Opinion: Fundamentalists' call to action

In 2011, the Public Religion Research Institute commissioned a survey of Americans asking if a politician behaved immorally, could they still carry out the duties of their office with integrity. The lowest affirmative score of 30% came from white evangelical Christians. But just five years later on the eve of the presidential election, they registered the highest score at 72%.

In 2017 when PRRI surveyed the same group of people asking it they thought Muslims or Christians faced more discrimination. The public - including mainline Protestantants, Catholics, and people of no faith - overwhelmingly agreed Muslims suffered more discrimination; only white evangelicals disagreed.

The dramatic retreat of the U.S. population from faith over the last few decades has left many evangelicals to consider their world view under siege. Their retrenchment toward a Calvinist contractual relationship with God has been most evident in 2 Chronicles 7:14 - the most cited biblical verse at Trump rallies - where God promises to heal the land of those that pray and seek his face and turn from their wicked ways. This has allowed them to disassociate Trump the man from Trump the religious crusader for God’s covenant.

But are white evangelicals really being persecuted?

In 1954, then Sen. Lyndon Johnson proposed an amendment that was voted into law prohibiting 501(c)3 organizations that included charities and churches from engaging in political campaign activity.

With less federal documentation required for their tax-exempt status than other non-profit organizations, churches already have deferential treatment under the law. Despite this, many of them, especially mega-churches have openly defied the requirements and routinely engaged in political organizing and campaigning. Their members have voted for Trump in staggering numbers.

But now our government is under siege and the guardrails are few. As the most powerful branch, Congress has remained quiescent, watching the executive and the judiciary - with its little enforcement ability - drive us toward a constitutional crisis.

The “Great America” of the 1950s, replete with its exclusivity, when most people belonged to a Christian church is not just gone, it never was. The biggest redemption the fundamentalist right can hope for is to call conservative Congressional Republicans to action in saving our Constitution and our democracy.

William Culbert is a retired physician who lives in Oak Ridge.