Go quickly to the sub-title of this large volume, “The Rise of the Religious Right in America”.  Written by William Martin, a highly respected professor of philosophy and religion at Rice University, it is a very readable book about one of the most volatile subjects in our land today.  Martin is best known in Christian circles for his recent, excellent biography of Billy Graham.

      He approaches the hot button subject of the Religious Right in America with a historian’s keen eye and with a philosopher’s fine balance.  The book, contrary to what some might expect, is not judgmental because of this interweaving of authentic historical perspective.  That leads to what some will consider to be a major weakness in this volume:  obviously needed conclusions are not made.  The author remains consistently objective, however, in pursuing the course of this intensely controversial movement in American life today.

      Martin sails confidently into these turbulent waters with well-honed skills, using multiple interviews with Religious Right leaders as well as a number of political leaders.  The reader will appreciate the careful research that has been done.  One of the most helpful aspects of the book is his chronicling of the earliest beginnings of the Religious Right political movement.  He traces this uniquely American religious development from Billy Graham’s early years of evangelism through Jerry Falwell and his abortive Moral Majority movement to the blending of Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition and Ralph Reed’s current fronting for him.

      One of the book’s finest contributions comes from this tracing of the origins of the movement.  How did all of this come about?  Despite the aura surrounding Billy Graham, the famous evangelist, figures prominently in these developments with his insistent cries about the moral trends of the land serving as the primary rallying cry for the Religious Right.

    Martin effectively ties personalities on to the sequence of political and historical events of this timeframe, particularly since Kennedy became president in 1960.  The survey of events and people is remarkable:  the assassination of Kennedy, the Vietnam War, LBJ and The Great Society programs, Nixon’s rise and fall with the intimate and reprehensible involvement of Billy Graham with him, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton!  Martin’s paragraphs on Jimmy Carter as a well-known Christian, the hostility of the Republican-Evangelicals, and the Reagan Republican identification with the Religious Right are vital pages in this development.

      Instead of concluding that American democracy is amazingly resilient and competent in its structure to withstand and correct most of its ills, the Religious Right has concluded that America is almost beyond repair.  “Let’s make America a Christian nation like it was from the very beginning” is the theme of many.  This leads to the reconstruction theology which is more widespread than many may realize.  The combination of an intense millennialism with a sometimes equally intense charismatic manifestation, explains why some in the Religious Right view any degree of compromise and balance as a sellout.

     Among the names that Martin weaves into this survey are Jimmy Swaggert, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, D. James Kennedy, Charles Stanley, James Dodson, Bill McCartney, Bill Bright, Tim and Beverly LaHaye, Phyllis Schafley, Richard Viguerie, Jesse Helms, C. Everett Koop, James Robinson, W.A. Criswell, Paul Weyrich, and Adrian Rogers.  These are not all the Religious Right figures interviewed or quoted, but these provide a feel for the width and influence of the Religious Right campaign which takes on the characteristics of a religious Jihad.  Tied into these personalities and their money machine enterprise is the development of religious television and computer communications which have sprung up and grown in recent decades.  These entrepreneurs quickly learned how to use the new media.  Pat Robertson and his famous 700 Club provide a timely illustration of this.

      So we have a movement, hot-wired now directly into the Republican Party, crossing all denominational lines, surprisingly effective in communication through computerized mailing lists, books, television programming, “Christian” bookstores, and radio talk shows, zeroing in on political control of local school boards, city councils, state legislatures, judges, the Congress, and the White House.  Clinton’s veto of one particular anti-abortion bill and his failed initiative related to homosexuals in the military have helped to galvanize a visceral distrust and virulent hatred.

      This is not a pleasant book to read because the reader’s blood pressure is directly related to personal convictions about these issues.  Attacks on public school education, a concerted effort to undermine the courts, and the ridiculing of separation of church and state further heighten the furor in American political and religious life today.

      Martin concludes this book by suggesting that the momentum of the Christian Coalition, essentially the heartbeat of the Religious Right, is still strong and upbeat despite significant setbacks, which they insist are temporary, in the 1996 general elections.

      With God on Our Side is a book well worth reading.  It is timely.  It is well-researched.  It is not hostile.  It should be required reading by all sides.  It is, however, an invitation to frustration because Martin points to very little light at the end of this tunnel.

Updated Monday, April 16, 2001