TONIGHT

• Home
• Video
• Podcasts/RSS 
• Local Showtimes
• Past Shows
• Blogs
• About the Show
• Tell Tavis
• Features
• Mobile

RELATED LINKS

• Christianity Today magazine
• Excerpt from Thy Kingdom Come
• Dr. Balmer's bio

E-mail a friend

Tavis: Randall Balmer is an acclaimed religious scholar and professor of American religion at Barnard College at Columbia University. He's also the producer of three documentaries for PBS, including one on the life of Billy Graham. His latest book is 'Thy Kingdom Come, How the Religious Right Distorts The Faith And Threatens America.' Professor Balmer, nice to have you out here on the west coast, sir.

Randall Balmer: Good to be here, thank you, Tavis.

Tavis: Good to have you here. One of the things that I guess I've known, and I've had enough of these conversations, but it really didn't hit me in the way that it did until I got a chance to look at your text, which is to be reminded of the fact that evangelicalism, historically in this country, has been aligned with progressive causes.

Balmer: That's right. Throughout the nineteenth century, absolutely.

Tavis: Talk about that.

Balmer: Well, and that's one of the things, one of the reasons for writing the book, is that I felt that the religious right, at the turn of the twenty-first century, did not represent the noble legacy of nineteenth century evangelical activism that invariably took the part of those on the margins of society. They're the ones who energized the abolitionist campaign.

The Temperance movement, which was in the nineteenth century a progressive cause. They were working for comprehensive education. They were very much concerned about the education of women, and also voting rights for women. And as I survey the religious right at the turn of the twenty-first century, I don't find any real parallel interests.

Tavis: I don't wanna get too far ahead of myself, but what's the primary reason for that turn?

Balmer: (laughs) It's complicated. It has to do with changes in American society. In the late part of the nineteenth century, with immigration, industrialization, urbanization. Also I think it has to do with the Cold War in some ways. The kind of fixation with anti-Communism kind of diverted evangelicals away from being progressives or liberals, even.

Tavis: Help me understand that one better, the connection between evangelicals and the Cold War, and the politics of it.

Balmer: Well, I think they were, it took place primarily in the realm of personal friendships. Richard Nixon and Billy Graham, for example, came together in the 1950s, primarily because both of them were anti-Communist crusaders. And as Nixon went in his political direction, Billy Graham kind of followed along. I'm not trying to blame Graham solely, but Graham was part of that. And I think it kind of moved evangelicalism more in the realm of conservative politics, rather than liberal, which is their heritage.

Tavis: To your point, let me ask a quick question. This takes us afield, far afield, but I promise I'll bring us right back here. But since you've done the documentary on Billy Graham, and you've studied this man's life and legacy, and there's no question he's a great and iconic American...

Balmer: Absolutely.

Tavis: No question about it, I think we agree on that point. Tell me, though, whether or not you think that Billy Graham has been courageous, or to the contrary, I don't wanna use the word cowardice, but when you are that towering a religious figure, and you find a way to stay right in the middle of Democrat and Republican Presidents - I had a friend down in Texas who says the only thing you find in the middle of the road is a dead armadillo.

Balmer: (laughs) Dead armadillo, right.

Tavis: I've never figured out whether or not it's a good thing or a bad thing, or how, in fact, Billy Graham stayed so middle of the road. Talk to me about that before I come back to the text here.

Balmer: Well, I think he did it quite self-consciously. He was very conscious of trying not to be overly political. I think he strayed away from that. Nixon kind of led him astray, but let's face it, Nixon led a lot of people astray. (laughs)

Tavis: (laughs) Yeah. Like a whole country.

Balmer: That's right. But he's consistently said that he wanted to work on individual regeneration. If you ask Billy Graham, as I have, how do you change society, he rejects the religious right. I don't wanna speak for him, but he does reject the actions and the policies of the religious right, precisely because he would say the way to change society is to change men's hearts.

This is, I'm quoting him. Meaning that the aggregate change of individual regeneration would result finally in a reformation in society. So he has shied away from both the social gospel impulse at the turn of the twentieth century, as well as from the religious right at the turn of the twenty-first century.

Tavis: All right, so Billy Graham aside, and I'll come back to the text, I promise, is it possible to wield that kind of, for lack of a better phrase, spiritual clout, and not fundamentally, in a head-on, direct way, address the social ills, the political ills, the economic ills, of a society in the way that, say, Dr. King, another important figure, did.

Balmer: That's right, yeah.

Tavis: Can you avoid doing that?

Balmer: Well, he has avoided doing that. (laughs) And I think some people have criticized him for doing that. I honor Billy Graham. I think he's done a lot of wonderful things. He's a wonderful person, and certainly a lot of people claim that he has provided for them, or pointed them in the direction of a spiritual transformation. I guess, if I had my druthers, I wish that he had been more directive with the kinds of issues that you're talking about.

Had he done so, had he been present, for example, at the March On Washington in 1963, or the march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, that would have been a powerful, powerful statement.

Tavis: Back to the text, though. The book is called, as I mentioned earlier, 'Thy Kingdom Come.' The subtitle, 'An Evangelical's Lament.' Before I get to your lament, tell me about your own spiritual journey, starting as a kid.

Balmer: Oh, (laughs) I was thoroughly reared within the evangelical subculture. My father was a minister for 40 years in the Evangelical Free Church, so I was a pastor's kid, moving around the Midwest to his various churches. And I went off to an evangelical college, as well as a seminary. I think I drifted away from the faith a little bit in graduate school. Not so much out of overt rebellion, but just kind of a lack of interest.

Tavis: Don't feel bad, a lot of folk do that in graduate.

Balmer: Absolutely, sure.

Tavis: And in my case, undergraduate. (laughs) That's another issue, go ahead.

Balmer: That was part of it. And then I found myself being drawn back eventually to the faith. And ironically, it was, in fact, the televangelist scandals in the 1980s that brought me back to the faith, because I decided at that point to try to write a book that would look at grassroots evangelicalism. Pentecostals, Fundamentalists, Sanctified Tradition, and camp meetings, and that sort of thing.

And there I was able to reconnect with the people of real faith and integrity, far away from the klieg lights of the televangelists. And to appreciate a new, what the new testament calls the scandal of the gospel. The fact that Jesus somehow, through the miracle of grace, takes our sad, broken lives, and somehow makes us whole.

Tavis: That's a fascinating draw, and one could argue, I grew up in a Pentecostal church, as you just mentioned, one could argue that it would have had to be Jesus to pull you back, vis a vis a scandal, because those are the things that run us away, (laughs) never, ever to return. I'm fascinated how that actually pulled you back in.

Balmer: Well, it did indirectly. The catalyst for writing the book, called 'Mine Eyes Have Seen The Glory,' was that the media seemed to think that all evangelicals in America were either easily duped, or the moral equivalent of Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart, and somebody who grew up within that tradition, and also as somebody who's a historian of religion in America, I felt I could offer a different approach. So that's what got me back into the grass roots to, to reconnect with my faith.

Tavis: Okay, so you reconnect, and yet you have, as an evangelical, a lament. The lament is primarily what?

Balmer: The lament is that I think the religious right has taken the good news of the new testament, something that is lovely and redemptive, and turned it into something that is ugly and punitive. They cherry pick passages from the scriptures, and use them to bludgeon their political enemies. My second lament, we already touched on, is that the religious right has defaulted on the example and the legacy of nineteenth century evangelical activists.

And the book is written more in sorrow, frankly, than anger, and I want to point evangelicals back to the gospel, back to the teachings of Jesus. Jesus, as you know, said a whole lot about caring for the poor. Those who are the least of these, to use his language. Very little, well, nothing at all, in fact, about issues like homosexuality and abortion.

Tavis: Can one, this is not a trick question, although it may sound like it, can one, Professor Balmer, be progressive, in a contemporary sense, be progressive and not be perceived as political? Can you be progressive and not political in the spiritual realm?

Balmer: Sure, I think so. I think, but at some point, for me, as a believer, as somebody who numbers himself among the followers of Jesus, I've always tried to negotiate the intersection between my faith and how that faith plays out in the political arena. And I wanna be clear about this book, I'm not saying that people of faith should not be active in politics, or make their voices heard in the arena of public discourse.

In fact, I think that the arena of public discourse would be impoverished without those voices. But I do think there's a real danger in aligning the faith with a particular ideology, a particular political party, and in this case, even a specific administration.

Tavis: I got a few minutes left. Let me throw a few issues at you, and get more on your lament with regard to the right and these issues. Abortion.

Balmer: My quarrel with the religious right is that I think they're insufficiently pro-life. And that is, if you construct a moral case against abortion, which, by the way, I think you can. Now I wanna be careful to say also that I think legally abortion should be legal. I have no interest in making abortion illegal. I think it should be unthinkable. That is, I think that the moral climate should be changed so that abortion is not a serious option in most cases.

But if you construct a moral case against abortion, it seems to me you have to be consistent about that. You have to at least call into question the morality of capital punishment. Certainly the war in Iraq falls under some sort of indictment at some level, it seems to me. But torture. In the course of writing this book, I contacted eight religious right organizations, asked them, very straightforward message, please send me a copy of your organization's position on the use of torture.

I received only two replies, both of them supported the use of torture. Now, these are people who claim to be pro-life. These are people who profess to hear a fetal scream. And yet they're saying torture is all right.

Tavis: Intelligent design, otherwise known as creationism?

Balmer: Actually, I think intelligent design is the surest proof I've come across for the existence of evolution. (laughs) Because you...

Tavis: (laughs) I see where you're going. All right, yeah.

Balmer: You take the ancient Hebrew story of creation, which doesn't pretend to be either history or science, and then you wanna put it in the public schools so you make it into creationism, the courts come along and strike that down, so that it evolves into scientific creationism. Courts come along, and then you have intelligent design. I can't wait to see what's next.

Tavis: What, the exit question, if I can, what can be done here? If your interest is in turning this thing in a different direction, in righting the ship, as it were, how do we do that?

Balmer: I think people of faith and people of conscience need to stand against the religious right. I think they need to call the religious right to account. These are people who claim allegiance to the scriptures, and yet they have so twisted and contorted the scriptures for particular political ends that they have, I think, compromised the gospel itself.

That's one step. Organizing a kind of groundswell of dissent against the leaders of the religious right. I'm careful to say in the book that I don't think it's the rank and file evangelicals who've got astray. I think it's the leaders who have led them astray. And they have this huge media empire, as you know, that is very difficult to resist. James Dobson, every time he wants to say something, millions of people hang on every word.

Tavis: But it assumes - I gotta get out of here, make room for Reverend Johnson Cook, I'm delighted to have both of you on the show at the same time. On the same show, rather. I hear your point, but that assumes that these followers are either stuck on stupid, or willingly drinking the Kool-Aid. Come on.

Balmer: No, I don't think they are.

Tavis: They're not putting a gun to these people's heads, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, there ain't a gun to these people's heads.

Balmer: No, that's right. But their media presence is so huge. I liken it sometimes to a vortex. You have this kind of mutually reinforcing rhetoric, and it's very hard for people to kind of stand outside of it, or step outside of it and say, wait a minute, is this right? I'm trying to do this with this book, other people are trying to make similar efforts. Problem is, we don't have the same kind of media empire that the religious right has.

Tavis: I wish I had more time to give you, but I think we used this well, though.

Balmer: Well, good. (laughs)

Tavis: 'Thy Kingdom Come, An Evangelical's Lament. How The Religious Right Distorts The Faith And Threatens America,' by Professor Randall Balmer, author of 'Mine Eyes Have Seen The Glory' and two or three PBS specials. Great read. Nice to have you here.

Balmer: My pleasure, thank you.

Tavis: My pleasure to have you. Up next, Dr. Suzan Johnson Cook from New York's Believer's Christian Fellowship. Stay with us.