Claiming the Religious Right's Mantle

Was Jerry Falwell more politician than preacher? Time will decide, but it is the politician who seeks to play Elisha to Elijah. Newt Gingrich delivered his Liberty University commencement speech in such a way as to claim his place as the one who will lead the "Christianist" army forward.

According to Robert Parham's Ethic's Daily commentary, Gingrich has offered a conflation of religion and nationalism as our hope for the future. Here is an insightful section worth pondering. But of course read the entire piece!

With Falwell now passed from the scene, Gingrich wants America to believe the Moral Majority founder entrusted him to bear this witness, just as Falwell bore it before him.

By conflating the Bible and Declaration of Independence, the former House Speaker fashions a civil religion, which is an inauthentic religion, in the search for power.

In Gingrich, the witness becomes the politician. The Christian God becomes national deity.
The Christian faith becomes the prevailing cultural ideology. The people of God become synonymous with the messianic American community.

That is a false faith, and dangerous.

Authentic religion from the best of the Christian tradition transcends every nation and sits in judgment of every culture. as the solution to the modern American Christian feeling of diminished power.