Michael, Michael, Michael—Please Stop!

In today’s Washington Post, Religious Right Michael Gerson is at it again in his selective use of the facts. This time, in employing the legacy of William Wilberforce , he effectively credits religious conservatism with ending slavery.

The historical revisionism never stops.

Once more Michael Gerson demonstrates the Right’s endless need to take credit for liberal accomplishments.

Wilberforce was not a conservative at all. Instead, he was more like an Evangelical with quite a bit of what historian Garry Wills defines as Enlightened faith—combining reason with faith. Today there are similar examples of individuals such as Wilberforce in the persons of Jimmy Carter and Tony Campolo.

Still, Michael Gerson feels the need to twist the truth by not telling the whole story.

In America, Abolitionism was hardly a conservative cause. It should be noted that more tolerant, progressive denominations such as Unitarians and Quakers--using the analogy of the Golden Rule to break away from the Bible’s literal reading that sanctions slavery—and not Evangelicals were at the forefront of American abolitionism. Conversely, Southern Evangelicals were at the forefront of using a literal interpretation of the Bible to justify slavery. In fact, the Southern Baptist Convention has its origins in breaking with their Northern brethren in 1845 over the issue of owning other human beings.

If anything, today’s religious conservatism—the movement that Michael Gerson is more closely associated with—has its real origins with the Dispensationalist thought of John Darby and Dwight Moody. (Rapture-based theology dovetails neatly with economic royalists who oppose economic reform (Why reform this world? All that would do is to help evil and delay the rapture). And it was Moody, who preached against reform and backed by several of the Gilded Age’s Robber Barons--just as much of today’s Religious Right is; nefarious groups such as the Institute on Religion and Democracy immediately comes to mind.

Once more it was progressive, not conservative religious faith, strong enough to think beyond literal readings of Scripture that brought about positive change.