The End of Empathy: Why White Protestants Stopped Loving Their Neighbors

409 Pages·2020·17.033 MB·English

by  John W. Compton

The End of Empathy

The End of Empathy
Why White Protestants Stopped Loving
Their Neighbors
JOHN W. COMPTON
1
3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-i n- Publication Data
Names: Compton, John W., 1977– author.
Title: The end of empathy : why white protestants stopped loving their
neighbors / John W. Compton.
Description: New York, NY, United States of America : Oxford University
Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2019044729 (print) | LCCN 2019044730 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190069186 (hb) | ISBN 9780190069209 (epub) | ISBN 9780190069216 (online)
Subjects: LCSH: Christianity and politics—U nited States. |
Empathy— Religious aspects—C hristianity. | United States—C hurch
history— 19th century. | United States—C hurch history— 20th century.
Classification: LCC BR516 .C687 2020 (print) | LCC BR516 (ebook) |
DDC 280/ .409730904— dc23
LC record available at https://l ccn.loc.gov/ 2019044729
LC ebook record available at https://l ccn.loc.gov/ 2019044730
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Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
Contents
Introduction 1
PART I. THE AGE OF STEWARDSHIP
1. The Road to Armageddon 17
2. The Brief Reign of Whirl 43
3. The Churches Do Their Part 61
PART II. WHY THE CENTER HELD
4. The Battle for the Clergy 89
5. Assaulting the Citadel 116
6. Inventing the Old-T ime Religion 144
7. The Last Hurrah: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 169
PART III. FROM REVELATION TO RATIONALIZATION
8. Revolt in the Suburbs 199
9. The Twilight of the Protestant Establishment 226
10. Why the Prophetic Torch Wasn’t Passed 249
Conclusion 279
Acknowledgments 285
Appendix 287
Archival Sources and Abbreviations 291
Notes 293
Index 383

Introduction
Seemingly every day, a new poll finds white evangelicals—b y far the largest
subset of American Protestants—e spousing views that would appear difficult to
reconcile with the golden rule. For example, evangelicals are more likely than
members of other religious groups to favor drastic cuts to foreign aid and do-
mestic social welfare programs. They are less likely than other believers—o r
nonbelievers, for that matter—t o say that the United States has a duty to accept
refugees displaced by violence or natural disasters in their home countries. They
are more likely than others to favor sharp reductions in legal immigration, as well
as the deportation of undocumented immigrants, including children, who have
entered the United States illegally. They are less likely than others to view sys-
temic racism as a serious obstacle to the socioeconomic advancement of racial
minorities. They are more likely than others to favor harshly punitive approaches
to criminal justice, including the death penalty. The list goes on and on.1
These findings were fairly well established by the time of the 2016 presidential
election. Still, the news that most evangelicals cast their ballots for Donald Trump
caught many commentators off guard. In part this was because what was known
of Trump’s personal life was sharply at odds with evangelical teachings. But it
was also because Trump, in contrast to previous Republican nominees, made no
effort to square his conservative policy positions with the Christian ethic of love
and compassion. In fact, his chief calling card was his promise to show no mercy
to those on the margins of American society.2 And yet, evangelicals, far from
balking at Trump’s proudly amoral agenda, awarded him more than 80 percent of
their votes. Significantly, Trump also fared reasonably well with white mainline
Protestants, traditionally the more liberal branch of American Protestantism,
capturing over 50 percent of their votes.3 Perhaps most surprising of all, devout
white Protestants— those who reported attending religious services on a weekly
basis— were the most enthusiastic Trump supporters of all.4
The news of Trump’s strong showing with white Protestant churchgoers
soon sparked a broader debate concerning the relationship between religiosity
and liberal democracy. For many commentators on the Left (as well as a few on
the Right), the 2016 election returns confirmed a long- held suspicion that reli-
gious citizens—o r at least white Protestant ones—a re less than fully committed
to the egalitarian norms of toleration and mutual respect that are often said
to undergird the American constitutional system. How else to explain devout
2 Introduction
evangelicals’ enthusiastic support for a proudly irreligious candidate whose
chief campaign strategy was to stoke irrational fears of immigrants, refugees,
and non- Christians?5 But not everyone agreed with this line of analysis. Other
commentators, including many who were deeply troubled by Trump’s victory,
looked to history to show that Protestant Christianity was not an inherently
reactionary force. In earlier eras, these writers pointed out, religious ideas and
institutions had often functioned as engines of social reform, providing much
of the grassroots energy behind the movements to abolish slavery, enfranchise
women, prohibit child labor, establish a rudimentary social welfare state, and
enact the transformative civil rights laws of the 1960s. Twenty- first- century
Protestants may have been hoodwinked into supporting a candidate whose
views were at odds with core Christian teachings. But to claim that this single
incident was illustrative of Protestant religiosity’s broader impact on American
political development was simply wrong .6
A glance at the historical record suggests that the second group of writers had
a point: whatever else may be said about the relationship between Christianity
and liberalism, it must be acknowledged that, at least in the American case,
advocates of egalitarian reforms have often employed religious ideas and sym-
bolism to great effect (as have their opponents). But to highlight the religious
reform movements of the past is to raise a more fundamental question: what
happened to this more tolerant and empathetic faith tradition? How, in other
words, did the connection between Protestant religiosity and concern for the
marginalized become so attenuated as to allow a candidate like Donald Trump to
win the churchgoing vote in a landslide?
The most common way of answering this question is to point to the rel-
atively recent rise of evangelicalism as the dominant strand of American
Protestantism. For most of the nation’s history, the bulk of American Protestants
were not evangelicals but rather mainline Protestants— a category that includes
the Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians, Disciples of
Christ, and some branches of the Baptist and Lutheran faiths. During the first
half of the twentieth century, most of these denominations experienced strong
growth, even as their leaders adopted left- of- center positions on issues such as
child labor and civil rights. This changed during the late 1960s and 1970s, when
the mainline churches began suffering serious declines in membership and
giving, and when evangelical churches and denominations, such as the Southern
Baptist Convention (SBC), began experiencing strong growth. By the end of the
1970s the balance of power in American Protestantism had shifted to the theo-
logically conservative evangelical churches, though it was initially unclear how
(or whether) this would affect the political realm. But then came the presiden-
tial election of 1980, when a series of large and well-f unded conservative reli-
gious groups, led by Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, entered the political arena in
Introduction 3
support of former California governor Ronald Reagan. The new groups, which
were dominated by evangelical and fundamentalist clergymen, adopted hardline
conservative positions not only on issues such as abortion and school prayer,
but also on such seemingly secular subjects as welfare, defense spending, and
taxes. And while no one could have predicted at the time of Reagan’s presidential
victory that evangelical elites would one day enter into a strategic alliance with
a playboy real-e state tycoon, it was then that evangelicalism, a faith tradition
based on theological conservatism, became firmly wedded to the newly conser-
vative political agenda of the Reagan-e ra Republican party.
Answers to why this shift occurred are more varied, but one popular theory
holds that the politicization of evangelical religiosity was fueled by a sense that
believers were losing, or had already lost, control of the wider culture. In some
versions of the story, the sexual revolution—i ncluding the advent of legalized
abortion and the movements for women’s and gay and lesbian rights— takes
center stage as the event that launched the Religious Right.7 In other versions
it is the nation’s growing religious and ethnic diversity, together with the federal
government’s increasingly aggressive actions in defense of African American
civil rights (which often entailed greater oversight of religious entities, such as
private schools).8 Still other commentators stress the entrepreneurial role of
the conservative business community, which sensed that evangelicals’ aliena-
tion might serve as the basis for a new and powerful political coalition based
on shared enmity toward the modern Democratic party.9 Whatever the imme-
diate trigger, the underlying cause in most accounts is a growing sense of alien-
ation, together with the conviction that aggressive political action was needed
to prevent further erosion of traditional Protestant (or in some versions Judeo-
Christian) values and prerogatives.
Without question, each of these narratives contains a grain of truth. Yet upon
closer inspection, a focus on cultural alienation alone cannot fully account for
the increasingly strident conservatism exhibited by white Protestants over the
past half-c entury. The most serious problem with the conventional story is that
it cannot explain the long history of Protestant social activism that preceded
the Reagan Revolution. After all, during the 1910s, the 1930s, and the early
1960s— also periods of increasing diversity and unprecedented social change—
millions of white middle- class Protestants channeled their anxieties into pro-
gressive reforms, helping to abolish child labor, establish reasonable workplace
regulations, construct the social safety net, and enact civil rights laws that trans-
ferred resources and political authority to minority groups. Nor can strategic
outreach from conservative businessmen or political operatives fully explain
the shifting political valence of Protestant religiosity. For while it is true that
conservative executives and libertarian activists succeeded in forging close ties
with leading evangelicals during the 1970s and early 1980s, the more interesting