Mencken as an ignoramus catching flies in a sweaty courthouse during the Scopes trial, but that snide dismissal overlooked Bryan’s long career as an advocate for progressive causes. In the 1920s, William Jennings Bryan was lampooned by H. Jefferson attracted huge numbers of voters simply because his running mate, Aaron Burr, was the grandson of the great evangelist Jonathan Edwards. For most of American history, evangelicals were Democrats or their equivalents, profoundly uncomfortable near the temple of the moneychangers.
This may in fact be a return to an older pattern. Today there is much talk of a new evangelical politics less stridently conservative, more responsive to the problems of global warming or public health or Darfur. Indeed, throughout the 19th century, nearly every episode in American foreign policy, from the Mexican War to the Spanish-American War, deepened the assumption that a Protestant wind was driving the republic forward. In the 1790s, the French Revolution thrilled not only secularists eager to see the spread of the rights of man but also many devout Protestants who sympathized with its attacks on the Catholic order and believed that it signaled the opening of seals, the sounding of trumpets and the final assault upon the Whore of Babylon (as Rome was exuberantly known). Strong religious enthusiasms continued to shape public opinion after the war of independence was won. In 1776, one minister spoke for many when he likened the struggle against England to the never-ending struggle against “the beast and his image over every species of tyranny.” John Adams, who helped edit the declaration, attributed the text to God as well as to Thomas Jefferson and expressed his wish that future Americans would celebrate the great day “by solemn acts of devotion” (along with bonfires, gunfire, the clanging of bells and other raffish pursuits of happiness). More than we realize, we descend from a founding moment that was evangelical. The historian Pauline Maier was right to label this bit of parchment our American Scripture.
Even so, the argument against kings derived much of its power from the vigor of Christian thought. God is mentioned four times, but obliquely, and never by name. It is not normally seen as an evangelical statement, despite the heroic attempts of the Christian right to claim it as such.
Consider the Declaration of Independence. In our week of national reflection, it’s worth recognizing that religious enthusiasm in America has as often as not had a reformist or even revolutionary cast to it. Maybe the distance between liberals and evangelicals, each eternal optimists in their way, is much smaller than we realized. For their part, evangelical leaders, unpersuaded by John McCain’s episodic proclamations of faith, are wise, or perhaps even prophetic, to consider all the options. In the last few weeks, Obama has announced several outreach projects (including one named after Joshua, who, unlike Moses, was able to lead his people to the promised land). We all know that politics makes strange bedfellows, but how odd it must have been to have sat in on the recent meeting between Barack Obama and evangelical leaders, including Franklin Graham, the conservative minister who once called Islam “a very evil and wicked religion.” Yet there they were, Obama and the evangelicals in Chicago on June 10, searching for and apparently finding considerable common ground.
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