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| Thursday May 1st, 2008 |
Remember that scene in the "Wizard of Oz" when Dorothy pulls back the curtain and finds that the great and terrible Oz is really a small, balding man? Veteran journalist Christine Wicker makes a similar discovery in her new book, The Fall of the Evangelical Nation.
A Southern Baptist by birth, and still a self-described evangelical, Wicker decided to investigate conventional wisdom about the numerical strength of America's moral majority. What she found should embarrass the secular media almost as much as it should evangelical leaders. The National Association of Evangelical's claim to represent 30 million souls? Wicker says the actual number is closer to 4.5 million. The Southern Baptist's Convention's estimate of 16 million members? Try a quarter of that number.
In her own words: "The idea that evangelicals are taking over America is one of the greatest publicity scams in history, a perfect coup accomplished by savvy politicos and religious leaders, who understand media weaknesses and exploit them brilliantly,"
Reviewing the book in Mother Jones, Debra Dickerson notes how those savvy politicos and religious leaders exploited a gullible (and religiously naive) press corps, "Having been handed a ready made story line by the thou-shalt-not brigades, the media became transfixed by a phenomenon they couldn't fully fathom but felt bound to report on." That's not to say that the Religious Right did not exert influence, rather that its success had more to do with creative spin than Christian soldiers.
Wicker's book is a quick read that hits a happy medium between anecdotal reporting and statistical analysis. She also explains her personal interest in the story and current ambivalence about her cradle faith community. (Disclosure: Wicker is a friend and I blurbed the book.)
If you want to read more about the press' capitulation to the Religious Right's narrative, you can look online for "Back to the Future: Religion, Politics and the Media," an essay I wrote for the September 2007 issue of America Quarterly. (The journal requires a subscription, but if you can get it online or in your library, this special issue "Religion and Politics in the Contemporary United States" has many excellent articles.)
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