Wednesday night, Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Seattle was on Glenn Beck's show. Here are the (free) clips from the show, the first one being about "men" and the second about "intolerance." Both reinforce the view I've expressed here that Mark and other prominent "young" conservative evangelical and neo-reformed leaders are coalescing a new religious right in the U.S.
Men:
Intolerance:
While the content is fairly predictable, a couple things stand out that scream "new religious right." In fact, this is really what Mark's call to resurgence is all about -- a resurgence of conservative Christians who champion right-wing legislation. Now, Mark is coy (and confused) about this, in that he claims the "moral majority" and the "religious right" are over and we should "put those t-shirts away, 'cause nobody's wearing them"; but even if he's changing the shirt, it's the exact same thing underneath.
- In the first video, Glenn opens up by saying, "Mark says that if we lose the men and we lose the inner cities, Christiandom [sic] is done, at least in the West." Mark simply replies, "Yeah," and goes on to talk about "re-evangelizing" cities and their men. Here is more evidence that Mark is really looking for a return to Christendom, not a rejection of it. While he confuses this with his talk of "civil religion" elsewhere, he is pining for the (supposed) days gone by when Christianity was central in American culture and politics/legislation. This is the meaning of "Christendom" in the thinking of the new religious right.
- In the second, Glenn asks Mark what we should do given our (supposed) culture of intolerance toward conservative/evangelical Christians, and Mark replies, "As of right now, [gay marriage] has become the civil rights issue of our generation. And some would say pastors shouldn't be involved in politics...but there are certain things that are moral, cultural, social, family issues that have political implications." This is Driscoll's code for saying that he is now becoming more of a conservative political activist in his ministry, and this, again, is what his call to resurgence is really all about. While it comes in the language of gospel and evangelism, the intent is to re-evangelize in order to legislate according to the right-wing agenda in the areas of gay marriage, abortion, religious freedom (read: Christian privilege), and small government/deregulation/free market economics.
If that's not evidence of the new religious right, I don't know what is.