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Dieting for Jesus
...In the 1920s, conservative Protestants were on the margins of politics. Now they surround the president, as they did on 5th November 2003 when George W Bush signed a new law outlawing a surgical technique called (by its opponents) "partial-birth abortion." Such prominent conservative Christians as Falwell, Louis Sheldon, chairman of the traditional values coalition, Attorney General John Ashcroft, and Adrian Rogers, former head of the Southern Baptist Convention, were invited to the ceremony. People who once picketed the White House have a new home inside.

No wonder, then, that many Americans, and nearly all Europeans, believe that the Bush administration signals the arrival to power of people who are drowning in dogma, fundamentally intolerant, and at war with the modern world. It stands to reason that an administration beholden to people like Moore and Boykin would call the war against Islamic terror a "crusade," support so strongly a state of Israel that conservative Christians believe has to flourish for Christ to make his return to earth, seek to criminalise abortion, and tear down the wall separating church and state. After all, there is an election on the horizon - in America, there is always an election on the horizon - and to win it, the Bush administration must mobilise the huge base of conservative Christians for whom Moore, Boykin, and Falwell speak.

As persuasive as this picture of evangelical influence may seem, it is also significantly distorted. Moore, Boykin and Falwell, alas, are real. But they do not speak for nearly as many followers as most people, including even President Bush, believe. The demonstrators in the Alabama courthouse were small in number and quickly left when the statue was, in fact, removed. The truth is that they did not have all that much support. Southern Baptists, the largest denomination in the conservative Protestant camp, were founded on the principle of church-state separation and tend to view public displays such as Moore's as idolatry. Richard Cizik, vice-president of governmental affairs for the national association of evangelicals, an organisation that lobbies on behalf of America's born-again Christians, was one of many prominent evangelicals to view Moore's actions as embarrassing and irresponsible. "Most of the public knows how we feel about the role of God in public life," he said. "We have to substantiate that we are willing to work with non-Christians, secularists and others to achieve a common respect for each other."

Boykin's comments on the Muslim faith have not been similarly denounced by evangelical organisations. But nor do they capture the degree to which American evangelicals have moved in the direction of religious pluralism and toleration in the past few decades. Sociologist Christian Smith of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who has surveyed them extensively, finds that American evangelicals do believe in the idea of America as a "Christian nation," but when asked what that term means, 40 per cent said that America "was founded by people who sought religious liberty and worked to establish religious freedom." In addition, they are nearly unanimous in their conviction that evangelicals should not try to force their views on others. It remains the case that evangelicals are less tolerant than mainstream Protestants and Jews, but they are clearly more tolerant than the old-time fundamentalist religious movements out of which they emerged.

Smith's research is part of an ongoing effort to examine evangelicals themselves, rather than the activist clergy and ideologically-driven interest groups that speak in their name. What this research shows is that when religion and American culture come into conflict, as they often do, culture tends to shape religion far more than the other way around. And because US culture is individualistic, populist, entrepreneurial and experiential, old-time religions that stand for unchanging truths, rigid dogma, and strict conceptions of sin do not have much chance. ...

...Individuals associated with the Christian right want to believe that they can help save America from a slide into moral despondency. But in reality, Christians in America find themselves experiencing what I call "salvation inflation": the trend, very much like grade inflation, in which less is expected but more is rewarded. People whose taste for immediate gratification leads them to conclude that they can be saved just by pronouncing their faith in Jesus are unlikely to save themselves, let alone save their country.

...Evangelicals are certainly more prevalent in American society than they were decades ago. They have their man in the White House: President Bush, after all, is not an old-fashioned religious traditionalist but a born-again and recovered alcoholic who turns to Jesus not to wrestle with his soul, but to discover how right he has been all along. And they will, as democracy gives them every right to do, push for legislation that reflects their views on such issues as abortion or therapeutic cloning....