‘Demeaning Our Own Values’

Where does Goodwin get the notion that the followers of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson are discontented farmers and mill workers? The religious right is entirely middle class and is not interested in the plight of workers or minority groups. Evangelical religious leaders simply use the middle class to maintain their own incomes in the wealthiest bracket, while the middle class uses its religious affiliation to segregate itself from the working class and minorities.

As an ideology, Protestant fundamentalism serves to blind its members to issues of social structure and to focus instead on issues of private morality, “sin.” This ideology functions to maintain the existing social system of the American South.

Far from criticizing the Reagan Revolution of increasing inequality of incomes and transfer of wealth to the upper class, the Protestant fundamentalist ideology deliberately overlooks these issues with its relentless emphasis on “sin.” The Reagan Administration directly plays up to this ideology in exchange for political support from the white Southern middle class, and that is essential for continued Republican control of the White House and Senate.

For its support, the white Southern middle class maintains a firmer grip of class and racial hegemony in its own backyard against the rapidly increasing black populations of the Southern states.

JOHN S. JENSEN

Downey