{"id":336,"date":"2011-04-11T09:45:33","date_gmt":"2011-04-11T13:45:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/?p=336"},"modified":"2011-04-12T15:57:24","modified_gmt":"2011-04-12T19:57:24","slug":"religious-lesson-of-the-budget-battle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/04\/religious-lesson-of-the-budget-battle.html","title":{"rendered":"Religious lesson of the budget battle"},"content":{"rendered":"

That abortion, in the form of defunding Planned Parenthood and prohibiting public funding in D.C., emerged as the final hurdle for the 11th-hour budget deal is an object lesson, but what’s the lesson? To Steve Prothero, it’s that<\/a> that the old culture war agenda is what the Tea Party really cares about. To David Weigel, it’s that<\/a>, with the jettisoning of the Planned Parenthood rider, social conservatives once again came away the short end of the stick. To me, it’s dramatic evidence of the cohesion of today’s conservative movement.<\/p>\n

To those with eyes to read the survey data, it’s been clear<\/a> for a while that Tea Party supporters are as socially conservative as any political grouping in the country. What’s less well recognized is the extent to which the religious right has opposition to big government in its DNA. Long ago, George Marsden called attention with some puzzlement to the preoccupation of the early fundamentalists with communism.<\/p>\n

Could this have had anything to do with pre-millennialist anxieties about Gog, Magog, and the Antichrist? Let it suffice to recall<\/a> Pat Robertson 20 years ago, riding high at the helm of the Christian Coalition, suggesting that the likes of Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush were “unknowingly and unwittingly carrying out the mission and mouthing the phrases of a tightly knit cabal whose goal is nothing more than a new world order for the human race under the domination of Lucifer and his followers.”<\/p>\n

Last December, the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival awarded its $101,000 Jubilee Award to “Agenda: Grinding America Down,” a documentary<\/a> by former Idaho state legislator Curtis Bowers dedicated to the proposition that communism is about the business of destroying our Judeo-Christian civilization today. Where Wilson, Carter, and Bush I once went, now goes Barack Obama. That it has been screened at churches around the country goes without saying.<\/p>\n

The lesson is this. John Boehner and company were able to introduce abortion into the budget battle because they understand that they’ve got a constituency that sees social and economic issues tied up together. Indeed, for religious conservatives these days “big government” as construed over taxes, health care, or the deficit, is the culture war issue par excellence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That abortion, in the form of defunding Planned Parenthood and prohibiting public funding in D.C., emerged as the final hurdle for the 11th-hour budget deal is an object lesson, but what’s the lesson? To Steve Prothero, it’s that that the old culture war agenda is what the Tea Party really cares about. To David Weigel,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":222,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nReligious lesson of the budget battle - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/04\/religious-lesson-of-the-budget-battle.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Religious lesson of the budget battle - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"That abortion, in the form of defunding Planned Parenthood and prohibiting public funding in D.C., emerged as the final hurdle for the 11th-hour budget deal is an object lesson, but what’s the lesson? To Steve Prothero, it’s that that the old culture war agenda is what the Tea Party really cares about. To David Weigel,…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/04\/religious-lesson-of-the-budget-battle.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-04-11T13:45:33+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2011-04-12T19:57:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Religious lesson of the budget battle - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/04\/religious-lesson-of-the-budget-battle.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Religious lesson of the budget battle - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","og_description":"That abortion, in the form of defunding Planned Parenthood and prohibiting public funding in D.C., emerged as the final hurdle for the 11th-hour budget deal is an object lesson, but what’s the lesson? To Steve Prothero, it’s that that the old culture war agenda is what the Tea Party really cares about. To David Weigel,…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/04\/religious-lesson-of-the-budget-battle.html","og_site_name":"Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","article_published_time":"2011-04-11T13:45:33+00:00","article_modified_time":"2011-04-12T19:57:24+00:00","author":"Mark Silk","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/04\/religious-lesson-of-the-budget-battle.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/04\/religious-lesson-of-the-budget-battle.html","name":"Religious lesson of the budget battle - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-04-11T13:45:33+00:00","dateModified":"2011-04-12T19:57:24+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/927f8b0a579506efe527e8e0967f519d"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/04\/religious-lesson-of-the-budget-battle.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/04\/religious-lesson-of-the-budget-battle.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/04\/religious-lesson-of-the-budget-battle.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Religious lesson of the budget battle"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/","name":"Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","description":"Beliefnet Voices","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/927f8b0a579506efe527e8e0967f519d","name":"Mark Silk","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c82\/c82eec82562775fad85f4a47e1a5fc4ax96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c82\/c82eec82562775fad85f4a47e1a5fc4ax96.jpg","caption":"Mark Silk"},"description":"Mark Silk graduated from Harvard College in 1972 and earned his Ph.D. in medieval history from Harvard University in 1982. After teaching at Harvard in the Department of History and Literature for three years, he became editor of the Boston Review. In 1987 he joined the staff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he worked variously as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist. In 1996 he became the founding director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and in 1998 founding editor of Religion in the News, a magazine published by the Center that examines how the news media handle religious subject matter. In 2005, he was named director of the Trinity College Program on Public Values, comprising both the Greenberg Center and a new Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture directed by Barry Kosmin. In 2007, he became Professor of Religion in Public Life at the College. Professor Silk is the author of Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II and Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America. He is co-editor of Religion by Region, an eight-volume series on religion and public life in the United States, and co-author of The American Establishment, Making Capitalism Work, and One Nation Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics. In 2007 he inaugurated Spiritual Politics, a blog on religion and American political culture.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/author\/msilk"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":338,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336\/revisions\/338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}