Christian America? What really Evangelicals Really Want?

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Author: Christian Smith
Publisher: Univ. Of California Press
Berkeley, 2002
257 pages

Konteks:
Bagi masyarakat Amerika, sudah menjadi pandangan umum bahwa kelompok kristen Evangelist, di samping sebagai kelompok agama yang bertujuan menegakan moral berdasarkan ajaran kristen juga ingin secara politik menciptakan Amerika sebagai negara kristen. Mereka yakin Amerika adalah vehicle of God to establish the kingdom of God o earth. Bisa juga dikatakan mereka percaya bahwa tanpa menguasai Amerika, misi kristen tidak akan tercapai. Amerika adalah titipan Tuhan bagi umat kristen. The "crazy" Christian, demikian beberpa teman Kristen sekelasku menyebutnya. Akan tetapi benarkah pandangan umum tersebut?. Penelitian empirik yang dilakukan Smith di bawah ini mungkin bisa menjawabannya.

This book is discussing about the dynamic within Evangelical movement in America on regarding its relation with public life in America. The author concern on many questions on evangelical movement whether or not they intend to create a Christian nation, whether or not they intend to impose their moral standards for American others, whether or not they want to dominate the biggest political vehicle of Republican party for their purposes. Smith tries to answer those very “ambitious’ question in a combined quantitative and qualitative approach by conducting 187 interviews and national telephone survey of 2591 Americans. This theme is very strategic as evangelical movement now becomes the superficially daily appearance of dominantly American religious activities.

There is no single major voice within evangelists Smith reported. There were varieties of response and views expressing by respondents regarding many issues. There were five major issues delivered by Smith to the respondents namely; the sense of Christian America? What they mean by American Christian nation? , Evangelist’s view on pluralism and tolerance, their involvement in American politics, evangelicals on education, and male headship and gender equality. The interviews show the variety of evangelists’ opinion. Moreover Smiths argue that the appearance of elites does not always represent the view of major grass root Evangelists. Smith supported this thesis by providing example of James Kennedy statement in the beginning of chapter one (p. 21)

The important statement of Smith is that what most American political, religious and academia players view about evangelical movement as the “gigantic” power to back up their political interest is not true. It is mythology. What appears on the media is not the real voice of the ordinary evangelists (p 193-194). Rather they are divided into; rejection, ambivalence, and supporting groups. The author insists that those people that demonize and are afraid of evangelical movement mostly don’t know what this group actually is. They prefer a biased knowledge to direct communication with those people of our concern. (p195). The similar cases is happen in the some scholars looking radical Indonesian Islamists who demand for implementing Syari’a law by using media. On the media radical Islamists seems has significantly larger number than the ordinary Muslims. I agree with Smith that media can give a biased perspective. (p 195-196)

I think this book has “secured’ my view on Christian America that seems the major content of the previous readings of this class. Previously we have been feed by Authors saying confidently and critically that America is Christian. America is Christian vehicle to create God’s kingdom on the earth. This book even though supports these theses, it provides different perspectives. It shows how actually ordinary people speak on their behalf. In conclusion, still American has not only one word. This book illuminates that media has significance role in shaping the biased views. Thus, by looking at the structurally investigated informants I would say that this research must close to the real fact of American evangelical Christian community. It is a great work.


Tempe, April 13, 2006