Born Again: Three Reasons the Christian Right is Globalizing

Journalists, activists and scholars have predicted the demise of the Christian Right several times since the 1970s. Needless to say, the Christian Right never died out. Each time the end was predicted, Christian Right leaders defied the journalists and experts by finding new causes to champion. Rather than collapse in the face of modernity, the Christian Right's influence has grown over the past decade and its interests have broadened. Once concerned largely with state and national issues, the Christian Right, just like many other social and political movements, is now developing international networks, initiatives and interests.

The Christian Right's most surprising shift in tactics is its recent decision to advocate its concerns at the United Nations, an organization that some continue to demonize as one of the possible stomping grounds of the Antichrist. Christian Right NGOs such as Focus on the Family and Concerned Women for America are now accredited with the U.N. so that they can attend and influence U.N. meetings. Christian Right leaders now lobby U.N. Ambassadors and rent offices in the U.N. neighborhood rather than solely working in Washington to block funding for the U.N.

The Christian Right's interest in the U.N. is not a temporary or isolated foray into international organizing: it is part of a trend of growing Christian Right involvement in international concerns. Over the past two decades, conservative evangelicals have expanded their concerns from a focus on anti-communism to an interest in global concerns ranging from the AIDS pandemic, sex trafficking, and opposition to reproductive rights, human cloning and the expansion of women's rights language in treaties, to support for Israel and religious freedom.

As they have expanded their vision, Christian Right leaders have continued to build new alliances, laying the foundation for a global, possibly even an interfaith movement. The Christian Right is no longer a handful of leaders and their organizations with a largely evangelical membership: it is now led by a number of organizations, many of which are Catholic and Mormon as well as evangelical. And its membership is equally distributed among all three communities. This is especially the case in the loose Christian Right coalition operating at the U.N. Not only is it ecumenical: it is increasingly international. Some leaders even hope to make it interfaith by bringing Muslims into the coalition.

Why and how did the Christian Right begin to globalize? A complete answer requires not only understanding the background of these organizations, but also the persuasive assumptions that resulted in these organizations not being noticed until recently. Simply put, one must first problematize commonly held beliefs about religion and modernity that have been held by scholars and intellectual elites for decades. The theory of secularization held that as societies modernized, they would become more secular. Even those who were its foremost proponents are now questioning this theory. In fact, some would say modernity carries within it the seeds of religious revitalization. The rise of fundamentalist movements in all world religions is one of the major developments that called the theory of secularization into question.

Second, it is important to reexamine a common misperception that Christianity is moribund. On the contrary, Christianity, particularly in the global South, is experiencing a revitalization that may rival that of Islam. As the center of Christianity moves to the global South, its global leadership is becoming more socially conservative. Related to this point, despite being a modern superpower, the United States itself remains very religious. While the liberal wing of media and progressive activists often express surprise at the Christian Right's continued influence, religious activism ought not be viewed as an aberration in American politics. From Prohibition to the civil rights movement, evangelicals have long been influential in important social movements. Many journalists tend to cover the Christian Right through the lens of church-state issues, portraying the culture war as a conflict between fundamentalists and secularists. They therefore often overlook a second dimension of the conflict: the struggle within Christianity itself. Both the media and the Christian Right tend to characterize Christianity as being defined by the conservative social views expressed by the Christian Right rather than being a faith characterized by diversity.

Finally, globalization is helping to extend the Christian Right's influence. Once the Christian Right is no longer viewed as an anomaly that somehow survived modernity, its global expansion can be seen as a result of the all-encompassing strength of the forces of globalization itself. A brief examination of conservative evangelical and Christian Right activism on issues of religious freedom, the global AIDS pandemic and sex trafficking reveals that such activism may have progressive as well as conservative results.

Reason 1: Secularism (Despite Predictions) Never Completely Banished Religion

Secularization Theory Reexamined

In the 1940s and 1950s sociologists generally asserted that religion would increasingly play less of a role in both politics and modern life. Social theorists largely doubted that religion could survive the impact of the Age of Reason: scientific research, humanistic education, pluralism, democracy, technology, bureaucratic organizational life among other elements would undermine societal interest and need for religion. As one sociologist reflected, "From its inception, [sociology] was committed to the positivist view that religion in the modern world is merely a survival from man's primitive past, and doomed to disappear in an era of science and general enlightenment. From the positivist standpoint, religion is, basically, institutionalized ignorance and superstition." At best, religion was a relic of barbarism treasured by the less educated, part of a prior stage of human evolution that would crumble under the weight of this post-Enlightenment trend towards secularization.

Even some theologians during the social revolutions of the 1960s and early 1970s proclaimed "God is dead," holding that Westerners no longer found the idea of a radically transcendent God meaningful and that particular change in attitude could be seen in a positive light. Secularity, if not secularism, was to be embraced. An enthusiastic style of religion (Baptists and Pentecostals) in particular was held suspect in favor of more rationalized, philosophical or post-Christian versions of religious practice (such as mainline Protestantism, Buddhism, New Age religion). In the name of cultural sensitivity, African-American religious experience might be tolerated, or even Islam, but Christianity was...