Evangelicals and the Wrong Side of History

President Obama’s affirmation of same sex marriage has raised evangelical ire. While polls indicate that Americans are evenly split over the issue, a multi-racial chorus of evangelicals has sang a sad song of dismay with the refrain “pro-gay marriage is anti-Christian”.

What is really at stake in this recent dust up is the age old tension between religion and democracy in the United States. One way to read the history of the United States is to comprehend the way in which religion has been used to either expand or restict democracy.

There were conservative religious leaders that used the story of Ham and the Apostle Paul’s admonishment for slaves to be obedient to their masters to justify chattel slavery. Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and a host of other Christians used the Bible to justify the inclusion of African Americans in the promise of American democracy.

While evangelicals used Bible verses to deny women the right to vote, a very religious Fredrick Douglass and the suffrage movement used the Bible to support the full enfranchisement of women. In solitary confinement on an Easter Weekend, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr responded to the criticism from conservative clergy who thought his voting rights campaign was ill-timed. Today, King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” is considered one of the greatest religious letters of the 20th century. Even though the evangelicals cast Roe v. Wade as Christian vs. anti-Christian, it has its origins in a pro-choice gathering of United Methodist Women in a Texas church basement.
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