Dan Wakefield is a novelist, journalist, and screenwriter. He is the author of two best-selling novels Going All The Way and Starting Over, which were produced as feature films. His memoir New York in The Fifties was also produced as a documentary film.
Currently, Wakefield is Writer-in-Residence at Florida International University's Writing Program. A graduate of Columbia University, he has also taught at Boston University and the Iowa Writer's Workshop.
In addition to five novels, Wakefield has written 11 non-fiction books. Some of these books include: Expect a Miracle, Creating from the Spirit, and How Do We Know When It's God? Wakefield has also been a Neiman Fellow at Harvard and a grantee of the National Endowment for the Arts. His work has appeared in The New York Times magazine, The Nation, Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly and GQ.
His book The Hijacking of Jesus: How The Religious Right Distorts Christianity and Promotes Prejudice and Hate was recently published by Nation Books. I reached Wakefield in Miami, Florida.
Gerry McCarthy: In The Hijacking of Jesus you write that: "The anti-American charge has become part of the right-wing religion's standard litany of diatribe. When the Women's Division of the United Methodist Church (UMC), a favourite target of Religious Right groups, urged the president after 9/11 to use diplomacy rather than war to end terrorism, the president of Good News labelled the statement 'virulently anti-American.'" Do you think there's a growing awakening to the tactics the Religious Right will use to poison dialogue like this?
Dan Wakefield: There is a growing awakening to what the Religious Right will use, because a lot of mainline Protestants are having to deal with the charges of the Religious Right. At almost every national conference held by mainline denominations, much of the time is taken up with rebutting charges or attacks from groups like Good News in the Methodist Church, and similar groups in the other mainline Protestant denominations. So they're very familiar with those charges.
Kathryn Johnson is the head of a social action group within the Methodist Church. For her group of social activists, she called in a professional mediator (who had negotiated in Northern Ireland) to try and tell them how to better respond to these things --without all-out attacks and responding with attacks.
GM: In the chapter "How they Hijacked Jesus" you speak to Joseph Hough Jr. who is President of the Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He says that the beginning of 1968 started the decline in membership of the mainline churches who supported the civil rights movement. "They were identified with more liberal views," he says, "they were more affirmative about the student revolutions going on, and more open to their opposition to the Vietnam War." Can you speak to me about this?
DW: It's clear there was a division in the civil rights movement mainly in the churches in the South. I quoted several people in the book about how some ministers lost their jobs who took the side of Martin Luther King Jr. The same phenomenon happened within the churches in the north with the protests against the Vietnam War. Some ministers who spoke out and were activists in the anti-Vietnam War movement lost their jobs. At the time, I belonged to a church in Boston. Happily no one lost their job, but there was a great and difficult division over the issue in the church --and that's in Boston, which is a pretty liberal place.
GM: You write about the relationship between the secular left and religious right in the book. At one point you explain that: "Part of the strategy that remains a conundrum to most progressive religious leaders is how not only to avoid the blows from the Armies of the Right but also to overcome the hostility of people who ought to be their allies on the secular left but treat them with scorn, condescension, or indifference." What's the source of this condescension? Do they think religious people check their intellect at the church door?
DW: Yes. They sometimes look upon it that you're lesser in the intellect department. In other words: That you couldn't really be an intelligent person and a religious person. That's the underlying feeling.
GM: You interviewed Republican Senator Richard Lugar from Indiana in the book. At one point he comments on the 2004 Presidential election. "There was not really an appeal of either party to so-called 'moderates,' to Independents --almost a lack of recognition that such people may exist in this world."
DW: That cuts both ways. In a sense he's talking about the extreme wings of things. But in an overall way (certainly on John Kerry's part) there was more of an attempt to be all things to all people. The interesting thing is that this didn't come out so much as moderate, because the Republicans accused him of flip-flopping. It was difficult for Kerry to take moderate stands, because they tended to sound like a kind of weakness.
GM: Despite the distortion of Christianity you observed by the Religious Right in your research, I thought you were more hopeful at the end of the book? Is that right?
DW: Yes. The hopefulness I felt was from the progressive Evangelicals like Jim Wallis. I particularly appreciated the work of Tony Campolo who is in that same group. Also: It now seems like a lot of younger people in the Evangelical movement have come to progressive views around the environmental issues. They're feeling this is an important aspect of their own religious view.
What these people are doing is breaking away from the Pat Robertson-Jerry Falwell part of the Evangelical movement. They're forming a group outside of the National Association of Evangelicals. Since then they have called themselves "Red Letter Christians" --meaning the things in red letters of the New Testament that shows Jesus' words in red letters. The title will be used against them by the Religious Right, because they think it means political red --which is not what they mean at all.
There is also the group called The Emerging Church. These are people struggling with trying to bring their views into current relevance to the issues facing us right now. All of those things were hopeful.
Finally: The intellectual interest to me in the Emerging Church included the writings of Brian McLaren. He's one of the ministers who is prominent in that group. These are people taking a hard look at their own views, and how they can be relevant today.
GM: In the book you speak with Wesley Granberg-Michaelson who is the chair of the steering committee of a new organization called Christian Churches Together in the USA (CCT). The organization consists of a variety of Christian faiths including: Pentecostals, Catholics, Orthodox churches, and mainline denominations. He says: "The media has just talked about the Religious Right and People for the American Way sometimes --as if there were no other kinds of Christians. It used to be the media didn't know what an Evangelical was, and then it got so fascinated they thought all Evangelicals were like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. The media still has a heavy learning curve on this." Do you agree with his observation?
DW: Yes. There is a heavy learning curve. There's still the attitude of condescension in a lot of the mainline media toward religious views. That's the case in print more than television. This was illustrated in The New York Times recently. They had a reporter at the recent conference in Washington DC of the Michael Lerner group The Network of Spiritual Progressives. (In the book, I write about their first conference held in Berkeley, California, last year). The New York Times report on the Washington conference was a put down. They were snide about it. Interestingly and surprisingly to me The Washington Post had it as a front-page story and they took it seriously. The first sentence of the article was "The Religion Left is back."
Things will vary in the media. But I was hopeful to see The Washington Post take the attitude that this group of people from different religious views, were trying to come together and create a response and alternative to the Religious Right.
GM: In the book I'm left with the impression that Jim Wallis of Sojourners doesn't like the term "religious left." Is that right?
DW: That's my impression. Wallis prefers not to have it thought of as "left" or "liberal." Republicans have managed to make liberal a bad word. That's probably the reason Wallis wants to stay away from that.
GM: You did a nine-city book tour recently that included Miami, New York, Boston, Chicago, Washington DC, and Indianapolis. Were you surprised by anything that you observed in talking to people about the Religious Right?
DW: Recently I spoke to an interesting group in Sarasota, Florida called "Forum for Change." It was a forum organized by a group of progressives who live in Sarasota --which is largely a right-wing, Republican, wealthy area. But there are a lot of intellectual liberals there too. Some of them are former journalists, lawyers and doctors who've started this series of speakers talking about issues and giving a different view than the Fox-News, Bush administration view.
For my talk they had over 250 people in attendance. I was moved by the earnestness and genuine nature of them saying: What can we do? What specific thing can we do to stave off the Religious Right or respond to these issues they're trying to divide people with?
I recommended Faithful America.org --which is a program of the National Council of Churches (USA) that Bob Edgar started. Also: The Network of Spiritual Progressives of Michael Lerner and Jim Wallis' Sojourners.
But I was struck by how all across the country there are different independent groups springing up around wanting to respond to the last U.S. Presidential election and how the political right has merged with the Religious Right (and is using it).
The 2004 U.S. Presidential election was like a wake-up call to a lot of people who were not happy with the Bush administration and the Iraq War. That's stimulated a great deal of dialogue and independent local groups who want to present and stand for progressive issues.
GM: In the book, you interview Rev. John Buchanan of the Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago. He says: "I think the other side would like us to believe that mainline denominations lose members because they've become too liberal --it's more complicated than that." You add that: "Yes, it is more complicated, and one of the sources of the complication --and a problem for the mainline that is seldom acknowledged-- is the difference between the effect of 'liberal religion' politically and 'liberal religion' theologically." Can you talk to me about this?
DW: The mainline churches haven't had anything they've responded to with the kind of passion that existed around the civil rights movement. The issues of war and peace are more difficult and emotional on both sides. It's true that as the mainline becomes more theologically liberal it loses some of the passion that really inspires people --and gives them a commitment to take an active role in politics and government.
GM: You write about Institute for Religion and Democracy (IRD) in the book. This group accuses mainline churches of throwing themselves into "leftist crusades" --including "environmentalism, pacifism, and multiculturalism." What kind of response would you receive if these tactics were challenged? In other words pointing out to the IRD that pacifism is hardly a "leftist crusade" --but part of the Sermon on the Mount.
DW: The biggest symbol of those tactics is that the Religious Right has now made "tolerance" a bad word. One of the favourite new books on the Religious Right is called Be Intolerant. I was on a TV program that involved a panel discussion in which there were two people from the Religious Right. I brought up this issue. I said it was strange that Christians have intolerance as part of their idea of behaviour. A man from the Christian Coalition said: "You can't be tolerant of sinners." The question then becomes who decides who is the sinner? It leaves out the Jesus story: Let him without sin cast the first stone. They say we're not being tolerant with sinners. But they decide what makes a sinner. It's an ironic twist. It's an example of the way Christianity has been twisted by the Religious Right.
Gerry McCarthy is Editor of The Social Edge.
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