The reform side of religious enthusiasm

Ted Widmer writes in the New York Times magazine that the connection between liberals and evangelicals may be stronger than we think and as old as the nation. The connection is found, he says, in an inherent optimism and a common reformist streak.

Maybe the distance between liberals and evangelicals, each eternal optimists in their way, is much smaller than we realized. In our week of national reflection, it’s worth recognizing that religious enthusiasm in America has as often as not had a reformist or even revolutionary cast to it. Consider the Declaration of Independence. It is not normally seen as an evangelical statement, despite the heroic attempts of the Christian right to claim it as such. God is mentioned four times, but obliquely, and never by name. Even so, the argument against kings derived much of its power from the vigor of Christian thought. The historian Pauline Maier was right to label this bit of parchment our American Scripture.

. . . .

It may disconcert both liberals and evangelicals to learn that they have a lost history together. From Barry Goldwater to Ronald Reagan and onward, Republicans have been conspicuously more comfortable speaking about God than their opponents. Dwight Eisenhower may have started the trend when his 1953 inaugural parade featured “God’s Float,” which a religion writer likened to an oversize molar. No administration ever listened more attentively to evangelical voices than that of George W. Bush, who declared it the official policy of the United States to “rid the world of evil.”

At first blush, Barack Obama may strike evangelicals as an unreconstructed liberal or, in other words, beyond salvation. But he is wise to reach out to them at a moment when the geological sands are shifting beneath our feet. Now and then he speaks in the ancient accents, promising to create “a kingdom right here on earth” or arguing that “our individual salvation depends on our collective salvation.” Those phrases slip by, generally unnoticed by his partisans (who are evangelical in their own way). They are worth noting in the months ahead. Not only do they connect us to the richness of a deep American past; they might even point to the better future we’ve been waiting for since, well, forever.

Read the rest here.

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