An (Evangelical) Voice in the Wilderness: The Modern Roots of Evangelical Engagement with American Politics

今天，福音派几乎完全与美国政治的右翼联系在一起。由于绝大多数人支持罗纳德·里根、乔治·w·布什和唐纳德·特朗普当选总统，并在堕胎、避孕、性教育、同性婚姻和妇女权利等问题上公开倡导并在某些情况下实现了社会保守政策，该协会并不令人惊讶。20世纪70年代末所谓的宗教右翼的兴起，似乎使福音派和共和党之间的联系几乎是不可避免的。然而，回顾20世纪40年代和50年代，福音派和共和党之间的联系还远不清楚。通过他们新成立的组织，全国福音派协会（成立于1941年），美国福音派在那几十年里与民主党和共和党的政府同样密切地合作。这个项目揭示了一段历史，与主流的流行言论相反，宗教和党派政治既不是交织在一起的，也不是不可避免的。政党政治的缺失实际上暴露了福音派活动核心的关键矛盾：他们在与政府接触的同时，又强烈地公开支持政教分离。将福音派的政治参与与对共和党的支持分离开来，意味着他们的活动不能简单地作为对某个政党的合法支持来辩护；他们更深层次的动机暴露了出来。因此，该项目利用这一时期的无党派政治参与来探索，不受党派关注的影响，福音派如何以及为什么与政府接触，以及他们如何以分离主义立场为自己的活动辩护。因此，这个项目讲述了福音派运动的中世纪历史，也更深入地了解了今天充满政治色彩的福音派运动的根源。该项目探索美国福音派与政治之间现代关系的根源有两个关键主题。首先，该项目准确地追溯了福音派在他们最关心的领域所施加的影响：无线电广播、基督教教育、海外传教活动和宗教自由。福音派对在这些领域取得成功的看法使他们相信，继续与政府接触是有益的，也是重要的。因此，该项目将分析福音派在多大程度上成功地影响了政策，以及在当时和随后的几十年里产生了什么后果。其次，该项目评估了福音派活动在本世纪中叶的法律和宪法后果。今天，福音派指责美国最高法院坚持政教分离的立场，歧视有信仰的人。然而，这些决定，从获得避孕措施到同性婚姻，都借鉴了20世纪40年代和50年代基础裁决中确立的基本原则，这些裁决在一定程度上受到了新兴的福音派运动的影响，这些运动主张隔离。在揭示和分析福音派对20世纪40年代和50年代美国公共生活中关于教会和国家的辩论的贡献时，该项目不仅提供了对这些早期裁决的重要性的详细理解，而且探索了这些裁决在近年来被重新解释和可能被滥用的方式。在试图揭示、探索和分析福音派在20世纪中期的二十年中与法律和政府接触的性质、程度和意义的过程中，该项目不仅提供了对这二十年的理解，而且还探索了当今福音派运动的根源，这是该运动中许多人目前不愿承认的。

Today, evangelicals are almost exclusively associated with the right wing of American politics. Having supported in overwhelming numbers the election of Presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump, and openly advocated, and in some cases achieved, socially conservative policy on issues including abortion, contraception, sex education, same-sex marriage, and women's rights, the association is unsurprising. The rise of the so-called Religious Right in the late 1970s has made it seem that the connection between evangelicals and the Republican Party was all but inevitable.Look to the 1940s and 1950s, however, and the connection between evangelicals and Republicans was far from clear. Through their newly-formed organisation, the National Association of Evangelicals (founded in 1941), American evangelicals in those decades worked equally closely with the administrations of both Democratic and Republican Parties. This project uncovers a history in which, contrary to dominant popular rhetoric, religion and partisan politics were neither intertwined nor inevitable.The absence of party politics in fact exposes the critical contradiction at the heart of evangelical activity: their very engagement with government at the same time as their emphatic public support for the separation of church and state. Untethering evangelical political engagement from support for the Republican Party means their activities cannot simply be defended as a legitimate expression of support for a Party; their deeper motives are exposed. The project thus uses this period of nonpartisan political engagement to explore, untainted by partisan concerns, how and why evangelicals engaged with government and how they rationalized their activities with their separationist stance. As such, the project speaks to the mid-century history of the evangelical movement but also to a deeper understanding of the roots of today's politically-charged evangelical campaigns.Central to the project's exploration of the roots of the modern relationship between evangelicals and politics in the US are two key themes. First, the project traces exactly what influence evangelicals exerted in those areas of most concern to them: radio broadcasting, Christian education, and missionary activity and religious liberty abroad. Evangelicals' perception of success in these areas convinced them that continued engagement with government was beneficial and important. The project will thus analyse the extent to which evangelicals were successful in influencing policy, and with what consequences both at the time and in subsequent decades.Second, the project assesses the legal and constitutional consequences of evangelical activity at mid-century. Today evangelicals accuse the US Supreme Court of discriminating against people of faith by adhering to a position of separation of church and state. Yet those decisions, from access to contraception to same-sex marriage, drew on fundamental principles established in the foundational rulings of the 1940s and 1950s, rulings which were, in part, influenced by the examples, arguments, and rhetoric of the newly-emergent evangelical movement which advocated separation. In uncovering and analysing evangelicals' contribution to the debates about church and state that played out in American public life in the 1940s and 1950s, the project provides not only a detailed understanding of the significance of those early rulings, but explores the ways in which those rulings have been reinterpreted and, arguably misappropriated, in more recent years.In seeking to uncover, explore, and analyse the nature, extent, and significance of evangelical engagement with law and government in the two decades in the middle of the 20th Century, the project offers not only an understanding of that twenty year period but also an exploration of the roots of today's evangelical movement that many in that movement are currently unwilling to acknowledge.