ABC Religious Coalition
by James Atticus Bowden

The liberals howled at so-called "Justice Sunday." It was way too 'uppity' of Senator Bill Frist to mention a political issue--majority rule on votes for judges--from a Baptist church in Kentucky and through a simulcast to over 1,000 other churches throughout the nation.

The Religious Right is not supposed to speak out in public. Or serve as judges. Or get elected. Or even vote, even though millions did in '04. At the same time, liberals covet their vote. Liberals just don't understand the ABCs of the Religious Right.

Democrat Chairman Howard Dean says his party must reach out to religious people but he remains clueless on winning votes from them. He thinks he does not have to support their issues but just trot out their churchy people for the mainstream media and say a few platitudes and it will all turn out right. He does not understand his ABCs.

Assemblies (of God), (Southern) Baptists, and (Roman) Catholics are the ABCs of the Religious Right. There are others, especially independent community Bible churches and Orthodox Jews, but the unity and numbers presented by ABCs' disparate peoples of faith are the building blocks.

The irony of the ABC alliance is that these Pentecostals, orthodox Protestants, and traditional Catholics hold such diverse views on church dogma. Formerly, they held one another in contempt more than in Christian love. But, today, the very fundamentals of their theology, which are the same, are threatened by Secularist Humanists at home and Islamists from abroad. The future of the nation and Western civilization depends on ABC ecumenical agreement on basics. Otherwise, the ABCs agree to disagree respectfully and privately on precisely how to be the physical body of Christ on Earth as His Church.

Yet, not every co-religionist is a Religious Right voter. Most of the Baptists (17 million), and Assemblies of God (3 million) and about a third of the Catholics (20 out of 60 million) will vote Christian values. Voting patterns are based on reading the Bible (see www.Barna.org). So, some Eastern Orthodox, Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and even Episcopalians will identify as Religious Right. Those other denominations represent their own minority. Their Bible believers are on the defensive in their churches against Christians who dilute the faith.

These Christians, who like to be called 'Progressives', think it is progressive to selectively read the Bible to emphasize fundamentalist snake-handing so they can appear relatively thoughtful by contrast, confuse same-sex with sacraments and distain ABCs more than Satan -- even if they believed in him. But Progressive Christian denominations are declining. The ABCs are growing.

In America , the ABCs must connect the dots from Bible values to issues not to political parties. The Republicans are not salvation. The Republicans respond to political power. ABCs must not put trust in Republicans like many black Protestants do in Democrats. The movement of black Christian ministers and flocks off the Democrat plantation is slow but it is gaining. If and when Republicans fail to produce results, ABCs should dump them as well.

The ABC Catholics bring a confidence from tradition that is absolutely unshakeable. The Baptists and Pentecostals bring what historian Arnold Toynbee described as the uncommon energy, activity, purposefulness and assurance of Calvinism. Theologians may sniff that neither faith is strictly Calvinist. But they inherit enough to maintain the undiminished missionary dynamism for over four hundred years. Despite their small numbers they remain 'Possunt quia posse videntur' (they can because they believe they can) -- and will.

The ABC core beliefs created the courage of convictions for our Revolution, Civil War, Manifest Destiny, unions and Industrial Age reforms, integration, and defending freedom, and now are the fire in the belly for the culture war and the war against terrorism. Progressive Christians once shared this heritage, but that was when they were still biblically Christian and understood. Until they return to these basics, they will never get their ABCs and will never win them to their cause.

James Atticus Bowden has specialized in inter-disciplinary long range 'futures' studies for over a decade. He is employed by a Defense Department contractor. He is a retired United States Army Infantry Officer. He is a 1972 graduate of the United States Military Academy and earned graduate degrees from Harvard University and Columbia University. He holds three elected Republican Party offices in Virginia.

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