The Faithful Citizen: Popular Christian Media and Gendered Civic Identities

2 Genteel Masculinity, the Prophetic Posture, and Legislative Politics

29 Genteel Masculinity, the Prophetic Posture, and Legislative Politics Amazing Grace 2 Then he said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Matthew 22:21 So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. James 2:17 Following the 2004 election, journalistic narratives made religious influence in electoral politics seem simple: Christian beliefs translate naturally into political platforms that translate naturally into electoral votes. The remarkable backlash that greeted the “values voters” and their evangelical leaders, however, suggests that Christian political activism is hardly so simple or unanimous. The evangelical Christians who supposedly won the White House for George W. Bush, and whose agenda he was expected to use his office to promote, were not a voting demographic that arose spontaneously or uncontroversially. They were, instead, the end result of a mobilization effort that dates back at least to Jerry Falwell’s founding of the Moral Majority in the 1970s, Pat Robertson’s presidential bid in the 1980s, and Ralph Reed’s leadership of the Christian Coalition in the 1990s, each of whom had incited controversy in his own time. The recent emergence of evangelical Christians as a political force has been no different; it has inspired a passionate debate involving religious leaders, academics, journalists , and elected officials, all of whom are asking, what role can and should religion play in democratic politics? When legal and political theorists question the propriety of the Christian Right’s political involvement, they do so on constitutional and 30 g The Faithful Citizen theoretical grounds.1 They ask, what role does the First Amendment allow religious organizations, leaders, and rationales to play in public policy making ? Moreover, do the basic requirements of liberal democracy allow for these types of religious influence? Religious leaders are equally passionate in challenging the propriety of the Christian Right’s organizing, but they do so on theological grounds. Are Christians called to participate in earthly politics? they ask.2 Does God’s vision for humanity entail particular political positions? How should Christians engage in earthly politics? Although these are the same questions that have reverberated through two centuries of American Christianity, they have reemerged with a new urgency since the arrival of the “values voters” at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Opening on nearly eight hundred screens in February 2007, Amazing Grace arrived in movie theaters at the height of this debate, and it offered a clear example of religious influence in institutional politics. Narrating the life and work of the eighteenth-century British reformer William Wilberforce, Amazing Grace takes audience members to a historical time and place where one of the most significant legal reforms in human history was driven by a small band of religiously motivated activists who achieved their objectives politically. The film’s Wilberforce expresses a clear divine calling to political activism, and the men and women who join his abolition work are similarly motivated by religious principles. They take their inspiration from the Christian hymn “Amazing Grace,” penned by the repentant slave ship captain and Wilberforce’s former pastor, John Newton. Amazing Grace opens in 1797, when a broken, exhausted William Wilberforce retires to his cousin Henry Thornton’s country home in order to recuperate. While there, he meets Barbara Spooner, and their abbreviated courtship affords Wilberforce the opportunity to recount his fifteen years of work to legislate the end of the slave trade. In those years, Wilberforce’s effort is characterized by relative weakness against the strength of the established slave industry and the members of Parliament who hold personal interests in slavery. These are men so comfortable with slavery that William, Duke of Clarence, even tries to bet his own slave against Wilberforce in a game of cards. In his initially feeble efforts, Wilberforce’s only allies in Parliament are his close friend Prime Minister William Pitt and Charles Fox. Outside of Parliament, his supporters include activists Thomas Clarkson, Hannah More, James Stephen, and Olaudah Equiano.3 Wilberforce, his colleagues in the House of Commons, and this small band of abolitionists use all the resources at their disposal to win support for their cause. The tireless Wilberforce offers one bill after another in the Genteel Masculinity, the Prophetic Posture, and Legislative Politics f 31 Commons and engages his hostile colleagues in sharp debates over each one. As Spooner describes it...