Prior to Jerry Falwall, there was no such thing in America as "the religious right." The only unified voting block of a religious bent to be found in this nation was embodied by American Roman Catholics. Even though the non-Catholic portion of the American population of Christians (sometimes generically called "Protestants") outnumbered the Catholic portion, they were a disjointed group (a disjointed majority) who didn't get along with each other and could barely stand to be in the same room as each other. Baptists and Methodists were unable to look past doctrinal differences, so they almost never assembled jointly and certainly never met for political purposes. Henry Kissinger even made several suggestions to President Nixon (including a two-child policy forf population control) but fears of losing the Catholic vote often negated those ideas. No worries at all about the Protestant vote because no such vote existed at the time.
Jerry Falwell made the difference. And a new voting block was formed.
Meanwhile, all through the 1980's, a very important --and I think dangerous-- trend started to arise in the newer and hipper churches (especially the new "mega-churhces" that began popping up). It was called the "sheperding movement," and it eventually paved the way for the even more dangerous "submission to authority movement."
Sheperding churches took the positoin that a new convert needed INTENSIVE guidance in his first year of indoctrination, and so those churches would DEMAND strict adherence to such guidance. That movement was criticized for fostering a lack of free-thinking and making it difficult for church members to make any decisions without having to call a church elder. Sheperding isn't very common today.
But then the submission to authority churches which came soon after did something slightly similar, but more pervasive. They restuctured the way a church self-governs. Specifically, under the submission to authority model, there was no such thing as a vote -- a complete departure from the true roots of American Protestantism.
The early Puritan churches always had church meetings where all church members could vote. So did Congregational churches. So did Baptist churches. The idea of a congregation voting as seen in the early Puritan churches of the 1600's became the model for the voting which still happens in a typical New England Town Meeting here in the 21st century. And the utter normalness of the practice of everyone getting a vote made it easy for the Framers of the Constitution to structure the new nation of the USA to be one whose cornerstone was the public ballot box-- the majory of Americnas were already accustomed to being voters because of church and because of town meetings. MOST churches all through American church histry have always had a vote. But then the "submission to authority movement" in the 1980's changed all that.
Churches that have structured themselves in this model have no vote at all. The pastors make all the decisions and merely announce them from the pulpit. Anyone who doesn't like it is welcome to find another church.
This model of church governance works well in a very large church where there are multiple pastors. It's easier to make a large church run smoothly when the whole messy business of voting gets eliminated, and the pastors are given carte blanc to make decisions swiftly with no objections. And these very large and very smooth running churches are extremely attractive to young married couples with children who like all of the extra perks large church can offer, especially childcare and married couples counseling. So the tradeoff of losing the original democratic model that has been the hallmark of Protestant churches for over 400 years now, and exchanging it for babysitting services was not only not seen as an actual loss, the whole concept was accepted as the correct Biblical model of New Testament church leadsership. The American version of church governance with that whole voting business was dismissed as not being scriptural. The only time any of the pastors can be questioned is if one or more of them is clearly living in sin. Other than that, the team of pastors are God's chosen instrument for leading that church, and they are to be respected and submitted to. Discipline for dissent can range from anything to an on-the-carpet tongue lashing to being ordered to step down from a current position in the church to being asked to leave and even to being publically shunned.
I personally attended such a church back in the 1990's. And at first I was disturbed to learn that there was no such thing as a vote. But I stayed, and I got over my discomfort and defended my choice to my friedsn who went to more traditional churches where a vote was normal.
Here we are, over a generation later, and the submission to authority movement is still going strong. MOST mega-churches of today are the kind that do not have a vote. (The mega-churches that still hang onto voting ususally split after a while and sometimes never recover from the split. But thuse submission to authority churches almost never suffer splits and just keep getting bigger.)
The notion that any flavor of dictates can be handed down by the pastors and NOT questioned is a normal notion and embraced as the true model of Biblical Christianity. And I now fear that the flourishing of this model of how to structure church governance has resulted in spillover into people's perceptions of how to structure local, state and national governance.
I fear an entire generation of the religious right now believes that it's okay for one's legislators to make whatever demands they want. And we are to accept what they say without question.
Hand down a funky new piece of legislation saying no one can sing the National Anthem with undo embelishment or synchopation? No problem. Our leaders know what they are doing and are being led by God. We merely need to check the Bible (not the Constitution) if we ever want to make sure their actions and decisions are acceptable. (Which is why Bill Clinton will NEVER be forgiven for Monica Lewinski --he did that while he was in office, so he was living in overt sin while conducting that office, thus he needed to be removed from office.)
