Why the Religious Right Worries Me More Than the Secular Left

Dusting off some nineteenth-century apocalyptic interpretations

Photo by Colin Lloyd on Unsplash

(An eight-minute read.)

Anyone who’s been a regular reader of my newsletter for any length of time has probably noticed something: I’m generally a lot more critical of religious people—and, specifically, Christians—than I am of non-religious, secular people.

For those who are deconstructing their faith, or who’ve experienced spiritual abuse that they’re processing, this no doubt comes as a welcome approach. It’s perhaps even cathartic or healing to hear a religious leader openly acknowledging the ways in which religious people have done significant harm.

There may be other readers, however, who have the opposite reaction. They feel frustrated that I keep putting down religious people, feeling that the great threat to faith is a “secular left” who is trying to obliterate Christianity and its values.

And such people must repeatedly wonder: why does this guy keep dogging on Christians?

If you happen to be in this latter category, I totally understand. I try not to be so negative about my brothers and sisters in the faith—though I know I probably err a little too far in that direction.

So I thought I’d try to respond to such a question, explaining why it is that, at the end of the day, try as I might to avoid piling on, I do worry more about the “Religious Right” than the “secular left.”

Looking like a lamb, speaking like a dragon

The simple answer is that I belong to and have been raised in a faith community, the Seventh-day Adventist Church, which has historically looked very suspiciously at the surrounding Christian world.

We’re not unique in this at all, being just one denomination, beginning in the nineteenth century, which arrived at the conviction that something went diabolically wrong over the course of Christian history such that the “Church” went from being a persecuted movement to a persecuting institution, wielding uncontested authority for nearly 1300 years, resulting in mass persecution against all those who refused to conform to its religious agenda.

Such convictions, at least in theory, were based on a study of the Bible’s apocalyptic material—specifically the books of Daniel and Revelation.

In Daniel 7, for example, the prophet sees a “little horn,” which rises out of a beast, that speaks “pompous words” against the “Most High,” and persecutes the “saints of the Most High” for 1260 years (see Daniel 7:25).

Adventist interpreters, along with other like-minded interpreters in the nineteenth century, connected this “little horn” to a beast that John sees in Revelation 13, which also has a “blasphemous name,” and commands worship from its subjects (blasphemy, in this understanding, is when a person claims the authority and prerogatives of God, like the Jewish leaders interpreted Jesus to be doing in Mark 2:7).

Furthermore, this beast, like the “little horn” of Daniel 7, exercises authority over the world for 1260 years as well.

Perhaps just as significantly, John sees a second beast in Revelation 13, working in concert with the first beast, which tries to enforce and compel worship. This beast, according to John, looks like a “lamb” but speaks like a “dragon” (Revelation 13:11). In other words, it has the appearance of Christ (in every other instance in Revelation where the term “lamb” is used, it’s very clearly in reference to Christ) but it speaks and acts like Satan (it’s also clear from Revelation that the “dragon” is Satan).

Thus, this beast takes on the guise of Christianity, and yet it really pursues an anti-Christian agenda, seeking to compel worship and religious behavior that reflects the priorities of the first beast.

All this led my Adventist forefathers to conclude that the real people to be worried about in the world were religious people. There had been, and would continue to be to the end of time (in fact, according to their understanding of Revelation, it would be ramped up at the end of time), religious people who wielded unmitigated authority in an attempt to coerce others to embrace their religious agenda.

In such an interpretation, Adventists were also taking their cues from Jesus, who warned his disciples that there would come a day when they would be “put out of the synagogues” and “killed,” and the people committing such heinous and violent acts would “think” they were “offering God service” (John 16:2).

Candidly, as some might suspect, I’m not sure I’m as willing to be as dogmatic about such interpretations as my forefathers were. I have lots of questions about the nature of the Bible’s apocalyptic material in general and the degree to which we can be so utterly certain about our specific interpretations of prophetic minutiae.

Indeed, I think there have been plenty of people over the span of Christian history, and especially over the last 200 years, who’ve essentially committed spiritual suicide because they based their whole faith on peculiar interpretations of the Bible’s apocalyptic material, only to be proven wrong over and over again.

At the same time, I fully recognize that it would be extremely natural for new religious movements in the nineteenth century—whether they be Mormons, Adventists, or the Churches of Christ—to read their fellow Christians, who were bringing significant derision and persecution against them, into the apocalyptic material.

In other words, as an example: Adventists were the recipients of tremendous ridicule and scorn in the 1830s and 40s—from other Christians—when they proclaimed that Christ was returning in 1844. Many were kicked out of the various Protestants denominations of which they were a part, and when a group of Adventists came to also later embrace Saturday as the day of worship, over-against Sunday like the rest of Christendom, they experienced even more religious pushback.

Thus, it would only be natural, when you’ve been the recipient of religious scorn from your fellow Christians—and these Christians happen to be exerting the most power in America—to easily interpret Daniel and Revelation in such a light.

So I recognize the potential for such factors to perhaps unwittingly skew how one understands the Bible’s teachings.

And for these reasons, as well as others, I want to remain somewhat open-handed about how I relate to such interpretations (one also has to keep in mind that Adventists made these interpretations before the rise of Marxism, Hitler, Stalin, or global jihad, and long before the precipitous decline of Christian adherence in America).

And yet, with all that said, such interpretations do still make sense to me, at least broadly speaking.

It’s hard to deny, for example, that the “Church” did brandish tremendous power and authority over Europe—and then on other continents via its explorers and missionaries—for well over a thousand years.

And try as some historians might to downplay the exact scope and extent of its persecutions, there is little doubt in my mind that they were of a fairly significant scale, just as Daniel and Revelation seemingly foretold.

Similarly, as I observe the current religious landscape, it does seem to me that there continues to be religious movements which have the appearance of a lamb—have the appearance of Christlikeness—and yet try to use coercion as the means by which to pursue their religious agenda (in other words, opting to use force and compulsion to promote a “Christian” agenda, rather than using love—which was Christ’s mode of operation—to draw and attract people into change).

All this is to say, this is why I admittedly have a bias against the “Religious Right.” This is the “milk” I was reared on, and it’s hard for me to shed such programming (as an aside, it’s been extremely surprising to me that some of my fellow Adventists who have historically been even more preoccupied with end-times scenarios than I am, have been—of late—embracing the rhetoric of the Religious Right and are all atwitter about secularism).

I’m not saying that milk is right or wrong. It’s simply an explanation as to where my self-identified biases reside, for good or ill, and the context from which I think and write.

And as I said above, I don’t want to be too closed-handed about my biblical interpretations, nor do I want any prophetic interpretation—which may ultimately prove to be of a dubious nature anyway—to affect the way I look at and interact with others.

At the same time, I hope it’s abundantly clear that I have a deep love and appreciation for my fellow sisters and brothers in Christ. And any angst or concern I may express is not directed toward individual Christians, but toward systems of thinking that promote particular forms of coercive religion, all in the name of trying to instill a narrow set of religious values (and, for what it’s worth, I have plenty of angst toward shenanigans that take place within my own Adventist community as well, feeling especially saddened by any feelings of superiority we may experience or display).

The bottom line is, however one slices up the biblical pie, there does seem to be plenty of material that points to the danger of religious persecution carried out by religious people, and there are lots of warnings about the dangers of religious hypocrisy.

I take this as a serious warning to myself, realizing that I am also guilty of the same. So I am very much a part of the problem, and I appeal to myself and my fellow sisters and brothers in the faith to employ, in the promotion of Christian values, only the principles of Christ’s non-coercive, love-awakening love.

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Shawn is a pastor in Maine, whose life, ministry, and writing focus on incarnational expressions of faith. The author of four books and a columnist for Adventist Review, he is also a DPhil student at the University of Oxford (what they call a PhD), focusing on nineteenth-century American Christianity. You can follow him on Instagram and Twitter, and listen to his podcast Mission Lab.