Twelve years after Dr. King's death, the Religious Right became the public face of Christianity. What happenned?

Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Jack Van Impe follow in the footsteps of Dr. Martin Luther King, Ghandi, and Jesus Christ.

Quite the contrast. Within twelve years from the death of the African American preacher in 1968, the Moral Majority was born and its legacy has politically dominated the United States until today.

It was quite the reversal of the historical wave of Christianity in the country. The abolition of slavery and the women's rights movement were spawned in up-state New York in the early 1800's in what was called the 'Burnt Over Region.' Religious extremism was rampant in the hellfire sermonizing that marked the territory, bringing to life other interesting movements like Mormonism and the control of alcohol. King's movement was the last great crusade from this reforming inspiration that has transformed our society.

King's legacy of non-violent protest in pursuit of equality for the descendants of slavery was one of the high points of his religion. As he knelt down before the police, to be taken to jail in Birmingham, the world could see sacrifice, submission to authority, and a willingness to endure the pain that the hatred of society wanted to inflict upon him.

Reverend King and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference was a magnet for every walk of life in the United States, not just Christians, to rally around and confront systemic social evil despite all costs. He took a bullet for it.

He was trying to change society in the grand and ancient tradition of the Church. A decade after his death, the South produced another Christian movement that took over the White House, the Religious Right. After 25 years of their agenda, America is feeling like it is a burnt over region nationally. One Christianity was a backlash against another Christianity.

The faith is now a caricature in the popular imagination. Religion is a lifestyle choice, and the wealth and stature of the Religious Right proves they are on God's side to produce the abundance of life for their followers. Ironically, Dr. King wanted all African Americans to have the opportunity to participate in that as well.

Religious self-sacrifice has now transferred to radical Islam, which uses violence instead of non-violence in the form of suicide bombers. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, a woman and an African American, now line up to become the next president of the United States. The Democrats have won the Congress after a dozen years in the wilderness. And Dave Stewart's 'The Daily Show' turns the once fearsome neo-conservative agenda into a comical parody, as the pilgrimage to free Iraq from tyranny suddenly wakes up to the reality about the coalition that has been running the country.

It seems Christianity has no injustices to protest. Everyone has returned to their comfortable pew. Abortion and school prayer seem to be at a stand-still, as the unending prosperity of the Baby Boomer generation heads into its twilight years.

Christianity has always been about the marriage of social nationalism and religion. Just as Jesus tapped into Jewish nationalism and tradition to get his point across, Dr. King also used the American Dream and Christian social justice to push his cause. The ideal of Christianity was the bride of reaction against the deprivation of the Great Depression and the horrors of fascism in World War II. President Johnson's Great Society fit well into both the pain relief of the Church's message and the hopes of the Republic.

The Religious Right failed because it was preaching to the converted, well-fed middle America praying at the alter of triumphant capitalism. There was no real struggle, outside of saving fetuses. And the secular agenda of creating heaven-on-earth without religion was doing fine with suburbs, shopping malls and modern medicine taking all the pain away.

Christianity had nothing to change, to tap deep into humanity to save it. Christianity is its least inspiring when it is part of the status quo. The spirit of the powerful instead of the spirit of change.

It was particularly difficult for conservative religionists because secular society turned out to be as resilient and amorphous as the religion that spawned Western society. Science, business and rationalism are now more potent catalysts for social change than classical religion.

Christianity changed within a decade from fighting social injustice to acquiring ‘your own personal Jesus.’ It stopped feeding the hungry and just kept feeding those already full. It was bred from an insularity of those prosperous years, wanting to forget the hangover of too many new ideas of the hippie era.

The public face of religion became a caricature of religious consumerism. How to get more out of your life, and stop the fear of losing what you have. Spiritual psycho-therapy. It was against the reforms of the earlier generation: abortion, equal rights (this time for gays), sex education, evolution and in favor of school prayer. They pushed for more social control, but could only achieve dismantling of government support services. They were convinced this would stop the suffering of America, but the citizens were already feeling no pain.

The next big galvanizing fear is the environment. Theology is hard at work converting its traditional human-centered message to incorporate this. Gradually, the stigma of ecology is losing its left-liberal hippie and anti-business tinge, so that even evangelical and fundamentalist Christians are beginning to jump on the bandwagon. Polls show that the religious consumer is demanding it. Its too apocalyptic to ignore.

Its all about managing the fear about one's lifestyle. Much like rock bands, the horror of 1950's Churches, which are now the choir on many modern-savvy altars. Its about managing the Earth, just like our Salvation. Its still human-centered, preventing the fall-from-grace of our consumer society by forces hostile to us, Nature.

The terrorist threat since 9/11 is starting to deflate in the public's imagination. Iraq has successfully screwed-up the Middle East, so that the Islamic World is gradually turning on itself instead of the West. Perhaps this is President Bush's real success story for America in the War on Terror.

In a way, George W. Bush has undermined the Religious Right by neutralizing evil. Christianity always needs a nemesis to fight against. His success in buggering up the Middle East, with no terrorist attacks on America since 2001, and modern McCarthyism now directed toward another the domestic minority threat, Muslims, plays into the hands of Time.

Americans do not believe that the billions spent on increased security can really stop another terrorist attack. But a complacency can settle in, and the political focus is now on extricating the troops from the mess the White House created, in effect saving Americans from death in a far off land.

The ‘axis of evil’ didn’t work. Despite fundamentalists’ political power, secularism is dominant. Pat Robertson could not preach against Islam. Dr. King’s Christian tolerance held, and the ‘axis of evil’ remained a political, social, and military question on a conceptual par with communism, not the devil. Americans were not converting to Islam, let alone plotting revolution to create the ‘Islamic States of America.’

Despite 9/11, terrorism is not a real, tangible, daily threat to the average citizen. They don't wake up every morning and see a social enemy, like whites did with African Americans before the Civil Rights movement, or Iraqis do today.

The justification for the war in Iraq has diluted the authority of the President, neo-conservatives and the Religious Right. The real threat of terrorism was used for another agenda through lies and manipulation. The authority that fundamentalist Christianity longed to resurrect has been seriously undermined as a challenge to secular society. The right wing coalition's incompetence and connivance is perhaps more of a threat to American freedom than terrorism.

The tenets of Dr. King’s movement have proven to have far more resiliency despite the religion’s descent into televangelist caricature. The marriage of fundamentalism and consumerism, media and individualism, does not mimic the courage and goals of the civil rights movement. If it did, we would see swarms of Christians in Baghdad, not converting Muslims, but marching against the madness of extremism. The Religious Right is too much like its brother, big business, finding Salvation through lifestyle. That is the true conformity of the modern world.

Classical Christian evangelism seems to be at a watershed. Peace, love and tolerance are confused with the fearful tradition that calls for sacrifice, pain and death to spread its Truth. The Religious Right does not have the balls like Dr. King had. It is about protection and safety of what we have, spreading the joy of pain relief and middle class life to the world. But it just doesn't seem to go like a military plan. And political conservative Christians are not prepared to risk their lives, or their fundraising.

The Religious Right is the marriage of nationalism and the truth of its heart. Its not really worried about the world. It would be nice if it adopted an American lifestyle and religion. But Iraq is now too confusing and complex to think about.

It is worried about the comfortable pew. Now it is on the wane, and returns to the butt of satire from which it rebelled, as the dreaded liberals take their first fleeting, blind steps to re-capturing the national agenda.

Unlike Martin Luther King, self-sacrifice, suffering, and deprivation are too strange in our culture to have a compelling impact. People just want to be happy, secure, and undisturbed. As the environment becomes the next big fear, which tradition will Christianity take to become involved in the issue? Will it be just prayer or sacrifice? Just words from the comfortable pew, or disturbing the status quo? Equal rights for all life on the planet, or keeping it in bondage to human desires? Its always worried about saving humans. How will American Christianity take these two opposite approaches in its recent past and translate it into a future?

After 25 years of the Religious Right, the burnt over region is now the entire United States. It is starting to lose the fire in its belly since the Democrats won the election based on Iraq and the bungled Hurricane Katrina recovery. What will be the religion’s next public face?