The Ebbing Religious War

When the Senate refused to remove Bill Clinton from the presidency, conservative thinker and writer Paul M. Weyrich stunned the religious right with his declaration that the cultural wars in American politics were over and lost. Society is disintegrating under the influence of an alien ideology, declared the man who coined the term “Moral Majority.” He added that it cannot be saved by religious influence on the American political system.

The truth is, it’s a bit early to write off the attempt by Christian conservatives to put the political system on a more righteous course. Steve Forbes and Rep. John R. Kasich (R-Ohio), campaigning for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination, already are talking of a national “moral and spiritual crisis.”

But even if we accept Weyrich’s premise, he still is wrong about the cause of the movement’s decline. It is not because we are a corrupt society descending into an ideological sewer. In fact, the major American political parties are becoming less ideological and more oriented toward pragmatism and problem solving. The real reason is that the vast majority of Americans do not believe government should dictate religious and moral values to them.

This does not mean Americans are anti-religion or morally bankrupt. Polls indicate that most attend religious services or hold some religious belief. But they also believe their faiths should be expressed through the church, temple or mosque, or in how they live their private lives, and not through the political process.

Today, far-right Republicans lament the lack of outspoken leaders like Ronald Reagan on issues such as prayer in school and abortion. They forget that Reagan never pushed those issues as part of his agenda once he was elected.

Religion’s clash with establishment politics began some years ago, but it didn’t become commonly known as a “cultural war” until 1992. The term came from a fiery speech by conservative commentator Patrick J. Buchanan, then as now a presidential candidate, before the Republican National Convention in Houston.

But the term was fuzzy and misleading because the conflict always was more than a cultural war. Buchanan actually said: “There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war . . . .”

Culture is one thing--ideas and customs surely have a place in political discourse. That was not particularly threatening. But it was something else to fight a religious war in the political arena. Two pioneers of the religious right, columnist Cal Thomas and Edward Dobbins, put it correctly when they wrote in The Times’ Commentary page that moral revival “is not the job of politics. That is the unique work of the church.”

This is not to suggest that any limits should be placed on political debate. What is wrong is to demand that religious doctrine be accepted on faith as public policy. Fortunately, the vast majority of the American voting public has demonstrated the ability to separate one from the other. That is why the religious war is not being won.