They Know Not What They Do

THE LEADERS of the Moral Majority crusade are absolutely convinced that they are right. Once the fire has seized the convert--once the seed of conviction is planted at a circus-tent revival meeting or through a multi-cassette mail-order course in Christian fundamentalism--it burns, un-flickering, fueled by the comfort of Absolutes. A protecting barrier between the flame and the winds of thought, rationality, diversity, and complication, the Bible is the answer book. Right-wing conservatism--the Way. The Book--the Truth. The flame--the Light. Only one thing missing: God.

The whole movement is based on a syllogism of sorts, an air-tight prescription for the ill-at-soul. It's all laid out in a pamphlet, "God's Simple Plan of Salvation," issued by the same independent Baptists who are attempting to carry the torch to Capitol Hill. Since you are human, you are a sinner. Since you are a sinner, you will die and go to hell unless you save yourself by accepting Christ as your personal Lord and Savior. Since you will go to hell if you are not saved, obtaining salvation is the only thing that should matter to you. From the pamphlet: "You say, 'Surely that is not all that is necessary to do to be saved.' Yes it is, absolutely all. Thank God many have been won to Christ by this simple plan."

So what does one do for the rest of one's life?--the simple plan can be carried out in less time than it takes to vote for Ronald Reagan. Here was the dilemma for the Baptist pastors who filtered into Massachusetts and other progressive states, ministers with just a handful of parishioners and tract racks brimming with yellowing brochures. The heathen--Jews prostitutes, homosexuals, Democrats, feminists, intellectuals, evolutionists, rock groups, Communists--weren't too hot on the Simple Plan. But after you've been saved yourself, the only meaningful thing to do is to help others save themselves. So the pastors had a problem: they were unemployed, so to speak.

As he saw them, his heart was filled with pity for them, because they were worried and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. --Matthew 9:36

THE PASTORS STOOD on street corners and in pulpits, but the Message did not reach many ears. Feeling worried and helpless (maybe bored), the pastors looked up the answer in the Book under Salvation, comma, the World. In their haste to find the recipe, they skipped over certain passages... "Do not judge others, so that God will not judge you, for God will judge you in the same way you judge others, and he will apply to you the same rules you apply to others." There wasn't time to read these lines--gay people were teaching their children.

Meanwhile: the spectre of nuclear devastation, overpopulation, finite energy sources, apartheid--these and a handful of other world conditions made it difficult for the unsaved to accept the Simple Plan. And those whom the Majority might regard as the pseudo-saved--people who called themselves Christian but not Fundamentalist--had accepted the simple plan but were looking for the Next Step. There was something unsettling about knowing that you were saved but that millions of little kids were starving to death around the world.

The pseudo-saved were confident that they would be saved because they had accepted the Simple Plan, but they figured that certain handicaps--hunger, disease, ignorance, subjugation, desolation, segregation--understandably made it difficult for others to hear The Word. They prayed to God for the strength to carry out the Next Step (overcoming the handicaps), but there were difficulties in the Straits of Hormuz and the Federal Reserve was raising the prime lending rate and the automobile plants were closing.

A lot of people began to wonder if God really wanted the Next Step to work out. When Sen. Ted Kennedy spoke at the Democratic convention, he implored them to trust their original instincts and to continue using their God-given talents and intellects in search of ways to overcome the handicaps. But people thought that Jonah had caught the whale to Nineveh too late. Ronald Reagan had already come ashore, and he was teaching the Simple Plan.

One blind man cannot lead another one; if he does, both will fall into a ditch.   --Luke 6:39

THE PASTORS CHEATED when they rode onto the political scene in the Moral Majoritymobile--the Bible doesn't preach neo-conservative doorbell ringing. The Moral Majority, however, has something to offer that the Next Step-New Deal-Liberal-Progressive stance does not: Something to do. The Majority's syllogism works like this: Since following the Simple Plan is better than lying dormant, we should follow the Simple Plan. Since the Simple Plan has nothing to say about the handicaps, we should ignore them.

The fire of fundamentalism is spreading, even though the next step in the "if, then" sequence is that if we ignore the handicaps then a lot of people will probably suffer and die, withough any chance for the salvation the fundamentalists want for them. In its new-found political limelight, the Moral Majority is seducing too many Americans into its truistic fantasyland. In its zeal to communicate the Word, the Moral Majority has forgotten who spoke it, and why. In its new-found political confidence, the Majority has intimidated America into doubting its confidence in the human ability to discern problems and try to solve them.