It’s a bit scholarly and long, but interesting if you’re into that sort of thing.
Margaret Mitchell is Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Literature at the University of Chicago. In this essay, entitled "How Biblical is the Christian Right?", Mitchell chonicles how the Chiristian right, who claim themselves to be biblical "literalists", frequently engage in biblical cherry-picking — or mere bible invocation — to further their political (as opposed to biblical) views. A typical example:
One clear example of the cyberspace Bible-as-sub-text hermeneutic can be seen on the family.org web site run by James Dobson (an American citizen who both sides will agree played an enormous role in the Supreme Court nomination and confirmation process, and merited an infamous thank-you note from Justice Samuel Alito). From the “Citizen Link” tab (www.family.org/cforum/) one finds a range of topical headings (rather apples and olives) under “Focus on Social Issues”: Abstinence Policy, Life, Constitution and Government, The Courts, The Media, Education, Gambling, Homosexuality and Gender, Marriage and Family, Origins, Persecution, Pornography and Worldview and Culture. Only two of these categories have a sub-heading “Biblical View.” Can you guess which? Actually, I was surprised, but they are Abstinence Policy and Gambling.
When one follows the link to the latter (“The Biblical View on Gambling”) we find only one actual passage cited: Matt. 10:16: “Jesus says ‘Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves.’” This may indeed be taken to refer to a single blackjack dealer, most of our state governments, or the whole “gambling industry” (as the statement later on the page puts it), but I think we can agree that in either case it is hardly a literal reading of Jesus’ commission to the disciples to walk the roads of Galilee preaching and healing. In an unusual concession the author says frankly “Gambling is not addressed directly in the Bible,” but follows that up with the last word on his own authority: “nor is it exempt from God’s instruction.” Yet the web page itself is anonymous, and the authority for its interpretation (gambling is not Biblical) depends entirely on the link to Dobson’s web site. So, despite the fact that there is no verse in the Bible about gambling, somehow (how?) God’s instruction about it can be known.
In other words, these evangelicals cloak themselves in the Bible and God, without having to go through the rigor of actual applying literal scripture:
A similar set of moves may be found in Jerry Falwell’s sermonic column (“Listen, America”) of January 31, 2004, which is entitled, “God is pro-war.”15 Falwell lines up Eccles. 3:8 (“a time of war, and a time of peace”), Exodus 15, Judges, 1 Chron. 14:15, and Prov. 20:18 and 21:15 (“It is a joy to the just to do judgment”) against what he characterizes as the errancy of “many present-day pacifists who hold Jesus as their example for unvarying peace. But they ignore the full revelation concerning Jesus pictured in the book of Revelation 19, where He is depicted bearing a ‘sharp sword’ and smiting nations, ruling them with ‘a rod of iron.’” Those who might respond by appeal to the sixth commandment are easily rebuffed by Falwell: it does not say “thou shalt not kill” but “actually, no; it says: ‘Thou shalt not commit murder.’” Falwell does not feel the need to document this point with reference to the Hebrew verb ratzach in Exod. 20:13 nor even to any particular translation (the venerable KJV so loved by many conservative Christians reads “kill,” but the more recent NIV and NLT read “murder”). It is just so because Reverend Falwell says it is so.
Mitchell sums it up thusly:
My thesis is that what makes the Christian Right biblical is not a literalistic hermeneutic so much as a mode of argumentation by reference to a deliberately selective set of biblical passages, annexed to the predetermined cause through a variety of exegetical moves, which are usually unexplained because they depend upon prior agreement of the ends of interpretation.
That’s a scholarly way of saying this: members of the Christian Right twist the Bible to make it fit with their own pre-conceived notions and agenda, not necessarily the Bible’s (or, indeed, God’s).
Finally, in the end, she answers her original question: "How Biblical Is the Christian Right?"
Biblical? Yes and no. Biblical in the sense of seeking biblical support for an agenda? Yes. Biblical in the sense of reading the whole Bible? No. Biblical in the sense of reading the Bible literally? No, not consistently. Biblical in reading parts for the whole, and in using the Bible as a source of weapons to define themselves against their enemies? Yes. Wrestling with the possible plural meanings and complex legacies of Bible itself? Not in public, at any rate.