Author: Frederick Clarkson

A number of this week’s reports and analyses from the Greater Blogosphere have a theme. In various ways they describe the religious right’s assault on religious freedom and pluralism in America. These assaults come from a number of seemingly different directions.
The Huffington Post

Thomas de Zengotita reacts to Jonathan Hutson’s original expose at Talk to Action about the bloodthirsty, Christian supremacist video game based on Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind series of novels:

When my nephew sent me this link about this new video game called Left Behind; Eternal Forces, I thought I was looking at satire….[but]…

This is really chilling stuff. What it tells us about the hearts and minds of these awful people is almost impossible to fathom. Hannah Arendt’s famous phrase, “the banality of evil,” comes to mind–only this is not just banal, it’s also pious. The combination is transcendentally ugly.

But what I really want to know is where are the decency brigades? Where’s Joe Lieberman and Hillary? Where are the Hollywood bashers? Where are the defenders of standards in our public culture? Let’s hear from Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes and the Wall Street Journal editorial page. Let’s hear from the folks at The New Criterion. How deep does the cynicism that underlies the neocon alliance with Christian fundamentalists run?

This is a Holocaust game for God’s sake.

Mainstream Baptist

Bruce Prescott reminds us that the Baptist tradition in the U.S. going back to Roger Williams, has always supported the right of individual conscience — that became a foundational principle in the American constitution, over coercion, (let alone the murder of New Yorkers who refuse to convert as is taught in the video game Left Behind: Eternal Forces, discussed above:

Williams, a champion of liberty of conscience and religious liberty, was offered the pulpit of the congregational church in Boston when he arrived in the New World in 1631. He declined that position because he was opposed to forcing everyone to one worship. Instead he became a missionary to the indigenous people of North America.

Williams studied the language and customs of indigenous North Americas and published the first text on a Native American language. Foremost among his concerns was a desire to share the gospel cross-culturally in a manner that respected the integrity of the consciences of all persons. In his book, The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, Williams wrote:

Two mountains of crying guilt lie heavy upon the backs of all men that name the name of Christ, in the eyes of Jews, Turks, and pagans.

First, the blasphemies of their idolatrous inventions, superstitions, and most unchristian conversations.

Secondly, the bloody, irreligious, and inhuman oppressions and destructions under the mask or veil of the name of Christ, etc. (Bloudy Tenent, page 8)

… People with this concern for both the integrity of conscience and of the Christian witness will not be organizing political efforts to force the children of Jews, Muslims and pagans to say state sponsored mandatory prayers in public schools. Neither will they be erecting religious monuments in public spaces.

Blog from the Capital

Don Byrd finds the money quote in a profile about former Faith Based Initiative honcho Jim Towey.  He also notes that the Louisiana Legislature which last week was flummoxed about which version of the Ten Commandments to use in a bill about posting the Ten Commandments and so decided to edit the holy writ, eventually punted. They sent a bill to the governor that says the commandments should be posted when someone finally figures out what they are.

Wall of Separation

Jeremy Leaming reports:

“Public Expression of Religion Act.” H.R. 2679, introduced by Rep. John Hostettler (R-Ind.)… would deny attorneys’ fees and out-of-pocket costs in cases won by advocates of church-state separation. The measure would essentially make it much more difficult for citizens to challenge government-backed religious activities….In a six-page to the committee, Americans United Executive Director Barry W. Lynn argued that the bill was a blatant attempt to cut off challenges to government-sponsored religion. Government entities, Lynn noted, have “virtually unlimited resources with which to litigate cases and can use those resources to drag out litigation.” Lynn also observed that increasingly government agencies do not have to spend money on litigation because Religious Right law firms, such as the Alliance Defense Fund and the Thomas More Law Center, are defending their actions for free in court.

Faith in Public Life

This brand new organization seeks to highlight, network and provide resources to mainstream religious groups as an alternative to the religious right:

Faith in Public Life envisions a country in which diverse religious voices for justice and the common good consistently impact public policy; and those who use religion as a tool of division and exclusion do not dominate public discourse.

As is now de rigeur, they have a blog. House blogger Dave Baron has a report on the Committee hearing on the Hoestettler bill. Comments welcome.

Give Up

This is not exactly about the religious right and what to do about it — but it is so well done that it suggests a model for comparative quotes involving certain leaders of the religious right. The Hitler vs. Coulter Quiz  (I scored 9 out of 14.)

Talk to Action

Tanya Erzen has the skinny on the religious right’s “ex-gay” meeting, held udring Gay Pride Week.

Exodus International, the umbrella organization for the ex-gay movement, is holding its annual conference called “Live Out Loud.” Exodus promotes the message that men and women can “come out” of homosexuality and change into heterosexuals through biblical approaches and reparative therapy. There are now over two-hundred ex-gay ministries worldwide, and the movement is expanding. I recently visited a prison that hosts an ex-gay ministry in its facility, and there are more to come.

Jonathan Hutson reports that there is spyware in the software of the controverial video game, Left Behind:  Eternal Forces.

It’s cutting-edge Israeli technology — a piece of software inserted directly into Left Behind: Eternal Forces, software that cannot be blocked or removed — and without your knowledge or permission, it tracks you. This in-game ad software records how often you play the video game, at what time of day and for how long, what game play areas you visit (like Times Square, Soho, Chinatown, or the United Nations Building), which video ads and product placements you view, where your computer is located geographically, and who you are demographically. It monitors your choices and behavior, collates data, and reports back in real-time to… whom? For what purposes? Do you know?

Chip Berlet wonders why so many Americans are missing just how vile and dangerous the novels in the Left Behind series really are. Christian values? Check it out:

When White supremacists post websites demonizing Jews and gay people, they are condemned for the hatemongers they are.

When leaders of the armed citizens militias and their allies in the Patriot Movement in the 1990s urged their followers to form anti-government underground cells and battle global cooperation and the United Nations, they were condemned as dangerous guerrillas spreading divisive conspiracy theories.

When Timothy LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins write the Left Behind series of novels containing the same type of bigotry, they sell 70 million books and are interviewed by clueless journalists who use a double standard by not confronting LaHaye and Jenkins for spreading hate and conspiracism as well as promoting religious violence as a heroic duty.

Moiv reports:

The National Abortion Federation’s new report — Crisis Pregnancy Centers: An Affront to Choice — tells us more than folks like Kurt Ensminger want us to know about the tactics of “pregnancy help centers” from Maine to California.

Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs) exist to keep women from having abortions. In many instances, they misinform and intimidate women to achieve their goal. Women describe being harassed, bullied, and given blatantly false information. Many assert that their confidentiality has been violated, and that mistreatment by CPCs has threatened their health.

Robert Pearson established the first Crisis Pregnancy Center in 1967. Pearson made his intentions for creating these CPCs clear when he declared, “Obviously, we’re fighting Satan. A killer, who in this case is the girl who wants to kill her baby, has no right to information that will help her kill her baby.”

Frank Coccozelli analyzes the bizarre disortions of the priest pedophilia scandal being carried out by the rightist Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights:

If the Religious Right were to succeed in establishing an American theocracy, or anything even close, the devil would be in the details. A preview is now being played out between the Catholic League on the theocratic Right and the Voice of the Faithful representing a full spectrum of mainstream centrist, liberal and conservative Catholics.

I decided to name the elephant on the conference table and noted that although the religious right affects the politics and public policy agendas of many, the many organizational conferences this summer will talk around the subject rather than address it directly. Few if any of these events will seek to hold coherent conversations on the religious right and what to do about it.

And I appealed to the blogosphere for assistance in updating my book, Eternal Hostility:  The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy. (There has definitely been progress, but we have a ways to go yet.)

Even though summer is here, this week there has been plenty of illuminating blogospheric reporting on and discussion of the religious right. So welcome to my more-or-less-weekly blog round-up on these matters.

The summer time is the right time, to learn about the religious right — and what to do about it. Well, all the time is the right time, but you know…
Jspot.org

Mik Moore has video:    

Steven Colbert [of Comedy Central] interviewed a self-righteous Congressman who wants to hang the ten commandments, well, everywhere, and asks him the question you’re dying to ask: “What are the ten commandments?” Perhaps the good Congressman should start by hanging the ten commandments in his home first.

Blog from the Capital

Don Byrd updates the trouble with federal funding of “faith-based” social services.

The Raw Story

John Byrne reports:  

On a PBS program aired this weekend and taped in April, new Bush domestic policy adviser Karl Zinsmeister told the host that he would personally support doctors being jailed for performing abortions…

Zinsmeister, President George W. Bush’s newly appointed chief Domestic Policy Advisor, gave the interview prior to his White House appointment. Zinsmeister was appointed May 24.

Asked if he would “feel comfortable putting a doctor in jail for performing a procedure that a woman wants?” Zinsmeister said, “sure,” while noting that he supported some limitations in cases of rape or incest.

Father Jake Stops the World  

Father Jake takes note that the editors of The Washington Times have apparently been reading Episcopal blogs in the run-up to the denomination’c convention in Columbus. Ohio.   The paper writes:  “The battle of the blogs is in full swing at the Episcopal General Convention meeting in Columbus, Ohio…”It’s a whole different game now,” said a Canadian clergyman operating one of the sites. ‘It’s ‘The people’s revolution hits the ground’… ”

The media is turning to the blogs for news. We’re part of “the people’s revolution.” Imagine that. This is becoming fun.

Dispatches from the Culture Wars

Ed Brayton reports on an interesting article by Stephen Carter in Christianity Today.  Brayton notes that Carter exposes the bogus demonization of the ACLU which has a long record of defending religious freedom of, among others, Christians.

But he has a larger purpose in mind, and I think it’s an important one. He wants to make a statement about the tendency of people on both sides to demonize their opponents. Decide that your opponents are purely evil rather than mistaken …  you’ll either fall for any criticism anyone makes of your enemy, no matter how unsupported it is by the evidence, or you’ll reach the point where you don’t really care whether a criticism is accurate as long as it makes Them look bad.

Corrente

Lambert discusses E.J.Dionne’s report on the election of the new, less strident president of the Southern Baptist Convention, and wonders whether evangelicals are “mellowing.”  

Dionne does make an interesting point lower down in the blogosphere. Real Christians–not Christianists–are crashing the gate at the SBC using blogs:

Over the past several years, an active network of Baptist bloggers has opened up discussion in the convention and given reformers and moderates avenues around what [Robert] Parham [of the Baptist Center for Ethics] called “the Baptist establishment papers” and other means of communication controlled by the convention’s leadership. Thus may some of our oldest and most traditional institutions be transformed by new technologies.

Talk to Action

Mainstream Baptist isn’t so sure that the SBC is mellowing. He thinks the hard right got taken by surprise — and that won’t happen again.  He also reports that while the SBC voted not to support an exodus from the public schools — they voted instead to try to take over school boards.

Michelle Goldberg inspires an important discussion about how to conduct ourselves on conservative Christian talk radio.

Jonathan Hutson’s latest post in his series on the the video game Left Behind:  Eternal Forces opens this way:

The Christian supremacist video game has drawn the wrath of conservative Christian attorney Jack Thompson. He has denounced and cut ties with Tyndale House, publisher of the Left Behind novels that inspired the video game, and he is now threatening a lawsuit over its licensing of the game. Talk to Action has obtained a letter from Mr. Thompson in which he has urged Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, Ph.D., to join him in repudiating Tyndale House.

Mr. Thompson has charged that in licensing the game, Tyndale House, publisher of his own book against video game violence as well as the Living Word Bible and several of Mr. Dobson’s titles on child-rearing, “has now become one of the mental molesters of minors for money.”

Chip Berlet thinks that those who are concerned about the new vid game, Left Behind: Eternal Forces should also take a closer look at the ugly stuff in Tim LaHaye’s novels on which the game is based:

The real scandal involving the violent video game Left Behind: Eternal Forces is that the demonization of enemies, bloodthirsty dualism, and murderous rampages on the computer screen are accurate reflections of the apocalyptic theology espoused by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins in their Left Behind series of novels which have sold more than 70 million copies.

Few in the mainstream media have dared confront the fact that the best-selling Left Behind series is a primer valorizing bigotry, paranoia, and guerilla warfare against those who promote tolerance, pluralism, and global cooperation. Almost four years ago, however, author Gershom Gorenberg, blasted the Left Behind series for its open “contempt for Judaism,” making a “fanatic killer” a hero, and general rejection of tolerance and democratic civil society.

Moiv reports that a draconian Republican antiabortion bill in Ohio enjoys the enthusiastic support of a Hero of the Faith of the Army of God — an alumni assocation of domestic terrorists who revere their captured and executed martyrs — and cheer-on the next generation.

And I appeal to the blogosphere for assistance in updating my book, Eternal Hostility:  The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy.

In the book I wrote: “The struggle between democracy and theocracy, which seemed to have been settled when the U.S. Constitution was ratified, is far from over. As Christian Right theorist Gary North writes, “For the first time in over 300 years, a growing number of Christians are starting to view themselves as an army on the move. This army will grow.” Taking this metaphor a step farther, North declared that, “We are self-consciously firing the first shot.”

As written, the book remains surprisingly current in describing trends that were harder for many of us to see ten years ago, but are far more evident now. I want to underscore that even if the GOP loses both houses of Congress in this election, the Christian Right is going to remain a powerful force in American politics and culture. Like any other movement, they will have their ups and downs, and ebbs and flows. But they have built some important organizations — religious denominations; think tanks; universities and law schools, and more — that did not exist a generation ago. There are quite a range of ideologies, methods, personalities and so on. And just as in any other broadly based movement, they are not without weaknesses and factions, in addition to their many strengths. These are things worth knowing.

You’ve sometimes got to do a lot of looking around to find the best the blogosphere has to report on the religious right and what to do about it. But fortunately, a little searching always yeilds some gems — in addition to the great stuff from the usual suspects, who we can count on to come through with good stuff for us just about every week.
Blog from the Capital:  

Don Byrd has the money quote from thoughtful discussion on avoiding stereotyping when discussing convervatives and religious people of all kinds. Don also has this:

Here’s a fun cautionary tale about the beauracracy of trying to create constitutional Ten Commandments displays in courthouses. Just another reason why this kind of thing may be a bad idea. In Louisiana, a House committee charged with developing a proper monument have had to confront the issue that the Ten are not the same for every religious tradition. And, oh yeah, they weren’t written in English. The headline says it all: “Panel Edits Ten Commandments”

Dispatches from the Culture Wars:

Ed Brayton has a detailed take down of the Discovery Institute’s relentless attacks on the Federal Judge who ruled that “intelligent design” was simply religious creationism, poorly disguised as science.

Political Spaghetti:

Matthew Thompson at reports that the Anglican Archbishop Akinola of Nigeria, the darling of rightwing, IRD-supported schismatic Episcopalians in the U.S., is the driving force behind an antigay marriage bill in Nigeria. At stake is more than same sex marriage, the bill

would also deny the most basic of civil rights to gay and lesbian Nigerians. They would be banned from speaking out on their own behalf, as well as banned from organizing meetings or processions of any kind. Violators would be subject to 5 years’ imprisonment.

Wall of Separation:

Robert Boston discusses the strangely defensive attack by New York Times collumnist David Brooks on Kevin Phillips’ new book American Theocracy.  Brooks denounces as “paranoid” Phillips’ well-documented discussion of the relationship between Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church and the Bush family. (I made my own contributions to the literature on this ten years ago.)  

Talk to Action:

Chip Berlet explains the role of Calvinist dominionism in American economic and foreign policy.  

To this brand of conservatism, it doesn’t matter if it is the child, the family, the community, the nation, or the entire world: to avoid chaos and immorality, there needs to be a strong authority figure willing to apply punishment, shame, and discipline–verbally if possible–through physical force and violence if need be.

The Bush administration, with the backing of millions of Christian conservatives, seeks to reform the global village by spanking its perceived miscreants–and they have the military arsenal to back up this neo-Calvinist authoritarian worldview.

Moiv details plans of militant antiabortion groups plan to lay seige to the last abortion clinic in Mississippi this summer.

Over the Memorial Day weekend, Operation Save America warmed up for its upcoming assault on the last abortion clinic in Mississippi this July by descending en masse on Raleigh, North Carolina. Raleigh is the home of Susan Hill, whose National Women’s Health Organization has kept its Jackson clinic open in the face of relentless opposition from legislators and activists alike. Recently I wrote of the storm clouds rising  in Jackson, where OSA will be joined by the New York-based Oh Saratoga! and other groups to “storm the gates of hell” and close the Jackson clinic for all time.

Guest front pager, Rev. Carlton Veazey, head of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice exposes how the rightist Institute for Religion and Democracy is behind efforts to undermine the prochoice positions and lobbying efforts of mainstream Christian and other religious organizations.

Another guest front pager, sociologist Arlene Stein, shows how the Christian Right often uses faux science to advance its religious and public policy goals.

Today, a wide-ranging network of Christian conservative “experts” are busily testifying against abortion, same-sex marriage, condom distribution in developing nations, and stem cell research, at the behest of federal, state and local officials. They’re using graphs, pie charts, and the language of scientific objectivity to make their case for creationism, abstinence-only sex education, and prohibitions against homosexuality–even if that means making up their science along the way.

Frank Cocozelli posted part four of his series on the Catholic Right — this time zeroing in on William Donohue and the Catholic League for Civil Rights.

The Catholic League, led since 1993 by its often bombastic president, William A. Donohue presents itself as the voice of all of the Vatican’s flock. Donohue often appears on cable television shows railing against those whom he believes to be disobedient to Rome or non-Catholics who dare to challenge the Vatican on non-economic matters of orthodoxy…..  Donohue complained that non-Catholics were interfering in internal Church affairs. “It’s one thing for them to be voyeurs,” he asserted, “–peering into the Catholic Church the way kids peer into candy stores–quite another when they become meddlers.” He then proceeded to warn Catholics For A Free Choice president Francis Kissling, the CBS Evening News, and Tikkun editor Rabbi Michael Lerner, among others, that the internal affairs of the Vatican are not their business before closing on a note about how “bringing back the Inquisition may not be such a bad idea.”

Jonathan Hutson’s four part expose of the new LaHayist video game, Left Behind: Eternal Forces, begins here. For those who have not yet heard about this, the game is a real time stragegy game in which Christian militias are pitted against the forces of the AntiChrist on the streets of New York — and characters must convert or die.

warriors shout “Praise the Lord!” as they blow infidels away, and players can switch to the side of the AntiChrist to kill Christians

Joan Bokaer reports that the Texas GOP has once again declared that the U.S. is a Christian Nation, and attacks “the myth of separation of church and state.”

Tanya Erzen has an excellent summary of what’s up with the rise of the religious right in Ohio–and has an idea of what needs to be done.  

The success of the Christian Right is due to years of institution building on the local and state level. Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America, and the American Family Association, among others have local and state councils that promote their agenda and tie them to a national policy center. A new message is crucial, but so are the networks and sites of affiliation for people to get involved in issues, and to feel they have a means to combat the theocratic message of someone like Rod Parsley. Churches, especially, continue to play a key role in galvanizing their constituencies around political issues. Secular and religious progressives have slowly realized they have been left behind, and it is imperative that we catch up.

This is yet another eclectic round-up of interesting and significant blog posts from the Greater Blogosphere on the religious right and what to do about it. This week’s edition features posts from Orcinus, Jews on First!, and Political Spaghetti — as well as many of the usual suspects.

Almost everyone has opinions about the religious right, its major characters, and the latest outrageous statements of Pat Robertson.

I think it is important that we listen to people who know what they are talking about.
Street Prophets: Pastordan flags an important story by journalist John Sugg on the state of the Christian Right. This is a story that merits much discussion.

Among other things, Sugg writes:

It remains to be seen whether the forces arrayed against the religious right will amount to much. Will they cause a substantial number of evangelicals to consider issues other than the short litmus test positions that fundamentalists such as Sadie Fields and Jerry Falwell have told them are important? Will they energize people of faith from other religious traditions to become more engaged in the political process? And, most of all, will they fracture the coalition that has given the Republican Party control of the White House, Congress and state governments across the South?

Chuck Currie nails the hypocrisy of the latest “statement” from the Institute on Religion and Democracy whose mission is to dismember the National Council of Churches and the leading affiliated mainline Christian denominations.

The Republican Party-aligned Institute on Religion and Democracy sent out a press release today attacking Jim Winkler, general secretary of the United Methodist Board of Church and Society  for a speech he gave in March of this year critical of President Bush  IRD spokesman Mark Tooley (also a writer for conservative activist David Horowitz’s web site ) claims that Winkler confuses “partisan politics with the Gospel.” The irony is too great to ignore. Not only is Tooley using the very same words that I’ve used in public criticism of IRD but the IRD press release attacking Winker was sent out by – wait for it – 2004 Bush campaign worker John Lomperis. Lomperis routinely sends out attack pieces against progressive Christians who don’t conform to IRD’s own partisan political agenda without disclosing his own partisan political activities.

Religion Clause:  Howard Friedman notes:  

On Monday, Florida’s Christian Family Coalition held a pastor appreciation breakfast in Miami. The 4 Florida gubernatorial candidates were invited to speak. Two showed up, but one of the two clearly got a boost, according to the Associated Press. Rev. O’Neal Dozier, introducing candidate Charlie Crist, said that the Lord Jesus had come to him in a dream two years ago and told him that Crist would be Florida’s next governor. Dozier is not without political connections. Present Governor Jeb Bush appointed him to a board that nominates judges in south Florida.

Political Spaghetti:   Matt writes (May 19th):  

Today, the founder of the Legion of Christ, Father Marcial Maciel Degollado, was disciplined by the Vatican for what Andrew Sullivan calls “a long and brutal history of sexual abuse and harassment of young seminarians in his care.”

Sullivan goes on to call on Richard John Neuhaus, a long-time defender of Father Maciel, and member of the Institute on Religion and Democracy’s (IRD) Board of Directors, to apologize for his “slander” against the journalists “who tried to unmask Maciel’s crimes.”

Although hardly comparable to Maciel, Archbishop Peter Akinola, who is also defended by the IRD, is nearly immune to attack because of the idolization he receives from within conservative Anglican circles and because the current threat of schism within the Anglican Communion makes the complaints of liberals too politically charged to be recognized — even when Akinola endorses legislation that would put gay and lesbian Nigerians in jail over a theological disagreement.

Sometimes the truth is before us, and we just can’t see.

Blog from the Capital:  Don Byrd discussed a major article from the Christian Science Monitor on vouchers for private religious schools in Milwaukee:

Sure, there are feel-good stories of capable children moving from a failing situation to a thriving one. But, the bulk of the evidence says what we’ve always known about voucher programs; they send public money to religious institutions, encourage the creation of religious schools of dubious educational integrity, are unable to maintain quality control, and offer no measurable improvement in the only thing that matters: student achievement.

DefCon: Clark links to a streaming audio chat with Michelle Goldberg, discussing her new book Kingdom Coming:  The Rise of Christian Nationalism.

Wall of Separation: Joe Conn reports on how Bob McDonnell, a graduate of Pat Robertson’s Regent University Law School is now  Attorney General of Virginia — and pushing an antigay marriage amendment to the state constitution:  

Legal experts say it would not only ban same-sex marriage, but would also jeopardize many other legal provisions protecting all unmarried couples. It would even put at risk important protections against domestic violence.

Jews on First!  Rabbi Haim Dov Beliak reviews Rabbi James Rudin’s book, The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us

For Jews, a central proposition about America is: America is different. Jews took heart that, in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and each of its subsequent amendments — especially the first and the fourteenth — the United States was distinguishing itself from old Europe by establishing the separation of church and state. This created a special independent status for all religions, including Judaism. Now, though, Rabbi James Rudin warns in his new book, The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us, all of that is about to end.

Rudin writes: “I am convinced that despite the large U.S. population, the religious diversity, and the Constitutional and judicial guarantees of church-state separation, the campaign to permanently transform America into a faith-based nation where one particular form of Christianity is legally dominant over all other religious communities constitutes a clear and present danger.”

Talk to Action:  Mainstream Baptist discusses the relationship betweeen the white supremacist Christian Identity movement and theocratic Christian Reconstructionist movement.

Bruce Wilson has reposted the transcript (by Renee from Ohio), of the recent Air America program State of Belief, that featured three Talk to Action writers.

Moiv shows us the money behind the Christian Right in Texas — and what that money buys.

Frank Cocozzelli posted part three of his series on the Catholic Right, notably the real story of Opus Dei — made famous by The DaVinci Code.

Orcinus:  Dave Neiwart has a long and timely discussion of the militant evangelical youth group, Battle Cry.

I first noticed BattleCry when they held their San Francisco rally a couple of months ago. After reading up on them and listening carefully to their rhetoric, I think Taylor’s labeling of them as “fascist” is not exactly correct. Rather, I think they’re a classic case of pseudo fascism:

Unlike the genuine article, it presents itself under a normative, rather than a revolutionary, guise; and rather than openly exulting in violence, it pays lip service to law and order. Moreover, even in the areas where it resembles real fascism, the similarities are often more familial than exact. It is, in essence, less virulent and less violent, and thus more likely to gain broad acceptance within a longtime stable democratic system like that of the United States.

And further:

The familial resemblance of fascism’s architecture is unmistakable, but it is not fully fleshed out. It is like a hologram, a skeletal outline, of fascism.

Fascism is not a single, readily identifiable principle but a political pathology, best understood (as in psychology) as a constellation of traits … Taken individually, many of these traits seem innocuous enough, even readily familiar, part of the traditional American political hurly-burly. A few of them are present throughout the political spectrum — but definitely not all of them.

It is only when taken together in sum does the constellation become clear. And when it comes together, it is fated to take on a life of its own.

The main component of fascism that is missing from Battle Cry is the real, beating heart of fascism: its eliminationist violence. There’s plenty of pretend violence, and certainly plenty of demonization of the “enemy,” all of which build toward the real thing. But there’s relatively little talk, yet, of “crushing” or eliminating or exterminating the enemy, which is really the signal characteristic of the Brownshirt.

He concludes:  

When we see groups like this taking shape, we need to understand that they are a warning sign that something is coming that the politics of the past may be inadequate to contain. It means we need to reach deeper and find something that dispells the cloud of fear that conservative rule has shrouded over the nation.

The religious and secular right have have been gunning for the mainstream Protestant churches in the United States, and around the world, for a generation. Through front groups — mostly associated with the Washington, DC-based Institute for Religion and Democracy (IRD), they have sought to foment internal division and generate external pressures, in order to neutralize, divide, and conquer the historic churches of mainline Protestantism that had become increasingly powerful and influential advocates for Christian notions of social justice.

Unfortunately, it has been as difficult for mainstream religious leaders to come to terms with this strategic assault, as it has been for most Americans to come to terms with the rise of the religious right in American politics. But we may have reached a turning point, thanks to Air America and a dedicated group of bloggers who also happen to be veterans of research and writing about the religious right.

On Sunday, May 21st, Air America’s nationally syndicated radio show State of Belief, “In conjunction with the website Talk to Action… takes an unprecedented look into the takeover of America’s churches, revealing the ugly truths, personal experiences, and exhaustive research of four leaders.”

“The Southern Baptist Convention was lost,” State of Belief host Welton Gaddy ruefully notes regarding the fundamentalist takeover of his own denomination, “not because of those trying to take it over, but because of people arguing that it wasn’t a big deal.”

The program will air on about 40 stations around the country, XM Satellite Radio, and over the internet via streaming audio, as well as via podcast. Visit the State of Belief web site for details on how to hear the show.
The State of Belief press release briefly introduces the three Talk to Action bloggers featured on the show:

Dr. Bruce Prescott, Executive Director of Mainstream Oklahoma Baptists is, like Welton, a veteran of the purges that marked the conservative takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention. The strategy, says Prescott, is to keep mainstream denominations in turmoil over wedge issues such as gay marriage, so that conservative leaders can be free to achieve their political and religious goals.

Dr. John Dorhauer, minister for the St. Louis Association of the United Church of Christ, has seen congregations around him descend into in-fighting, provoked by right-wing propaganda. Dorhauer explains, “What the politically motivated achieve is the silence of the religious conscience voice that has historically led this country….If you take out the 45 million people that are represented by the National Council of Churches, you are going to hollow out one of the cores of our nation’s democracy.”

Dr. Andrew Weaver, a United Methodist pastor and research psychologist, has traced the campaign against mainline Protestantism largely to the Institute on Religion and Democracy a think-tank funded by uber-conservative industrialists such as Richard Mellon Scaife and the Adolph Coors family. Weaver says that the IRD and so-called religious “renewal” groups are funneling money in “a systematic effort to undermine mainline churches that still have democratic, transparent processes.” The problem in countering these efforts, he says, is that “All of these traditions have niceness at the core; while we’ve been thinking it’s touch football, they’ve been playing tackle.”

Talk to Action, (of which I am the co-founder), made reporting on and discussion of the attacks on the mainline churches a focus not only because they are the targets of a sustained war of attrition, but because media coverage, even progressive and religious media, has been spotty at best. That is starting to change, but the need for sound reporting and analysis will continue for the foreseeable future. From the standpoint of the leaders of the religious and secular right in America, the final victory of a permanent marginalization of the hated mainstream churches, seems within their grasp.

For general background in advance of the show, I suggest my recent article: The Battle for the Mainline Churches, which appears in the Spring issue of The Public Eye magazine.

Here are some excerpts:

“Make no mistake,” wrote Avery Post, the national president of the United Church of Christ in 1982, “the objectives of the Institute on Religion  and Democracy are the exact opposite of what its name appears to stand for. The purpose of its leaders is to demoralize the mainline denominations and to turn them away from the pursuit of social and economic justice.

“We must not wait for this attack to be launched in the congregations of the United Church of Christ. I urge you to move quickly to tell the ministers and members of the churches in your conference about this campaign to disrupt our church life and to explain to them how and why the National Council of Churches has been chosen to be its first victim and the opening wedge for attacks on the denominations themselves.”

Post’s letter to regional leaders of the 1.3 million-member church followed the Institute of Religion and Democracy’s (IRD) media attacks against the National Council of Churches (NCC) and its member denominations in Readers Digest and on 60 Minutes. Both were smear jobs, alleging that money from Sunday collection plates were financing Marxist guerrillas. 60 Minutes producer Don Hewitt told TV talk show host Larry King in 2002 that it was the one program he truly regretted in his career. Twenty years late, but at least he acknowledged the error.

Avery Post was prophetic in his warning. Unfortunately, he was not widely heeded. Although the episode was big news at the time, it seemed to drift from people’s consciousness. These days, the battle lines are drawn over such issues as same sex marriage and ordination of gay and lesbian priests and ministers. But as important as these matters are, the stakes are far larger. They go to the extent to which the mainline churches will continue to play a central role in American public life, or the extent to which they will be marginalized, perhaps forever.

People outside of the churches may wonder, why they should care? Methodist minister Andrew Weaver, who has researched the Institute and its satellite groups, explains that the member churches of the National Council of Churches account for about 25% of the population and half of the members of the US Congress. “NCC church members’ influence is disproportionate to their numbers,” he says, “and include remarkably high numbers of leaders in politics, business, and culture…. Moreover, these churches are some of the largest landowners in the U.S., with hundreds of billions of dollars collectively in assets, including real estate and pension funds. A hostile takeover of these churches would represent a massive shift in American culture, power and wealth for a relatively small investment.”

What is more, the institutional moral authority, leadership, and resources of the churches have been vital to major movements for social change throughout the 20th Century–from enacting child labor laws, to advancing the African-American civil rights movement, to ending the war in Vietnam.

For much of the 20th century, the mainline Protestant churches maintained a vigorous “social witness.” That is what these Protestants call their views on such matters as peace, civil rights and environmental justice. While there was certainly conservative opposition to the development of these views, and to the activities that grew out of them, the direction of mainline Protestantism was clear. The churches became powerful proponents of social change in the United States. They stood at the moral and political center of society with historic roots in the earliest days of the nation. Indeed, they epitomize the very idea and image of “church” for many Americans. In retrospect, it seems inevitable that powerful external interests would organize and finance the conservative rump factions into strategic formations intended to divide and conquer–and diminish the capacity of churches to carry forward their idea of a just society in the United States–and the world.

When the strategic funders of the Right, such as Richard Mellon Scaife, got together to create the institutional infrastructure of the Right in the 1970s and 80s, they underwrote the founding of the IRD in 1980 as a Washington, DC-based agency that would help network, organize, and inform internal opposition groups, while sustaining outside pressure and public relations campaigns.

IRD was started as a project of the Coalition for a Democratic Majority (CDM), an organization of conservative Democrats (many of whom later defected to the GOP), who had sought to counter the takeover of the party by liberals associated with 1972 presidential candidate George McGovern. IRD was originally run by Coalition chief, Penn Kemble–a political activist who did not attend church. According to a profile by the International Relations Center, IRD received about $3.9 million between 1985 and 2002 from The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Sarah Scaife Foundation, John M. Olin Foundation, Castle Rock Foundation, The Carthage Foundation, and JM Foundation.

The Institute remains a well-funded and influential hub for a national network of conservative factions called the Association for Church Renewal. The member organizations, called “renewal” groups, variously seek to neutralize church tendencies of which they don’t approve; drive out staff they don’t like; and seek to take over the churches, but failing that–taking as many churches and assets out as possible. The network’s spokespersons are treated as credible voices of conservative dissent by mainstream media.

…in 2002, a foundation controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife “gave $225,000 to the IRD for its “Reforming America’s Churches Project”– among whose stated goals is the elimination of the Methodists’ General Board of Church and Society, the church’s voice for justice and peace, as well as discrediting United Methodist Church pastors and bishops with whom they disagree by instigating as many as a dozen church trials over the next few years.

The longtime director of IRD, the late Diane Knippers was, according to Salon.com’s Max Blumenthal, “the chief architect” of an initiative “to `restructure the permanent governing structure’ of `theologically flawed’ mainline churches… in order to `discredit and diminish the Religious Left’s influence.’

IRD and its agents in all of the major denominations have indeed used the internal church judicial system to create division while seeking to enforce their versions of orthodoxy. The Presbyterian Church USA, for example, has seen many judicial battles over, among other things, ordination of gay clergy and the carrying out of same sex commitment ceremonies during this period.

You can read the entire article at the web site of The Public Eye.

In my more-or-less weekly round-ups of interesting and important posts about the religious right from the Greater Blogsophere, I have highlighted posts with which I generally agree in substance and tone.  

But sometimes, there are disagreements worth highlighting — even among our friends.  And this week, a few have surfaced. What we disagree on, and how we go about disagreeing, can be at least as important as the things on which we agree and how we come to agree on them.
Over at The Daily Kos, front-pager SusanG promoted a dubious diary about Concerned Women for America that to my mind, epitomizes wrong-headedness about the religious right. She writes:

TrueBlueMajority’s Retrosexual politics–I’m not concerned about Concerned Women for America — argues that vocal conservative groups are nothing to fear. In fact, their agenda is so out of touch with mainstream America that the more publicity they get, the better – for us.

The diarist seems to think that merely publicizing their “agenda” will translate into changes in voting behavior of the religious right, or those they influence; and that antisex legislation and court decisions can’t happen because it would make “angry white men,” angry. hmm. While that premise is unsupported, the anti-contraception “agenda” has been well known for decades — but no one has, to my knowledge, ever made it into an effective issue. This is not to say that it shouldn’t be an issue. But that is hasn’t yet, should give us pause.

But there was also good stuff at The Daily Kos:  Front-pager DarkSyde had a characteristically feisty piece about fighting back against media repetition of lies and errors of the religious right as if they were facts:

Social conservatives are determined to protect the ability of rapists to reproduce, and the wishes of the victim apparently don’t matter. Plan B contraception has again attracted the ire of the fundies but this time the medical community is fighting back.

Issac-Davy Aronson at State of Belief picks up on an important piece from Mainstream Baptist at Talk to Action:

“We need more Christian influence in Congress…” …So said an Air Force general in a fundraising email he sent for a Republican Congressional candidate…from his official email account. Oops…

“The Air Force is investigating whether a two-star general violated military regulations by urging fellow Air Force Academy graduates to make campaign contributions to a Republican candidate for Congress in Colorado, Pentagon officials said yesterday.

“Maj. Gen. Jack J. Catton Jr., who is on active duty at Langley Air Force Base, sent the fundraising appeal on Thursday from his official e-mail account to more than 200 fellow members of the academy’s class of 1976, many of whom are also on active duty.”

Howard Friedman at Religion Clause has a good summary of this and other recent events in the controversy over religious bigotry at the Air Force Academy. Among other things:

Jeremy Gunn, director of the ACLU’s program on religious freedom spoke at the Air Force Academy Thursday, according to the Colorado Springs Gazette Gunn told Air Force cadets and faculty that the alleged war on Christians in America is a myth driven by politics. In fact, he said, religion has never enjoyed a time of greater freedom. Philosophy Professor Col. James Cook, who invited Gunn to speak, said the debate over the role of faith in the military has led the school to seek out a variety of opinions without taking sides.

Don Byrd at Blog from the Capital has further news. Among the opponents of legislation designed to favor evangelical military chaplains — is the chief of Navy chaplains, Rear Adm. Louis V. Iasiello, a Roman Catholic priest.  

Friedman also has a succinct report (which I have made even more succinct) on Pat Robertson’s latest outburst against Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State:

Robertson said, “Barry Lynn is so extreme, he has said that if a church is burning down, the city shouldn’t’t bring the fire department and trucks to spray water on the church because that violates separation of church and state.” AU officials deny that this is Lynn’s position. Robertson went on to claim that the ACLU had taken over Americans United, and described the ACLU in these terms: “The goal of the ACLU is to strip all religion from the public square. Why? Because the goal of the Communist Party was to weaken America, and they thought that they could weaken America if they took faith out of our public life. That’s where it all came from, ladies and gentlemen.” In a release by Americans United in response to the attack said “Robertson is not just factually wrong, but increasingly shrill and paranoid.”

Our friend Pastordan takes on windbag Andrew Sullivan at Street Prophets — over the idea that in the name of the purity of faith that all politics should be taken out of religion. I agree with Pastordan, and that this is a silly, nonstarter and a basic misunderstanding of religion. Religion is part of one’s identity, not something detached. It is possible to respect religious pluralism and separation of church and state without worrying  whether religion has anything to do with someone’s politics.

I’m not willing to walk away from advocating for the people directly affected by these things in the name of spiritual purity and the “quiet majority.” To ask religion to stay out of politics is to ask it to forswear moral witness, to abdicate its responsibility to act on behalf the poor and powerless.

For that reason, this is perhaps the most offensive part of Sullivan’s column:

What to do about it? The worst response, I think, would be to construct something called the religious left. Many of us who are Christians and not supportive of the religious right are not on the left either. In fact, we are opposed to any politicization of the Gospels by any party, Democratic or Republican, by partisan black churches or partisan white ones. “My kingdom is not of this world,” Jesus insisted. What part of that do we not understand?

Emphasis mine. It’s really nice to issue calls to high-mindedness and non-partisanship – except it leaves the oppressed in bondage. I won’t do that: I worship a God of liberation. And though I don’t agree with many stances of conservative Christians, I won’t ask them to do so, either. We are all called to seek justice, as best we understand it. That inevitably involves us in conflict with one another, but so be it. No one ever said that finding – and doing – what was right would be easy.

The one thing on which Pastordan agrees with Sullivan (or maybe Sullivan agrees with Patordan) is that we need a special word – they both advocate “Christianists” — to describe the kind of people whose agenda they mutually don’t like.  

There are already many perfectly serviceable terms we can use to clearly and accurately describe various factions and characteristics of the religious right. No one term will ever fit all — and I wish people would stop trying to coin it. What we really need — is to know what we are talking about. When we do that, the right words and the right terms will fall right into place.

Meanwhile, over at Talk to Action, Mainstream Baptist highlights a remarkable outline of how to manage religious differences, in terms of “rights and responsibilities” in the public schools.

Michelle Goldberg defines Christian nationalism — which is the subject of her new book,  Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism — just out from W.W. Norton.

Jonathan Hutson explains what’s wrong with the picture of a cowboy George Bush has on the wall of the Oval Office — the one titled “A Charge to Keep” that has come to serve as a metaphor for Bush’s political identity and the themes of his administration. (Don’t miss this one — it’s an amazing story.)

And John Dorhauer tells the story of how he recently served as the MC for the annual awards banquet of the Missouri Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice:

The title of the evening, “Faith and Freedom,” encapsulates what is often at the heart of much of the progressive religious community’s point of view: citizens should not have to choose between their faith and their freedom. Conversely, religion should not be a tool used to deny citizens their right to freely choose when it comes to moral principles. Such a belief is at the heart of the concept of the separation of church and state.

But the attacks from the right mischaracterize the issue, and typically portray pro-choice advocates as having abandoned the faith.

[Crossposted from Talk to Action and Political Cortex]

Having a difficult time making sense of the religious right? If so, you are far from alone. It is alien territory for many Americans in its religious, political and public policy aspects. But it is a big, powerful, political movement that will be with us, in all of its many manifestations for a very long time, no matter what happens this election year.  If we are going to be able to have useful conversations about the politics of the Christian right, it helps to have some foundational knowledge.
I did a round-up the other day of some of the best and most important blog posts about the religious right from the past week. And as I did, it occurred to me that even as most people find it difficult to learn about the religious right, let alone have a thoughtful conversation about it, it is also hard to figure out how to learn the things that are most important to know. Blogs are helpful, but it is hard to get a foundation of knowledge from blogs alone. And since there are few conferences in any field that even a focused panel discussion on the subject, if you recognize the seriousness of the situation, you just have to do it for yourself.

But I will help.

Over the next little while, I will do a series of posts that can be your own personal home school curriculum on the subject. To start, here are five basic books (among many on the subject) that, taken together, provide a good foundation of knowledge that I think will be helpful in the run-up to this year’s elections, as well as the elections of 2008. This foundation will also help to make sense of ongoing news reporting and blog posts you may encounter, and to provide some common knowledge,language, and concepts among people who share your concerns about this powerful political movement.

Dr. Clarkson’s Old Fashioned Home School Curriculum requires that anyone who wishes to consider themselves well informed and able to hold their own in political conversation ought to have read three of the five books below.

Rightwing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort, by Chip Berlet and Matthew Lyons, Guilford, 2000.

This book is used as a text in college courses around the country. It is a history of the sociology of rightwing populism in the U.S. in its religious, secular and racist dimensions. It is a highly recommended background for understanding the roots of contemporary conservative movements. The official book summary states:

Right-wing militias and other anti-government organizations have received heightened public attention since the Oklahoma City bombing. While such groups are often portrayed as marginal extremists, the values they espouse have influenced mainstream politics and culture far more than most Americans realize. This important volume offers an in-depth look at the historical roots and current landscape of right-wing populism in the United States. Illuminated is the potent combination of anti-elitist rhetoric, conspiracy theories, and ethnic scapegoating that has fueled many political movements from the colonial period to the present day. The book examines the Jacksonians, the Ku Klux Klan, and a host of Cold War nationalist cliques, and relates them to the evolution of contemporary electoral campaigns of Patrick Buchanan, the militancy of the Posse Comitatus and the Christian Identity movement, and an array of millennial sects. Combining vivid description and incisive analysis, Berlet and Lyons show how large numbers of disaffected Americans have embraced right-wing populism in a misguided attempt to challenge power relationships in U.S. society. Highlighted are the dangers these groups pose for the future of our political system and the hope of progressive social change.

Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy, by Frederick Clarkson, Common Courage Press, 1997.  

This book was talking about the theocratic elements of the Christian Right years before it was cool, and I am pleased to report that it has stood up quite well over time, and remains surprisingly current. This book discusses some major points and players in the development of the Christian Right political movement that brought us to where we are today. It also discusses the significance of the theocratic Christian Reconstrucionist movement in the context of the broader Christian Right, especially the antiabortion movement, and explains how it is foundational to many religiously motivated homeschoolers. I take the view that unless you understand the role of Christian Reconstuctionist movement, and seminal thinker R.J. Rushdoony, you can’t understand the rise of the Christian Right or what animates its “Biblical worldview.” One of the founders of Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority stated that without Rushdoony’s books “none of us would be here.” I think that statement is exactly right. This is not to say that everyone in the Christian Right is a reconstructionist; far from it. Rather, the ideas of Christian Reconstructionism have had everything to do with powering this contemporary political movement to the pinnacle of power in less than a generation.

Among other central tenets of the Christian right, this book explores and debunks the myth that America was founded as a Christian nation, and suggests specific ways that the Christian Right can be countered. Another feature of the book is a chapter exposing the bogus theories to two prominent academics that unfortunately became popular in Democratic and liberal circles in the 1990s. One of the authors was a barely closeted Christian Rightist posing as a neutral scholar. It is important to read books that are reliable sources of information and analysis — that is, if you want to win. That is one reason why the books mentioned here are important.

Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism by Michelle Goldberg is just out this month from W.W. Norton. Goldberg will be making personal appearances in New York, California, Massachusetts and Washington, DC in May and June in connection with the release of the book.  This book is a logical follow-up to Eternal  Hostility. I have read an advance copy and will more formally review it at some point. But suffice to say it is a must read.  Goldberg deftly integrates her understanding of Christian Reconstructionism into the broader narrative of current events, notably an entire chapter on the Dover, Pennsylvania federal court case over intelligent design. There are also lucid and well documented discussions of the war on the federal judiciary and more broadly, the meaning of Christian nationalism as it permeates Christian Right political culture.  

It was an ordinary spring school board meeting in the small bedroom community of Dover, Pennsylvania. The high school needed new biology textbooks, and the science department had recommended Kenneth Miller and Joseph Levine’s widely used Biology. But Bill Buckingham, a new board member who’d recently become chair of the curriculum committee, had an objection. Biology, he said, was “laced with Darwinism.” He wanted a textbook that balanced theories of evolution with Christian creationism, and he was willing to turn to his town into a cultural battlefield to get it.

“This country wasn’t founded on Muslim beliefs or evolution,” said Buckingham, a stocky, gray-haired man who wears a red, white and blue crucifix pin on his lapel. “This country was founded on Christianity and our students should be taught as such.”

With God on Their Side:  How Christian Fundamentalists Trampled Science, Policy, and Democracy in George W. Bush’s White House, by Esther Kaplan, New Press, 2004. Now out in paperback.

This is the definitive book on what happens when religion trumps science in politics and public policy as exemplified by the outrageous policies of the Bush administration. While the books previously metnioned tell us how we got to where we are today, this book focuses on the consequences of their policy ideas in hair-raising detail, particularly in the areas of AIDS policy and reproductive health of women.

American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century, by Kevin Phillips, Viking, 2006.

This book is also a must read in this political season. It is emblematic of the growing chasm between conservative writers like Phillips, and the rabid alliance between neoconservatives and the religious right that has defined the Bush administration. Phillips shows rather convincingly that there is a strong historical correlation between the rise of religious zealotry and the decline of great nations and empires. He sees the rise of the American Christian Right in this context and relates the problems posed in connection with other major political and economic trends. (The book draws on work by me and by Esther Kaplan in making his argument.) While it is not without flaws, (that I will discuss in a formal review sometime soon), these are outweighed by the strength of his general argument. That Phillips’ books is getting so much national attention across the political spectrum also means that it is a must read as it will contribute significantly to the contemporary conversation on these subjects.

The frequent by-products of religious fervor in the later stages of the previous powers– zealotry, exaltation of faith over reason, too much church-state collaboration, or a contagion of crusader mentality– shed light on another contemporary U.S. predicament. Controversies that run the gamut from interference with science to biblically inhibited climatology and petroleum geology and demands for the partial reunion of church and state have accompanied the political rise of Christian conservatism. Such trends are rarely auspicious.

The essential political preconditions fell into place in the late 1980s and 1990s with the emergence of the Republican party as a powerful vehicle for religiosity and church influence, while state Republican parties,most conspicuously in the South and Southwest, endorsed so-called Christian nation party platforms. These unusual platforms, as yet nationally uncatalogued, set out in varying degrees the radical political theology of the Christian Reconstructionist movement, the tenets of which range from using the Bible as a basis for domestic law to emphasizing religious schools and women’s subordination to men. the 2004 platform of the Texas Republican party is a case in point. It reaffirms the status of the United States as “a Christian nation,” regrets the myth of the separation of church and state,” calls for abstinence instead of sex education, and broadly mirrors the reconstructionist demand for the abolition of a large group of federal agencies and departments, including the Energy Department and the Environmental Protection Agency.

(Oh yeah, and four of the five authors mentioned above blog at Talk to Action.)

Thank you, Kevin Phillips. The conservative scholar and author of the important new book, American Theocracy, has made it safe for all to utter the word “theocracy,” without fear of being dismissed as a kook, an exaggerator or a religious bigot. (Or at least safer.)

I will have much more to say about American Theocracy in the not too distant future, but for now let’s note that while this book is important for many reasons, it is worth highlighting that unlike almost every other writer that has tackled the Christian Right, he does not shy away from discussing the Christian theocratic movement as it exists in our time, in the U.S. (His argument is summarized in the current issue of The Nation.  His article opens this way:

“Is theocracy in the United States (1) a legitimate fear, as some liberals argue; (2) a joke, given the nation’s rising secular population and moral laxity; (3) a worrisome bias of major GOP constituencies and pressure groups; or (4) all of the above? The last, I would argue.”

It is worth discussing the nature of theocratic ideas and movements in the United States in our time, and I think the publication of American Theocracy will help us to do so over the next few months and years as America once again comes to grips with notions of totalitarian religious governance that have been part of the mix of American political thought since the Colonial era. There are many reasons why such ideas have gained traction in our time, and Phillips describes some of them very well.

But before we do, let’s just note that for a long time, discussing the explicitly theocratic views of elements of the Christian Right made people wary and unwilling to actively discuss it. Indeed, there has been a strong undertow of denial in the culture — one that continues, even if it is now suddenly less fashionable. Some people considered talk of contemporary theocratic politics and ideas as poppycock and conspiracy theory. Others feared that some Christians might be offended. Some were in the kind of a fearful state of denial that can only be described as “it can’t happen here” and were unable to take in any information that would allow them to seriously entertain the idea that there was and is an active theocratic movement in the United States. For others, “theocrat” was seized on as an epithet for all conservative Christian views of which they disapproved. This was particularly unhelpful, because the unsubstantiated name calling tended to reinforced the attitudes of those who considered even the use of the word theocracy or theocrat somehow untoward. All of these tendencies are still with us, and will need to be continually addressed if we are going to be able to have meaningful conversations about the theocrats of our time.

While I encourage everyone to read Phillips’ book, I also want to give a big plug for my own, Eternal Hostility:  The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy, which was first published in 1997 by Common Courage Press. (The title is borrowed from a quote from Thomas Jefferson, which is engraved in the rotunda of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC. In response to the theocrats of his time he wrote:

I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

When Phillips tackled the subject, one that was new to him, he soon realized that one cannot talk about the theocratic tendencies of the Christian right without looking at the intellectual sources of contemporary theocratic thought. Hence the importance of Christian Reconstructionism, the central intellectual source of the theocratic movement in the U.S. I was honored that Phillips drew considerably on an article about Christian Reconstructionism I wrote in 1994 for The Public Eye magazine. As it happens, I incorporated and expanded on that article for  Eternal Hostility.

Demand for Eternal Hostility has been steady over the years, and my publisher tells me that they are about to reprint it. (But when they do… the price will go up!  Shipping prices have gone up too, so I will soon have to raise the price I charge through my web site. So. For a limited time, you can get the book that discussed the theocratic movement in America before it was cool to — at the pre-cool price.)

I am pleased to report that it has stood up quite well over time. While the book covers a lot of ground from Pat Robertson and the Christian Coalition and the Promise Keepers, to the empire of Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church. Here are a few excerpts from my discussion of Christian Reconstructionism, a subject that I am sorry to report must be grappled with in any serious discussion of the Christian theocratic movements in the U.S.  These excerpts are intended to offer a few snapshots of the seriousness of the thought and purpose of the movement, and some sense of its influence.

Let’ just start out by noting that the work of the Reconstructionist thinkers, especially the late theologian R.J. Rushdoony, are so central to the development of the contemporary Christian Right that Rev. Robert Billings, one of the founders of Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority once acknowledged that “if it were not for [Rushdoony’s] books, none of us would be here.”  This is important to note, because some of what I discuss below will sound so outlandish that it may be difficult to believe that anyone take such ideas seriously.  But indeed they do. And while the vast majority of the leaders and activists of the Christian Right do not accept these ideas, it is important to note that there are those that do; that these ideas have been central, not peripheral, to the political and theological conversation in key circles of conservative evangelicalism; and have been a part of the modern conversation for a generation.

Reconstructionism is a theology… which asserts that contemporary application of the laws of Old Testament Israel is the basis for reconstructing society towards the Kingdom of God on earth.

Reconstructionism argues that the Bible is to be the governing text for all areas of life — such as government, education, and law– not merely for “social” or “moral” issues like pornography, homosexuality, and abortion.  Reconstructionists have formulated a “Biblical worldview” and “Biblical principles” to govern and inform their lives and their politics.

Reconstructionist theologian David Chilton succinctly describes this view:  “The Christian goal for the world is the universal development of Biblical theocratic republics, in which every area of life is redeemed and placed under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the rule of God’s Law.”…

The original and defining text of Reconstructionism is The Institutes of Biblical Law, published in 1973 by Rousas John Rushdoony—an 800 page explanation of the Ten Commandments, the Biblical “case law” that derives from them, and their application today.  “The only true order,” writes Rushdoony, “is founded on Biblical Law.  All law is religious in nature, and every non-Biblical law-order represents an anti-Christian religion.”  In brief, he continues, “every law-order is a state of war against the enemies of that order, and all law is a form of warfare.”

Epitomizing the Reconstructionist idea of biblical “warfare” is the centrality of capital punishment. Doctrinal leaders… call for the death penalty for a wide range of crimes in addition to such contemporary capital crimes as rape, kidnapping, and murder. Death is also the punishment for apostasy (abandonment of the faith), heresy, blasphemy, witchcraft, astrology, adultery, “sodomy or homosexuality,” incest, striking a parent, incorrigible juvenile delinquency, and in the case of women, unchastity before marriage.”

Rushdoony insists that Biblical law requires “death without mercy” for “idolatry.” He notes, however, that the death penalty is not required for privately held beliefs… Death is intended for “attempts to subvert others and to subvert the social order by enticing others to idolatry.”…  “God’s government prevails, and His alternatives are clear cut:  either men and nations obey His laws, or God invokes the death penalty against them.”  … The potential for bloodthirsty episodes on the order of the Salem witch trials for the Inquisition is inadvertently revealed by Reconstructionist writer Rev. Ray Sutton of Tyler, Texas, who claims that biblical theocracies would be “happy” places to which people would flock because “capital punishment is one of the best evangelistic tools of a society.”

Reconstructionism often “cloaks its identity, as well as its activities, understanding he degree of opposition it provokes…. While claiming to be reformers, not revolutionaries Reconstructionists recognize that the harsh theocracy they advocate is revolutionary indeed.  [Influential Reconstructionist writer] Gary North warns against a “premature revolutionary situation,” saying that the public must begin to accept “the judicially binding case laws of the Old Testament before we attempt to tear down institutions  that still rely on natural law or public virtue . (I have in mind the U.S. Constitution.)”  Reconstructionists are aware that such ideas must be discreetly infused into their target constituency.  The vague claim that God and Jesus want Christians to govern society is certainly more appealing than the bloodthirsty notion of “vengeance,” or the overthrow of constitutional government.

… North bluntly states that one of his first actions would be to remove legal access to the franchise and to civil offices from those who refuse to become communicant members of Trinitarian churches.”  Quick to condemn democracy as the idea that law is whatever the majority says it is, North et al, would be quick to cynically utilize a similar “majority” for a permanent theocratic solution.  In a claim that could change forever the meaning of “politically correct,” Rushdoony envisions a society in which “only the right have rights.”

Epitomizing the way that Rushdoony’s views are the measure by which many Christian Right leaders determine their own stances, Herb Titus, founding… dean of Pat Robertson’s Regent University Law School, says that he differs with Rushdoony over the “jurisdiction of the civil ruler” in capital cases.  Titus says that God’s covenant with all nations calls for the death penalty for kidnapping, rape and murder.  But, with regard to other forms of death penalty, there are differences of opinion among Christians. I do not subscribe to Dr. Rushdoony’s view with regard to the authority of the state with regard to say adultery or committing homosexual behavior.”  The “differences of opinion” to which Titus refers go to the heart of the matter.  If the leading scholars of the Christian Right cannot agree among themselves as to what God’s laws require, the nature of law and government depends entirely on who gains power, and is thus not “absolute,” as leading demagogues of the Christian Right are fond of claiming.

The writer Richard Weaver is famous among conservative intellectuals for his aphorism, “Ideas have consequences.”  While many have taken that notion to justify a wide variety programs, the basic point is fair enough. And it is that sense of the consequences of ideas that is vital in understanding the role and influence of the ideas of Christian Reconstructionism, which have been deeply infused into the thought of the Christian Right. Although the movement has no one denominational or institutional home, its writers have been prolific and deeply, albeit quietly, influential. Christian Right legal activist John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute was a longtime disciple of Rushdoony, although he now says he is no longer a Reconstructionist.  Herb Titus taught Rushdoony’s Institutes of Biblical Law for many years in his classes at Regent University, an accredited law school. Reconstructionist writers including Rushdoony, influenced the thinking of Marvin Olasky, a longtime adviser to president Bush, and the coiner of the term “compassionate conservatism.”

Suffice to say that there are numerous examples and that this movement is in serious need of far more serious attention than it has received. American Theocracy has opened the door.  Let’s walk through it.

[Crossposted from Talk to Action]

Tom Parker is running for the job once held by the Roy Moore, the former Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court who was ousted for defying a federal court order to remove the monument to the Ten Commandments he had installed in the state courthouse in Montgomery. Parker, who served as a spokesman and legal counsel to Moore, was elected to a seat as an Associate Justice on the court in 2004.  

Parker is running a pugnacious Christian Rightist primary campaign for the GOP nomination for chief against incumbent Chief Justice Drayton Nabers, who once clerked for legendary U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Hugo Black. The primary will be held on June 6th.  

Said Parker:

“Hugo Black was one of the worst justices in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court. Unlike Chief Justice Nabers, I would never choose to work for Hugo Black after he ruled against school prayer and religious training in the classroom and Bible reading in public schools. And if I were Alabama’s chief justice, I would never look to Hugo Black as an inspiration.”

Parker is running on what is widely viewed as a payback slate of candidates seeking vengeance against the justices who voted — unanimously — for the ouster of Moore.
Parker’s post-Moore career has been marked by controversy following revelations of his ties to neo-confederate groups and his publicly stated belief that state courts have the right to defy federal court decisions. His peculiar line of argument, the notion of “interpostition,” has roots in the states rights based argument against federal court ordered desegregation. For his views on defiance of federal courts, among other things, he received an award from the theocratic education organization, Vision Forum, headed by Christian Reconsructionist thinker, Doug Phillips.    

The Associated Press reported on the flap over Parker’s attack on Hugo Black on the occasion of the induction of the late Supreme Court justice into its hall of fame last week.

Parker issued a statement calling Black’s induction into the Alabama Lawyers Hall of Fame a “shameful disgrace to the people and state of Alabama.” He said Black “personally launched the war to kick God out of the public square in America.”

Parker… also criticized Republican Chief Justice Drayton Nabers for participating in the event at the state judicial building. Parker’s statement got distributed at the induction ceremony, where three other prominent Alabama legal figures were inducted along with Black.

Black was a Senator from Alabama before President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him to the Court in 1937.  He served for 34 years and was, among other things, a strong defender of the First Amendment and opponent of racial segregation, as reflected in his work in support of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education which outlawed racial segregation of the public schools.

Parker’s campaign is of a piece with the far right’s attack on the judiciary. As a matter of fact, Parker introduced Roy Moore on the occasion of his speech at the 2005 “Confronting the Judicial War on Faith Conference” in Washington, DC.  Parker is so closely tied to Moore and all that he represents, that he even posted his remarks in introducing Moore on his campaign web site. He wrote in part:

On the day that he was removed from office by the Court of the Judiciary for his faithfulness to his oath to support the Constitution instead of an unlawful order of a federal judge, I handed him a scripture verse that I had written out for him the night before:

Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it brings forth much fruit. (John 12:24)

Chief Justice Moore, because you chose to stand in the face of great personal sacrifice, the growing national awakening and the coalescing of these leaders in this nascent movement are the fruit.

Please welcome Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore.

[Crossposted from Talk to Action and Political Cortex]

Amidst all the hoo ha over the slam dunk decision of federal District Court Judge John E. Jones against presenting intelligent design as science in the Dover, Pennsylvania public schools, it is easy to miss the point. The Dover decision was not only one battle in the struggle over the teaching of creationism and its variants in the schools, but one battle in the much larger and historic war of the worldviews. Even after most of the rest of society moves on, the religious right will never be over Dover.

This essay seeks to explain why.
You may think that I am about to describe a war between the worldviews of religion and science. But that is not the war of the worldviews. The war of the worldviews is actually between the worldview of the domination of religious orthodoxy vs. constitutional democracy and religious pluralism. That mouthful is actually simpler than it sounds.

Generally, conservative, orthodox religious worldviews sees the history of the world as the  unfolding of a religious drama. The story will vary according to who is doing the telling, of course, but it is still a religious story, and very often there are conflicts between the worldview and the actual facts of the history of the world. According to their view, the competing story is one of evolution, of science, which is agnostic about, or even hostile to religion. That there are many religious people who can easily accommodate scientific approaches to reality does not alter the religious right’s insistence that the teaching of evolution is an attack on their worldview. Sometimes this is articulated as an attack on their religion, or even an attack on God.

This is important to underscore, because this same scenario is played out on issue after issue. It makes little difference to the dominionist wing of the religious right if some Christians are accepting of the ordination of women; accepting of abortion; accepting of homosexuality; accepting of other religions, and even the non-religious. That only means to them that those folks are not really Christians. Rather they are religious deviants guilty of apostasy; or heresy; or blasphemy.

For example, when the Washington, DC-based Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) and the groups in its orbit — now in their third decade of attacks on the historic mainline Protestant denominations — denounce acceptance of homosexuality, it is worth noting that many of these same retrogressives also oppose the ordination of women. For example, the newly appointed president of IRD, is an ordained minister in a tiny splinter sect, the Presbyterian Church in America, (PCA) that broke with mainstream Presbyterianism in 1973 over among other things, the ordination of women. And when the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) was taken over by fundamentalists — it did not take long before women were denied ordination. It is easy to forget that this was a big issue in most of the mainline churches in the 1970s. Contemporary retrogressives are playing smart politics in not to talking about that. But one need look no farther than the the SBC and the PCA to see where the retrogressives of mainline Protestant “renewal” would go if they had their way. Their notions of Christian orthodoxy emphasize very different roles for women in the church and in society, among other things.

Homosexuality is the wedge being used to divide mainstream Christian churches. Thanks to the miracle of modern marketing and “message” development, old fashioned charges of apostasy and heresy are reworked as claims that retrogressives simply seek to “renew” or “restore” the mainline churches to true Christian orthodoxy — as if the paid political operatives of IRD, bankrolled by the likes of Richard Mellon Scaife are the arbiters of the true faith. The historic churches of mainline Protestantism support religious freedom and the right to religious difference. They support the separation of church and state. They are moving increasingly towards the Christian equality of women and gays and lesbians and seek to be welcoming to all. Perhaps more importantly, the mainline churches have stood up to the excesses of big corporations, the military and intelligence community, and the federal government in general in recent decades. Their stances and their institutional resources and moral authority have made them targets of the neo-conservatives, the corporate right and the Christian Right. The attacks on the mainline churches come from these several sectors working in coalition — the clearest expression of which is the IRD.

Clearly there are larger historic forces at work.

All of which brings me back to the Dover decision.

Jeffrey P. Moran, an associate professor and chair of the Department of History at the University of Kansas, writing in the current issue of The Public Eye, considers the Dover decision in light of the Scopes trials of the 1920s, the first big legal battle over evolution, and takes a look forward.

Although no one believes that we have heard our last from the Intelligent Design bunch, it may be useful at this resting point to take a longer view of the controversy. In the 1925 Tennessee Scopes trial, invoked ritually every time another squabble erupts over whether to teach Darwin or the Bible in the public schools, the antievolutionists still had the confidence to come out hot for Genesis in its narrowest interpretation rather than take cover behind “Intelligent Design” or some other linguistic squid ink.

Led by one of the most famous men in the United States, the Democratic politician William Jennings Bryan, the Tennessee antievolutionists in 1925 also made clear that the tension between the Bible and Darwin’s theory of natural selection was not their sole concern. Although they surely felt their dignity tarnished by Darwin’s assertions of a common ancestry between humans and beasts–especially monkeys –much of their animosity toward evolutionism grew out of its larger commitment to “materialism.” Commonly used today to denote an unseemly attachment to consumer goods, “materialism” in Bryan’s day conveyed more a sense that the scientific method–seeking material explanations for natural phenomena, such as explaining why species change over time–was literally “disenchanting” the world by removing a role for God to play. Darwin and his scientific allies seemed to have barred God from playing a role in the natural world.

Like many of his own allies, from the Vatican proper to the “Protestant Vatican” of Nashville, Tennessee, Bryan feared that a reliance on materialism had left us with a degraded, godless culture–and the conceptual connection he made in the 1920s from the Origin of Species to flapperism, jazz, and bathtub gin has changed today primarily in its form, not its substance. A culture that relies purely on materialist explanations is a culture that has given up on the possibility of the miracle, on the belief that God may intervene in the natural world through whichever mechanisms he chooses, including particularly the saving grace of Jesus.

Ah, but wait! Contemporary creationists not only have a worldview at odds with materialism, but they have an activist think tank with a long term mission. Moran continues:

… a look at the so-called “Wedge Document,” a long-term strategic plan for ousting evolution and renewing America’s Christian character developed at Seattle’s well-funded Discovery Institute in the 1980s, also reveals the persistent vigor of the anti-materialist impulse as it funnels itself through the fight against evolution. Although no longer able to trumpet its religious goals as openly as Bryan did (and, in fact, the Discovery Institute initially denied having anything to do with the wedge document), in the end, the similarity in substance is paramount. The Wedge writers view “scientific materialism” as the very source of almost all destructive “moral, cultural and political legacies” of the past century and a half. What are these legacies? Bathtub gin has shuffled off the stage, originally replaced by Freudianism, utopianism, and communism, but now more recently supplanted by liberal attitudes toward personal responsibility, theology, and, in a nod to the Discovery Institute’s well-heeled supporters, “products liability.”

While the existence of the Discovery Institute and the wedge document is not news, it is important to understand their role in the war of the worldviews — a war in which most people are unaware that they are even engaged. But in fact, the religious right’s attacks on the mainline churches are not so much issues of religious “orthodoxy” but ways of fomenting dissention and instigating schism in order to diminish major institutional targets in the war of the worldviews. The same goes for efforts to teach creationism or ID in the public schools. The warriors of the religious right view the public schools as the educational system of the enemy: one that teaches respect for religious differences, scientific understandings of the universe, and ultimately constitutional democracy itself.

This brings us to the worldview of pluralism in a constitutional democracy. Pluralism in our American context means religious equality, which is to say that all citizens are equal in the eyes of the law, whether we are non-religious or religious, or a certain kind of religion. It is all irrelevant to our status as citizens. It is this premise that underlies a vast amount of law and public policy and stands in the way of the dominionist tendencies of much of the religious right.

The challenge for supporters of pluralism, whether they are mainline protestants deemed insufficiently orthodox, or public school curriculums deemed insufficiently religious, is what Christian Reconstructionist author Gary North described as “the dilemma of democratic pluralism.” (Which I discuss in Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy). North astutely observes the difficulty faced by those who embrace democratic pluralism:  They are often confounded by their philosophical acceptance of those whose views oppose and activities undermine — the very nature and system of pluralism itself.

Opponents of pluralism in the U.S. are becoming quite skilled at exploiting the “dilemma;” for example by mocking liberals for being “intolerant.” We see this in operation when IRD operatives claim that conservatives are not tolerated in the mainline churches — even as these same “conservatives” or “renewal” advocates, are actively subverting and seeking to divide the very denominations from which they demand tolerance. People on the receiving end of the charge often do not know what do say in response. Hence the “dilemma.” Similarly, in the battle over teaching creationism or ID, we hear the charge that the schools are intolerant of the supposedly competing theory of intelligent design.

Of course, there is nothing intolerant about thwarting those who would undermine pluralism and equality for all. Rather, standing up for religious pluralism and constitutional democracy; defeating efforts by “renewal” groups to create division and schism in the churches; and refusing to teach religious doctrine dressed-up as science — means standing up for one’s values and the values of the religious, constitutional, and educational institutions we hold dear.

The arguments that seek to exploit the dilemma of democratic pluralism are clever, but deeply disingenuous. Of course, they are not really arguments at all. They are best understood as tactics in a larger strategy of disruption and discrediting of mainstream institutions that support and respect pluralism of religious belief and actual intellectual thought. The Discovery Institute and the Institute on Religion and Democracy are centers that develop and utilize such tactics for deployment in the war of the worldviews.

In conclusion, here is an excerpt from Eternal Hostility, that surfaces one aspect of the war of the worldviews.

Rev. Charles McIlhenny, an anti-gay crusader and friend of [theocratic theologian] Rushdoony, wrote in his book, When the Wicked Seize a City, that “we are engaged in a very long war for control of our culture,” a war between secular humanism, the religion of our dominant American culture, and orthodox Christianity.” He believes that, “Christianity will eventually win the world for Christ, and I don’t believe there is any compromise possible in this war.”

McIlhenny, a Reconstructionist-oriented pastor of an Orthodox Presbyterian Church in San Francisco, believes not only that “the homosexual rights movement is God’s judgment upon a fearful and ineffective Church which has not taken an active role in society,” but that homosexuality is actually a “religion” that “clashes squarely and directly with the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament.” He further argues that “faith is totalitarian” in so far as it “encompasses a whole worldview and life view,” and that “[t]he gay rights movement is as totalitarian in its belief as is Christianity.”

Of course homosexuality is not a religion, let alone “totalitarian.” To most readers, it may seem to be stating the obvious to say that there are gay men and lesbians of all faiths and of all political persuasions — but in the “totalitarian” worldview of Rev. Charles McIllhenny, there is no room for such a possibility.

[Crossposted from Talk to Action]