Research On Religion » Richard John Neuhaus

Michael Cromartie on Religion, the Media, and Think Tanks

tonygill — Sun, 18 Oct 2015 08:00:22 +0000

Jay Hein on the Invisible Revolution. How did the secular and religious media react to the recent visit of Pope Francis to the United States? And what does a think tank do to influence the national dialogue and policymakers on a variety of issues related to religion and faith? These area a few of the questions we explore with Michael Cromartie, vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC. A former research assistant to Chuck Colson, member of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, and founder of The Faith Angle Forum, Mr. Cromartie has a unique perspective on the world of faith, the news media, and public policy.

We begin with a lesson on the Scottish pronunciation of names. Tony, being the football fan he is, mispronounces “Cromartie,” placing the emphasis on the wrong syllables, but Michael instructs him on the proper syllabic emphasis. And then it is off to a discussion on the pope’s recent trip to the United States. Instead of focusing on what the pontiff said, we look at how both the secular and religious media covered the event. Michael points out that the media is fascinated by Francis due to his lack of ostentation, but the coverage of what was said was skewed towards the economic and climate message, but avoided the cultural issues that were part of Francis’s message. We also talk about the liberal and secular nature of the national news media and the recent emphasis on “religious nones” and why a population that is seemingly becoming less religious would be so fascinated with this spiritual figure. Michael also tosses in some of his thoughts on how the Protestant media covered the pope and how this opens a door for evangelicals to reframe their image in the public square.

Tony follows this discussion by probing Mr. Cromartie’s background, wondering how he ended up in a Washington DC think tank. Michael reviews his high school and college experiences, including time living in a Christian commune, and how he surprisingly ended up working for Chuck Colson and getting mugged in Denver. It is from there that he eventually became linked to the Ethics & Public Policy Center (EPPC) in Washington DC. We then follow the conversation into the world of think tanks and discuss what the EPPC does and how it originated. Tony asks about how and whether such think tanks actually effect policy and Michael provides a number of examples of how EPPC attempts to slowly change the nation’s dialogue by bringing academics and policymakers together in a number of different forums. We discuss two of these programs that Mr. Cromartie helped shape — the Evangelicals in Civic Life Program and the Faith Angle Forum. As to the latter, Tony asks how the EPPC is trying to get journalists and academics to break out of the bubble they are in. Michael presents some of his thoughts on this.

We finish the interview with some of Mr. Cromartie’s personal reflections on his own life experience and how this might be useful for a younger generation. He notes that rather than trying to make a world-changing impact immediately when you are young, it is important to be “significant where you are right now,” which relates to being faithful in the ordinary tasks of life. Recorded: October 9, 2015.

Hunter Baker on the Past and Future of the Religious Right

tonygill — Sun, 03 Aug 2014 08:00:01 +0000

The Religious Right has been a force to be reckoned with in American politics over the past four decades, but is its influence on the wane as many of its initial leaders and intellectuals pass from the scene? Prof. Hunter Baker, associate professor of political science and Dean of Instruction at Union University, talks about the past, present, and future of this movement based upon his most recent book The System Has a Soul.

Following some light banter about puppies, Prof. Baker provides us with a definition of what the Religious Right is, noting that it has been a term that has been ill-defined and often used to refer to poor and uneducated religious voters. Hunter points out that this movement has some deep and surprising intellectual roots. While religious involvement in American politics has a long history, he dates the current movement back to William Jennings Bryan and the Scopes Monkey Trial and then picks up the story in the mid-20th century with the emergence of a number of “neo-evangelical” thinkers such as Carl F.H. Henry and Frances Schaeffer. We review the interesting influence these thinkers had and note the surprising activist background of these individuals, including Schaeffer’s willingness to “listen to hippies” and pro-labor attitudes (things that are not normally associated with the media caricature of the Religious Right).

We then talk about the emergence of the movement in the 1970s with individuals such as Chuck Colson arguing for religion to take on a more public profile and events such as the Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision playing an important mobilizing effect. This is where Hunter explains how Christians began to reject “functional differentiation” and helps Tony understand what that social scientific-sounding terms means. While many neo-evangelicals supported Jimmy Carter’s bid for the presidency in 1976 and that many Democrats were supporters of the pro-life movement that was gaining ground, Hunter points out the shift that occurs to the Republican Party in the 1980s with Ronald Reagan’s embrace of these individuals with his famous quote, “I know you can’t endorse me, but I endorse you.” Our conversation also covers the extent to which this movement was merely an evangelical Christian movement or whether it entailed non-Protestant thinkers such as Richard John Neuhaus.

We review the public rise of the Religious Right in the 1980s with reference to Falwell’s Moral Majority and Robertson’s Christian Coalition, but Hunter points out that it was James Dobson’s Focus on the Family that probably had the bigger and more lasting impact on the movement. Again he points out that Dobson, who has a Ph.D., is indicative of the scholarly grounding of the movement contrary to a media opinion that paints the movement as anti-intellectual. Although the demise of the Moral Majority and the election of Bill Clinton as president are often seen as indications of the waning of the Religious Right in the 1990s, Hunter asserts that the movement took on a more grassroots approach and was able to develop a “deeper bench” by electing adherents to office and placing them in the Academy. He makes the claim that the real peak of the Religious Right movement was around 2005. Disillusionment with the presidency of George W. Bush and the apparent failings of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan aided in eroding the influence of Christian conservatives during this time. We also discuss the politics surrounding same-sex marriage and how losses in the battle to ban gay marriage have also chipped away at the movement’s strength.

We finally turn our attention to the future of the Religious Right. Tony asks to what extent the Tea Party represents a revitalization of the Christian conservatives, but Prof. Baker notes that the Tea Party represents a distinct social movement. Nonetheless, he raises the issue of religious liberty and how Christians are now seeing this as a major issue that may allow them to align with the more libertarian leanings of the Tea Party. We also chat about the recent writings of Jonathan Malesic and James Davison Hunter who argue that it may be a time for Christians to embrace secularism and perhaps take a “season of silence.” Hunter provides his thoughts on this topic and we ruminate about the future of Christian political activism in the United States noting that there have been periods of waxing and waning throughout the long course of history and we may be witnessing one of those waning moments. Recorded: July 23, 2014.