Biblical Literalism, Secularism And American Politics

by Christopher Lane
Huffington Post

In his recent “Newsweek” cover story, “Christianity in Crisis,” Andrew Sullivan gave at least three reasons for the crisis he sees afflicting American Christianity:
Many suburban evangelicals embrace a gospel of prosperity, which teaches that living a Christian life will make you successful and rich. Others defend a rigid biblical literalism, adamantly wishing away a century and a half of scholarship that has clearly shown that the canonized Gospels were written decades after Jesus’ ministry, and are copies of copies of stories told by those with fallible memory. Still others insist that the earth is merely 6,000 years old — something we now know by the light of reason and science is simply untrue.

One needn’t agree with Sullivan’s devout conclusion, that we should “follow Jesus but forget the Church,” to feel concern about how such troubling perspectives weigh on American society and politics. While biblical literalism is integral to evangelical faith, given its belief in the supposed purity of the biblical Word, evangelicals (as the recent wave of support for Rick Santorum attests) have put an indelible stamp on the choice and direction of countless positions in the Republican primary, from economic policy and taxation to healthcare and even access to birth control.
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