does that mean I'm against prayer? No. It does not mean that at all.
Randall Balmer:I am very strong in my belief in the efficacy of prayer. But I must say that there is no way this body, meaning the senate or the constitution or the president or the courts should ever abolish prayer in public's goals. That is impossibility. I often use somewhat facetiously the example and experience of having prayed my way through every math course examination I ever took. I was not praying to the teacher.
Randall Balmer:I was not praying to my fellow students. I was engaging in silent prayer to god who thought I was more powerful than I, who I thought was more powerful than I, and that all students and all the students put put together. All I'm saying is that this can be very personal and silent. Prayer is happening happening all the time. So, you know, that addresses your, your issue.
Randall Balmer:You certainly can pray in public schools. The issue is prescribed prayer in public schools, which is a clear violation of the first amendment. Sorry to take you down that, No.
Derek Kreider:No. No. That was that was good. And I I mean, again, I I think that shows how, information is is wielded. And, you know, I wouldn't say that I think my teachers were were maliciously lying to us.
Derek Kreider:There's just this this narrative that kind of gets started somehow, and, and it it goes on. So here here's a big question for you because so I don't think that abortion is a a good moral choice to make. I think that,
Randall Balmer:I agree.
Derek Kreider:I think that it's terrible, the situation that people are put in. I empathize with a lot of people who have abortions. I understand that there's so many so many causes that that underline, underlie abortions. So what would you say to somebody who says, okay. Even even if I take your narrative about, you know, all this evidence that you give us about how abortion wasn't it wasn't brought up because people really cared about that.
Derek Kreider:It was kind of used. People were kind of manipulated. Nevertheless, it's true that abortion is killing a a valuable human being made in the image of God, and we've arrived at that truth. So at this point, like, we're still 1 issue voters despite our history. What What would you say to somebody like that?
Derek Kreider:Why does it matter how we got here?
Randall Balmer:Well, I first, I think it I think racism matters. And so and I'm happy to to address that a little bit later in my, in in in our conversation. But first of all, I agree that, that, abortion is a moral abomination, except for, you know, the obvious exceptions. Rape, incest, the life and well-being of the mother and and that sort of thing. But I think that's precisely the point as I what I would argue.
Randall Balmer:No. I'm I'm I'm I'm sort of setting aside my historian's hat for the moment and talking about as my understanding the of the issue and how it should be addressed as a as a believer, as a Christian. And I think you put your your language was precisely right. I regard abortion as a moral issue, not a legal issue. What I find striking about the abortion debate or what passes for the abortion debate these days, which I think is a pretty anemic debate, frankly, but that's another that's another matter.
Randall Balmer:What I find striking is that the only thing that both sides of the abortion debate agree on is that making abortion illegal is not going to make it materially less frequent. So what does that tell us? It tells us that if you're truly interested in limiting the incidence of abortion, the law, the courts, is not gonna be the way to do it. Women are still gonna have abortions. I mean, let's not let's not kid ourselves about this.
Randall Balmer:If you truly want to limit to the incidence of abortion, we have to change the moral conversation. That is to change the moral debate. And I'm willing to go to great lengths to do that, including public service billboards, discouraging people from having abortion. But let's make clear is that we also need to be clear that we also have to couple that with availability of contraceptives, sex education, and measures like that, if we're truly sincere about limiting the incidence of abortion. I think we have several things we have to do.
Randall Balmer:And, again, I think it is a moral issue. It's not a legal issue. I mean, you know, just to put it in kind of simple terms, when does the state issue a birth certificate? Right? At birth, not at conception.
Randall Balmer:You know? This is just it's and this is and and even within Christian theology, the the traditional point of no return in terms of the fetus is the moment of quickening, which is several weeks at least into a pregnancy before, the quickening is when you when you feel or can discern the the the fetus moving, on his or her own. I I again, I think it's a moral issue. It's not a legal issue.
Derek Kreider:So then how would you differentiate that between you know, somebody says murder is murder. If they're if they're created if a fetus is created in the image of God, and they're killed and, you know, a toddler or an adult is created, why is that a legal issue as opposed to just a moral issue?
Randall Balmer:Again, I think it's because you have to understand at what point does the state take an interest in the individual. Again, it's not a conception. Now I know that there are some of the anti abortion people who are trying to kinda roll that back and say that the state has a a a vested interest in the individual at the moment of conception. But, you know, I I that's I think that's a heavy lift, legally, to make that case. I saw a cartoon, the other day saying, you know, showing a pregnant woman being pulled over by a police officer and protesting.
Randall Balmer:Well, officer, according to the laws of the state of blank, whatever it is, Arkansas, whatever, my fetus is, is a person and therefore I should be allowed to drive in the HOV lane. You know, you get into things like that and it's it, you know, it kind of it kind of, descends pretty quickly into absurdity.
Derek Kreider:Yeah. So so you would say that, you know, trying to make abortion illegalism, it's almost showing that, Christians are sort of reaching for a theonomy of sorts. Like, they're they're trying to and probably the same thing with with, gay marriage and other sorts of things.
Randall Balmer:Yeah. Yeah. I I yeah. I suppose. I
Derek Kreider:Okay. Yeah.
Randall Balmer:I guess, I have to think about that a little bit longer. But, yeah. It's it's just it it just doesn't I mean, it it it defies common sense, but it also defies I think it defies, you know, centuries of understanding of, of gestation. But also, you know, what are the limits of the law? I, you know, I I, you know, and I I wanna make it clear in this conversation that I honor those who are sincerely, you know, opposed to abortion in any and all cases or whatever whatever their position might be.
Randall Balmer:I and I I have a great deal of sympathy for it. But again, I think it should be addressed as a moral issue rather than a a legal issue.
Derek Kreider:Okay. Last question that I wanna ask.
Randall Balmer:Just a minute. I Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead, please. Sorry.
Derek Kreider:Okay. Yeah. This is my last question. And if, hopefully, it dovetails into I know you wanted to to talk about race here, and I think it'll it'll dovetail into that a little bit. But, if it doesn't, you can you can kind of make it make it work and get that in.
Derek Kreider:But, you know, as as part of studying propaganda over the past 6 months or so, I I ended up reading Mein Kampf just a little bit ago, and and I was really struck by by one point that Hitler made. I mean, he makes a lot of brilliant points, unfortunately, for propaganda and how it's used. One of the things that he said is that, you know, he's giving this example of if there is, you know, there's you're one person, but there are 4 different people who have who are against you. They're opposed to you. He says that can actually make you look really weak because you've got 4 opponents.
Derek Kreider:He said, the trick is you have to lump all of those opponents into 1 opponent, you know, find find some common thread so that you can you can put them in one category. And Jacques Ellul in his, you know, his work on propaganda, he he says basically the same thing where he talks about polarization or, you know, this Manichean view, this all black, all white, and this this polarization. Mhmm. Because if if you only have to deal with one idea, then you can just dismiss all of the other ideas that that would probably argue you down. So with with the evangelical community today, you know, the word liberal or Marxist or woke, You know, there's those are are 3 easy ways to dismiss anything.
Derek Kreider:Right? I don't like that information. That that's woke information. So you see this with with systemic racism, with CRT, with all that kind of stuff. So I think I think a lot of evangelicals would be surprised because because I was for sure that over the last 150 years, the evangelicals have been engaged in quite a lot of social social justice issues or woke issues, whatever you wanna call them.
Derek Kreider:I'd love if you could give us a little bit of a background of the transformation of evangelicalism in terms of social justice, and then maybe dovetail that into to some comments that you might wanna make on on race in regard to abortion and propaganda.
Randall Balmer:Happy to do that. And, you know, again, as a historian and and somebody who grew up as evangelical, one of the things that I started to learn in in in college was that evangelicals have a very long and I would say quite distinguished history of social concern, particularly in the 19th century coming out of the 2nd great awakening. And that concern was directed particularly to those on the margins of society. Those called Jesus called the least of these. So if you look at evangelical, political and social activism in the 19th century, you find they were involved in various peace crusades.
Randall Balmer:They were involved in prison reform. They were leaders in the common school movement, what we call public schools today or public education, because they recognize that was the way for those on the lower rungs of society to become upwardly mobile and become, to join the middle class. They were, they were engaged in, women's rights movement, women's equality. I mean, you know, the the opposition to the ERA is just one of the great travesties of my lifetime, my judgment, particularly because evangelicals, lined up against equal rights for women, which is just an utter betrayal of their own heritage, their own history.
Derek Kreider:Yeah. And and that's still not past. Right? I mean, it's still
Randall Balmer:No. It hasn't been hasn't been ratified. No. No. No.
Randall Balmer:Because of Phyllis Schlafly and these other people. So and and and and the other thing that that that I learned more recently about evangelical activism in the 19th century is that, people like Charles Grandison Finney, who by any measure is the most influential evangelical of the 19th century, were adamantly opposed to free market capitalism, because capitalism elevates avarice over altruism, and therefore is not Christian. Charles Finney said that a Christian businessman was an oxymoron and didn't use that language, but that's what he was arguing. Right? So you'll I I you look.
Randall Balmer:Alright? I look at that history as as somebody who's who who grew up as an evangelical and still wants to claim that that mantle. And I look back and I say, well, this is really quite a remarkable history. What happened? Well, you know, again, we probably don't have time.
Randall Balmer:I know we don't have time to get into all the the steps along the way. But, that, general focus, really persisted until at least the early decades of the, 20th century. Then what happens is the Evangelicals kinda go underground. This is when they start building their subculture as a as a, a place of refuge as a separate entity from the larger culture. But they begin to go back into, the larger world in the 19 seventies.
Randall Balmer:And again, if you're looking for a milepost, on this, you can do a whole lot worse than looking at the 1973 Chicago declaration of evangelical social concern, which is a remarkable document that seeks to, resurrect a lot of the social emphasis of 19th century evangelicals. It's it's, I I urge you and anybody else to to look at that document, the 1973 version of the Chicago declaration of evangelical social concern, which really is quite a remarkable document. Then we go through the 19 seventies, Jimmy Carter, of course, an evangelical Christian, Southern Baptist Sunday School teacher runs for president in 1976. He captures roughly half of the evangelical vote. And I think many evangelicals were voting for Carter, many of them at least, just out of the novelty of being able to vote for one of their own for president.
Randall Balmer:And then you have the rise of the religious right, which occurs late in the 19 seventies in advance of the 1980 presidential election. And that's when you get back into this whole narrative about racism and the rise of the, religious right. And I think the larger importance of racism here, and it didn't become clear to me until I was writing, Bad Faith. The the book came out just last August. And I was trying to make sense of how evangelicals got from their origins in the 19 seventies to 81% 81% of white evangelicals.
Randall Balmer:That's still a staggering number to me. Supporting Donald Trump for president in 19 I'm sorry. 2016. Now this is a man who's really can't be associated with family values very readily. I mean, I think that's probably the understatement of of, of the century so far.
Randall Balmer:And yet 81% of white evangelicals vote for Donald Trump. And I began to kinda retrace my steps historically going back to, the origins of the religious right and the defense of segregation. And, it became clear to me that the key intermediate figure in that is Ronald Reagan himself, the man that many evangelicals look to as a political messiah and, or a demigod for that matter. And, looking at Reagan's career, Reagan started politics in California in opposition to the Rumford Fair Housing Act, which sought to guarantee equal access to housing. He was an outspoken opponent of both the civil rights act of 1964 and the voting rights act of 1965.
Randall Balmer:Throughout his political campaigns, he frequently invoked the racially charged phrase law and order. And, anybody who lived through that era can hardly forget his vile caricature of so called welfare queens. Women of color who supposedly were living off the public dole in lives of luxury. He was never able to produce any of these welfare queens, but he was he was sure they existed. You add to that the fact that as president, he persisted in support of the apartheid South African government, and he decimated the civil rights commission as president.
Randall Balmer:And for me, the most, damning event occurred on August 3, 1980 when Ronald Reagan opened his general election campaign for the presidency after winning the Republican nomination. August 3, 1980 in of all places, the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, Mississippi. The place where 16 summers earlier, members of the Ku Klux Klan in collusion with the local sheriff's department abducted, tortured, and murdered 3 civil rights workers during freedom summer. Reagan was the master of symbolism. But in case anybody missed his intent on that occasion, he invoked the decades old segregationist battle cry.
Randall Balmer:I believe in states rights. So trying to understand the religious right, you have to understand its roots in a defense of racial segregation and where it ended up in 2016 and 2020 in the race of Donald Trump. Not exactly the family values guy, you have to also understand Ronald Reagan. You have to loop him into the narrative as well. So, you know, I I repeat that I honor people who are dedicated to the anti abortion cause.
Randall Balmer:I, I have a great deal of sympathy for them, but I also think it's important to acknowledge racism. And in my understanding as a historian, unacknowledged, unrepented racism tends to fester. And I think that's what we see in 2016 and again in 2020. And now again, even continuing, because evangelicals have failed to account for the racism at the roots of their political movement.
Derek Kreider:Yeah. And, I think what's unfortunate is, I think, through through the civil rights era, I think evangelicals were sort of starting to account for it. I mean, the the the the point that they couldn't get, you know, a base around segregation shows that, okay. Well, you know, people have that in their consciences. But I think the reason I wanted to end with Hitler's quote here or Hitler's idea here is because I think it's brilliant what happened.
Derek Kreider:It's it's terrible, but it's brilliant in that they got their racism by by lumping lumping it into this one common enemy. And now we have one issue voters that only see one enemy and one good and and you defend your group. And it's, it's all black and white.
Randall Balmer:Yeah. Yeah. You're absolutely right. And I would love it. You know, I I've spent arguably much of my career trying to call evangelicals back to their better selves and say, listen.
Randall Balmer:You, first of all, you have the bible, you have the new testament, you they have the example of Jesus and the teachings of Jesus. And he's pretty clear about, what what he he expects, of his followers. You know, he he he talks about he talks about welcoming the stranger, for example. That certainly has some implication for immigration, I should think. Now you know I understand that borders are are are touchy issues and they're difficult issues, but when Jesus tells us to welcome the stranger it seems to me that has some relevance to immigration policy.
Randall Balmer:Jesus takes tells us to take care of the widows and the or orphans to visit the prisoners and and to, to to feed those who are are hungry. That has certain implications or ramifications for social policy. It seems to me. So I've been trying to, you know, to to emphasize that, but also to point out, the, what I consider the noble legacy of 19th century evangelical activism on social matters. And that I think points you in a very different direction from that of the religious right.
Derek Kreider:Well, thank you very much. And that's that's all that I have for you in terms of questions. If there's anything that, that you think would be good to say at this point or anything that you think I've overlooked in regard to to propaganda or anything, I'd love to hear it.
Randall Balmer:No. I, I know you've been very thorough. I I think I I think one of the things that fuels this movement that is the religious right is, the rhetoric of victimization. And so you mentioned Hitler earlier, and I'm not trying to draw direct parallels between Hitler and the leaders of religious right. Please understand that.
Randall Balmer:I'm not I'm not doing that. But what the leaders of religious right have been so good at doing is painting themselves and by extension all evangelicals as victims in the culture in some way or another. And I I think, you know, there are arguably some basis for that, but I think it's it's it's it's grossly exaggerated if if there is. And, I I think frankly, that's one of the reasons they gravitated Donald Trump in 2016 is because, nobody speaks the language of victimization more fluently than Donald Trump. Now it's always about him.
Randall Balmer:He's always the victim, of course. But I think evangelicals rec, recognize that and it resonated with them in in some way. But I think as you pointed out earlier, there's real danger in that. There's real danger in that sort of, rhetoric. And we're we're seeing it playing out right now.
Derek Kreider:Alright. Well, thank you so much. I I enjoyed it. And, again, I appreciate you being willing to take time out of your day to do this.
Randall Balmer:I appreciate it, Derek. I wish you all the best. God bless.
Derek Kreider:Thanks. That's all for now. So peace, and because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it. This podcast is a part of the Kingdom outpost network. Please check out the links below to find other great podcasts and content related to nonviolence and Kingdom living.
