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Authors: Lawrence Kaplan
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technology has raised their public profile. Liberals had simply forgotten that large numbers of people did not share their beliefs and values. The cosmopolitans and intellectuals who supervised the media and ran the bureaucracies of the major denominations had concentrated on the struggles for the rights of women and blacks, on the student movement, and on the protests against the Vietnam War, and neglected the American conservative Protestant. It is not so much fundamentalism but public awareness of fundamentalism that has been born again. Insofar as some element of growth was involved in the rise of the new Christian right, it was the growth of evangelical and fundamentalist self-confidence, part of which came as an incidental feature of the rise of the sunbelt.
Similarly, the increased politicization of fundamentalism should not be seen as a reaction, if by doing so one implies that it is fundamentalists who have changed markedly. Insofar as there is a reactive element, it is not in the beliefs and values of fundamentalism but in the subculture's recognition that, to hold what it had and to avoid losing more, it must actively resist. If one is looking for a single word to describe the rise of the new Christian right, then "reassertion" would be appropriate.
Fighting Back
Fundamentalists are moved to fight back, either by changing the content of liberal and cosmopolitan culture or, more typically, by resisting the incursions of that culture and demanding the right to social space. I have tried to show that such resistance has a series
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of ironic consequences. To have any chance of success, it must concede many of the things fundamentalists wish to preserve. When the concessions are not made, the NCR's claim to being a serious political movement is undermined. Given the smallness of the conservative Protestant population and its regional concentration, realistic political action requires pragmatism and accommodation. To have any hope of maintaining the social practices they believe their religion requires, fundamentalists must compromise what is distinctive about that religion. In the world view that creates the particular reasons conservative Protestants have for resisting modernism, Catholics and Jews are not Christians, and Mormonism is a dangerous cult. But legislative and electoral success requires that fundamentalists work in alliance with such groups and with secular conservatives.
The final irony of the position of contemporary fundamentalists is revealed in their attitude toward minority rights. Fundamentalists object to the language of group rights, first because their religious and political ideologies are constructed around individualism, and second because the groupsracial minorities, feminists, and homosexualswhich have so far deployed the notion of group rights represent causes that fundamentalists have to date opposed. Nevertheless, the new Christian right has been most successful in the public arena when it has presented its own cause as that of an oppressed and hard-done-by minority. As yet, this rhetoric appears only occasionally in fundamentalists' complaints about the neglect of their values and in the strategic thinking of NCR lobbyists and lawyers. But it is easy to imagine it taking hold and serving as a vehicle for coming to terms with modern America. The regionalism expressed in "states' rights" will become the pluralism of minority rights and with it will come the end of any dream of a Christian empire.
The Defeat of the NCR
It is perhaps premature to explain the failure of a social movement that has not yet died, but enough of the signs are already therein fact, have always been there for those who wished to see themfor us to attempt an explanation.
Page 47
The first point to make is that the potential support base for the NCR was always smaller than many commentators noticed. First, the movement has failed to attract the support of any significant number of conservative Catholics,
Similarly, the increased politicization of fundamentalism should not be seen as a reaction, if by doing so one implies that it is fundamentalists who have changed markedly. Insofar as there is a reactive element, it is not in the beliefs and values of fundamentalism but in the subculture's recognition that, to hold what it had and to avoid losing more, it must actively resist. If one is looking for a single word to describe the rise of the new Christian right, then "reassertion" would be appropriate.
Fighting Back
Fundamentalists are moved to fight back, either by changing the content of liberal and cosmopolitan culture or, more typically, by resisting the incursions of that culture and demanding the right to social space. I have tried to show that such resistance has a series
Page 46
of ironic consequences. To have any chance of success, it must concede many of the things fundamentalists wish to preserve. When the concessions are not made, the NCR's claim to being a serious political movement is undermined. Given the smallness of the conservative Protestant population and its regional concentration, realistic political action requires pragmatism and accommodation. To have any hope of maintaining the social practices they believe their religion requires, fundamentalists must compromise what is distinctive about that religion. In the world view that creates the particular reasons conservative Protestants have for resisting modernism, Catholics and Jews are not Christians, and Mormonism is a dangerous cult. But legislative and electoral success requires that fundamentalists work in alliance with such groups and with secular conservatives.
The final irony of the position of contemporary fundamentalists is revealed in their attitude toward minority rights. Fundamentalists object to the language of group rights, first because their religious and political ideologies are constructed around individualism, and second because the groupsracial minorities, feminists, and homosexualswhich have so far deployed the notion of group rights represent causes that fundamentalists have to date opposed. Nevertheless, the new Christian right has been most successful in the public arena when it has presented its own cause as that of an oppressed and hard-done-by minority. As yet, this rhetoric appears only occasionally in fundamentalists' complaints about the neglect of their values and in the strategic thinking of NCR lobbyists and lawyers. But it is easy to imagine it taking hold and serving as a vehicle for coming to terms with modern America. The regionalism expressed in "states' rights" will become the pluralism of minority rights and with it will come the end of any dream of a Christian empire.
The Defeat of the NCR
It is perhaps premature to explain the failure of a social movement that has not yet died, but enough of the signs are already therein fact, have always been there for those who wished to see themfor us to attempt an explanation.
Page 47
The first point to make is that the potential support base for the NCR was always smaller than many commentators noticed. First, the movement has failed to attract the support of any significant number of conservative Catholics,
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