It was discussed as a matter of the difference between the evangelist Billy Graham and his son, Franklin. Was it merely a generational thing, Billy the dad being born in 1918 and Franklin, the son born in 1952? One was a member of what’s been called the Greatest Generation and the other a Baby Boomer.

Maybe not as dramatic as the difference between Jerry Falwell and his son by the same name, but it’s still indicative of something that’s happened to religion in the last century, and leaves the U.S. going forward with the most amoral leader in its history, though elected largely due to the influence of what’s now called Christian Nationalism.

It’s a relatively new phenomenon, though there are those who try to trace its roots to an earlier time when there were plenty of tangents of religions. But I argue that this Christian Nationalism (I am not convinced that’s the best thing to call it), is pretty new, uniquely American, arising in the 1970s as the product of a deliberate attempt to “weaponize” fundamentalist Christianity against a rising trend toward fairness, equal rights and justice.

It began as Nixon’s so-called Moral Majority was part of an organizing effort to wipe out the effects of FDR, the rising civil rights movement of the 1960s and Lyndon Johnson’s so-called War on Poverty.

It was part of a collective act of terrorism perpetrated against the American population that began with the assassination of JFK in 1963. That constituted an assault on the U.S. psyche like nothing else. It was a murderous raid with assault weapons on Camelot itself. In short order, we were assaulted further, like the victims of terrible domestic abuses, by the assassinations of Malcolm X, Bobby Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Vietnam War was dragging our young into a remote jungle to be killed by the tons of thousands and assailing those who lived through it with social abuse, and a relentless attack of depersonalized sex, debilitating drugs, and joblessness, creating the “Me Decade” when drugs and cults flooded the market, so to speak, orchestrated to disable an entire young generation.   

This maelstrom, this downward spiral of national moral decline was given a huge boost from premeditated social philosophy, introduced as the rationale for a plunge into dionysian hedonism and social fracture, alienating each from all. That was called generically “postmodernism,” where radical individualism would constitute a groundwork for assaulting organized labor and social protests.

Fundamentalist Christianity was a fertile ground for this assault, and was nurtured to promote anti-reality, anti-reason, anti-rational approaches to life, right along the lines of what postmodernism represented. Cults of all types were also tossed into the toxic cauldron.

Billy Graham held to the prime, basic value of personal character, just as Dr. King did (“Not by the color of your skin, but by the strength of your character”). Billy Graham would despise what his son has become, a craven apologist for the worst sociopath that has ever held high office in this nation. 

Nonetheless, the world is deeply in need of a legitimate revival of all the basics of an ethical life, centered on an appreciation of what an amazing universe we live in, and are, as human beings, a vital and responsible representation of.

 It’s not all about money. Truth and knowledge are being suffocated by a lack of the resources they need to thrive among all us as everything, everything is being valued only by the pocket book. The money is going to $600 concert tickets, or to watch huge and fast grown men subjecting themselves to irreversible brain damage. Why not put 22 men out on a field armed with two-by-fours, whaling away at each other’s helmets? That’s our new national pastime.

The postmodern fracturing of our culture has left us bereft of the kind of uplifting affirmations of the simple deeds that make for a good life. We gravitate instead toward instant gratification, and the sense that, if it feels good, it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. Feeling good has become more important than being right.

So, what would Jesus do in light of all this?