TV REVIEW : ‘Faith’: On Front Lines of Culture Wars

Demons have been around a long time. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus encounters a crazed man living among the tombs and asks him his name.

“My name is Legion, for we are many,” his demons bellow from the depth of the wretched man’s soul.

As America approaches the new millennium, members of the religious right have their own name for the secular demons that have possessed Christian America: They --as in They control the bureaucracy, They control the media, They control the institutions of cultural power, They control academia.

Nothing is beyond their grasp, not public schools, not public morality, and certainly not sexuality.

Christian America, as CBS anchor Dan Rather reports tonight on an hourlong “CBS Reports,” “Faith & Politics: The Christian Right,” is determined through prayer and politics to exorcise those demons, among them Bill Clinton, liberals, radical feminists and homosexuals.

“We’re back,” a Baptist preacher in Hardin County, Ky., declares amid uplifted hands and shouted “Amens!” in his white congregation. “We’re back in Christian commitment to our church. And we’re back in Christian commitment to our nation. Now you will see the world change--for the better!”

That the religious right is politically active is certainly not news. What Rather offers is a much needed if not definitive look into not only what the religious right is up to, but also what concerns it, and the underlying religious motives that have moved its members from their churches into the public square.

Viewers visit the front lines of the nation’s culture wars--from a school board battle in Merrimack, N.H., over teaching creationism in science classes to Republican infighting in Texas.

There are interviews with concerned churchgoing parents about what their children learn in school. There are cuts to fervent preachers who sincerely believe that homosexuality is sinful.

There is even a splash of humor. Said one good ‘ole boy of President Clinton’s churchgoing: “You have a President who is a liar, a cheat and that does not know what morality is. May I say to you, sir, sitting in a church house will no more make you a Christian than sitting in a henhouse is going to make you a chicken.”

Unfortunately, opponents of the religious right--Christians and otherwise--do not come off nearly as engaging. There are, of course, appeals to pluralism and worries about intolerance. But don’t look for a competing moral view that is as articulate and coherent.

At times, opponents of the right are reduced to name-calling (“You’re a blubbering idiot”) and adolescent demands (“Cut this crap out!”).

To his credit, Rather brings perspective in his closing commentary. There must be, he said, an “incredibly delicate balance” between a society eager to embrace a moral vision and one that imposes one set of beliefs on everyone. Says Rather: “The ability of the United States of America to hold itself together as one nation, under God, indivisible, depends mightily on that balance.”

* “Faith & Politics: The Christian Right” airs at 9 tonight on CBS (Channel 2).