Tim Wildmon

AFA president

May 2000 – I guess I should be scared of myself. That’s what many in the media say anyway. So I go to the mirror every once in a while and just stare at myself. Sometimes I talk to the man in the mirror.

“You’re one of the religious righters aren’t you?” I ask myself. Having already answered the question, I have a rather mocking tone in my voice. I point into the mirror. “Sure you are. Look at yourself.”

So I look. And I try to feel. I try and feel the religious rightness that is within me, that fundamentalism beast that makes me a threat to the rest of America. I wonder if any of my three children will become religious righters? How did I get this way? What is wrong with me?

“Tim, go separate your sons please!” Alison says from the bedroom. She too is a religious righter, although more secure about it than I am. She doesn’t care what other people think. Never has.

If I’m this way now, just think how I will be after we go through the summer and fall presidential campaign. My strong feeling is that we – that is people who identify ourselves as Bible-believing Christians – are about to be demonized like never before. And what’s ironic, the people that are going to demonize us don’t even believe in demons!

Seriously, conservative Christians are what is wrong with America if you listen to the mass media – including both the news and the entertainment industry. Nightly television programs rip the beliefs of Christians and hold those beliefs up to scorn.

So take a personal inventory. You may be a religious righter if…

1. You believe in the God of the Bible.
2. You believe in Jesus Christ as the only way to salvation and ultimately heaven.
3. You believe the 10 Commandments are still relevant and that there are universal moral absolutes.
4. You believe that abortion violates Commandment number six – You shall not murder.
5. You believe that sex is right only within the confines of marriage between one man and one woman.
6. You believe that homosexuality is immoral and unnatural.
7. You believe in the Great Commission given to us by Jesus Christ.

If you said yes to the above, you are a religious righter in the eyes of most Americans. And you’re the real threat to this country.

Recently I read a column by syndicated writer Suzanne Fields, herself a Jew and one of the few nationally syndicated writers who sees this Christian-bashing trend and calls it for what it is – bigotry. She calls it “open season on Christian fundamentalists.” Allow me to quote some from her column:

I rarely sit at a bar or restaurant, or in a political meeting on a college campus, or engage in a give-and-take social life in New York and Washington without hearing casual references to the religious right ‘wackos,’ fundamentalist ‘kooks,’ or those ‘nutsos’ who follow Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson. You won’t hear anything like that aimed at Jews, whether Orthodox, Conservative or Reform – or the followers of Rev. Al Sharpton, for that matter.

Why us then? There are many reasons I believe open bigotry against conservative Christians has become acceptable. But I think primarily, it is because we hold up a Biblical standard of decency and morality and unashamedly say so. Many people hate that. It’s like the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard. We say abortion is killing. They say it’s a woman’s choice and you wackos should just “mind your own business.” That plays well in our country today. Real well. They see our beliefs as pushing our religious views on them and they react.

And what makes it even more difficult for our side to combat is that Americans have long held to the “live-and-let-live” philosophy. Americans have a high regard for privacy. (So do the religious righters I know, I might add.) So when you couple those Americans who genuinely hate Christians with those Americans who – while they don’t really have any particular contempt for us – still have bought into the idea that we on the “religious right” have an agenda to turn America into a theocracy, you have a combination which represents a majority of people in this country. And thus the bigotry against conservative Christians is acceptable.

I don’t have all the answers on what to do about this. We must continue to stand for biblical morality; to do less is to deny our faith in Christ and the Bible. And we must be careful about what we say and how we say it so as not to give our enemies more ammunition to use against us with the broader public. We must stand for truth, but do so with the love of Jesus Christ.