Is This Déjà Vu?

I am a product of the Jesus Movement that swept across the U.S. in the early 1970s.

 

Many of my generation felt betrayed by how our elders and government responded to the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, the corruption of the Nixon/Agnew administration, women’s liberation, and other societal fissures.

Timothy Leary’s “tune in, turn on, drop out” mantra seemed reasonable in light of our disillusionment with institutions that appeared blind to the inevitable course of cultural change.

The status quo was unfixable in our minds. And connected to that was religion, particularly Christianity, in my orbit. I wanted nothing to do with it.

From my perspective, Christians had cozied up to bigoted, power-hungry political leaders. While Billy Graham’s crusades aired at primetime, he was frequently phoning President Nixon. When the Watergate tapes were released, they exposed embarrassing conversations. While the media was doing investigative reporting on Watergate, Graham told Nixon that his wife “thinks it’s all a communist plot, left-wing and everything else.” Graham attacked the media, saying, “I felt like slashing their throats,” and later stating that the Jewish “stranglehold” on the media “has got to be broken or this country’s going down the drain.”

Meanwhile, Chuck Colson—later a Christian, but then Nixon’s “hatchet man” and Special Counsel—threatened to revoke network licenses unless they stopped reporting on Watergate. Nixon’s personal attorney pleaded guilty to laundering campaign money. Several in the administration eventually went to prison for various crimes. To me, it was rotten to the core.

Why would I want that version of Christianity? Why did Christians seem the first to call for war, cling to guns, and oppose racial equity? Martin Luther King Jr. practically begged for white pastors to speak up in his letter from a Birmingham jail.

But then came a reality check: the alternative fared no better.

The Beatles sang that all we needed was love, only to sue each other a few years later. I became disillusioned with our amorphous counter-culture and my own unmoored, ugly, self-centered behavior.

Into that milieu, the Holy Spirit came roaring through.

Jesus was like no one I had ever met. This was a leader I could follow. I didn’t always understand his followers, but his revolutionary “realness” overcame that barrier. If part of Bertrand Russell’s resistance, sadly, was due to his negative observations of Christians and their ethics, somehow the transformative effect of Jesus on my heart—and, frankly, its sin-breaking power—was greater than my disappointment with the institution.

So here we are today. And side note: Graham later deeply regretted his coziness with political power.

Religious demographer Ryan Burge noted in The New York Times that white evangelicalism has never been more politically unified. In the 1970s, only 40% of churchgoing evangelicals identified as Republicans; today, that number is 70%. Burge argues that millions are now drawn to the “evangelical” label not for a theological affinity for Christ, but for its association with the GOP. Unsurprisingly, Burge also found that self-identified evangelicals who attend church “seldom or never” rose from 10% in 2008 to over 25% in 2020. That data is several years old; I suspect the shift is even stronger now.

Regardless of party affiliation, why is it so difficult for the Church to learn from history, and be sidelined from her mission?

When the Church gets in bed with the State, has there ever been a good result?

I can only think of one bright spot: might an authentic move of the Holy Spirit be on the horizon… despite our collective amnesia?

Dave Workman | The Elemental Group

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