The Rise and Fall of the Religious Left by L. Benjamin Rolsky;

Author:L. Benjamin Rolsky;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc. (Tier 3)

Due to Lear’s own investments in religious liberal ways of thought that tended to see the universal in religious particulars, he and PFAW saw little at issue when speaking of a common vision for the country when articulated by the members of his interfaith advisory board. Once circulated within the media, however, such suggestions took on a defensive quality in an attempt to name their most visceral enemy—the Christian Right. For Falwell and others in the electronic church, PFAW represented anything but the liberty-centered nonprofit it claimed to be. In fact, for many on the Christian and political right, “the separation of church and state came to be, by and large, the isolation of religion from politics.” Lear and PFAW expected citizens of the United States to behave civilly when conducting themselves politically, yet with the arrival of Falwell, Swaggart, and the electronic church, each of the tenets espoused and defended by the nonprofit came into view in the less than flattering light of intolerance. As a result, the tolerant gradually became intolerant of intolerance itself, as witnessed in the speeches and writings of the Christian Right.106

For Lear and PFAW, the diagnosis was a simple one—the Right did not follow the “ethic of civility” in its political activities.107 As perceived “peddlers” of divisiveness and belligerency, Falwell and others left little to moderation or gentility. Theirs was a politics of offense rather than “no-fense.” Their voices were to be heard no matter what in a manner fitting to an increasingly mediated age. As sociologist James Davison Hunter fittingly describes it, “The ‘New Christian Right’ has violated the moral strictures of civility by crossing over the barriers separating public and private spheres and attempting to retain, through political means, traditional moral standards. With the relatively forceful reintroduction of conservative Protestant symbols into the public realm, political decorum was besmirched.”108 In light of this particular description, the accusations of PFAW were not only designed to draw attention to the dangers of conservative religiosity, they were also part of a larger strategy of maintenance and protection of public space itself from the likes of Falwell and his generous congregations.

Lear’s and PFAW’s desire to raise the nation’s collective awareness concerning these threats stemmed from its commitment to defending free speech as a First Amendment right, yet the nonprofit’s cultural productions accomplished a great deal more once uttered to eager audiences and journalists the country over. The numerous publications and addresses of PFAW, in addition to the writings and productions of Lear himself, “set the discursive terms of civil society by naming and locating the sacred and the profane, while simultaneously prescribing the rules of engagement for the ritual interaction of both in public space … under the name of civic protection.”109 It is in this sense that we can name such acts of discursive fashioning as part of the religious mechanics of civility. These processes were intimately related to the interfaith politics of consensus on which Lear and PFAW grounded many of their arguments for a more civil space of American politics.

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