Persecuted Christians?

One of the most characteristic features of the Christian Right is to strike a pose of being persecuted. A lot of their critics and opponents may miss this, because the charge often seems so fantastic.

But Republican Congressman John Hostettler of Indiana provided an excellent example of this on the House floor on Monday. He was addressing a current proposal by Democratic Congressmen David Obey of Wisconsin and a previous, similar one by Steve Israel of New York that proposed to "put Congress on record against 'coercive and abusive religious proselytizing' at the U.S. Air Force Academy."

Andrew Taylor of the Associated Press explains the issue being addressed:

At issue is how Congress should respond to allegations of proselytizing and favoritism for Christians at the Air Force Academy.

The Air Force is investigating numerous allegations of inappropriate actions by academy officials, including a professor who required cadets to pray before taking his test and a Protestant chaplain who warned anyone "not born again would burn in the fires of hell."

Obey said a senior chaplain at the academy was transferred to Japan after criticizing what she saw as proselytizing. (Republican: Democrats Demonize Christians by Andrew Taylor (AP 06/20/05.)

The well-sourced allegations also include instances of officers pressuring those reporting to them to convert to their particular brand of Christianity. The Republicans voted down this proposal but accepted a more mildly worded (!?) proposal that the Air Force should report on the steps they are taking to promote religious tolerance.

What Hostettler had to say in opposition to the Obey proposal was this:

Hostettler ... asserted that "the long war on Christianity in America continues today on the floor of the House of Representatives" and "continues unabated with aid and comfort to those who would eradicate any vestige of our Christian heritage being supplied by the usual suspects, the Democrats."

"Like a moth to a flame, Democrats can't help themselves when it comes to denigrating and demonizing Christians," he said. (GOP Congressman Calls Democrats Anti-Christian by Mike Allen Washington Post 06/21/05)

Hostettler later apologized for his remark. Sort of. Mike Allen's account of the latter is:

Eventually, Hostettler rose and read a sentence that had been written out for him in large block letters by a young Republican floor aide: "Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw the last sentence I spoke."

Which presumably applied only to "denigrating and demonizing," not the "long war on Christianity" one. But let's not comma-dance. Hostettler may take the combat metaphor more literally than most. Later in the AP story, Taylor writes:

Hostettler, a Christian and social conservative, made headlines last year when he was caught carrying a loaded handgun in a carry-on bag in the Louisville, Ky., airport. He pleaded guilty to carrying a concealed weapon and received a 60-day sentence, which he will not have to serve unless he has other criminal troubles before August 2006.

Allen includes the detail that the pistol was a Glock 9mm semi-automatic.

The assumptions underlying Hostettler's nasty attack are important to understanding the approach of the Christian Right. He was not talking about any kind of restrictions of Christians going to church, or reading the Bible, or praying in private or in worship services. He was talking about officials of the Air Force using their organizational position in the Academy to pressure students at the academy to adopt a conservative brand of Protestant Christianity. Practices like requiring a class to pray before a test would certainly make many students, Christian and non-Christian alike, uncomfortable.

In the contorted, authoritarian logic of the Christian Right, preventing Christian fundamentalists from imposing their religion on others amounts to "persecuting Christians."

Allen quotes another Republican Congressman, who illustrates the point:

"We don't prejudge that there is abusive proselytizing," said Duncan Hunter, R-Calif.

"If you tell Christians they can't tell others about their faith, then they can't exercise their Christian religion," Hostettler said later. He said proselytizing involves a forced conversion to Christianity, something that did not occur at the academy.

With a cult-like redefinition of words, Hunter claims that "proselytizing" describes only forced conversion. That's plainly not what proselytizing is; rather, it's actively recruiting people for something, though it's usually heard in connection with religion. And the criticism of the Academy's practices is not about proselytizing as such, but rather about officials abusing their positions to pressure cadets into conversion.

There is a logic to Hunter's logic. Even if it's authoritarian and circular logic. The idea is that actively proselytizing, aka, "winning souls for the Lord," is a priority for evangelical Christianity, not just the fundamentalist variant. Hunter's argument is that since their religion tells them to actively proselytize, any restriction on this activity, even in the context of official duties, is a violation of the proselytizing Christian's freedom of religion.

Of course, this whole position just ignores the freedom of conscience of those being inappropriately pressured to convert. Most Christians would argue that abusing official positions to press people into converting would be a violation of the freedom of conscience, which for Christians is based in major part of St. Paul's teaching that becoming a Christian involved a personal and free decision by an individual. The Protestant Reformation asserted as one of its main teachings an emphasis on the individual role in understanding God's message in the Scriptures. And Protestant theology continues today to emphasize the worth of the individual.

So the logic of Hunter and Hostettler is not any generally-accepted tenet of the Christian faith. In fact, it's very questionable whether Christian theology can legitimately be used to justify such a position at all. Fundamentalists don't have an exclusive franchise of Christianity, however much they might like to think so. And other Christians can and should object when they misuse our religion in cases like this.

The group Americans United for Separation of Church and State reports on the story at its Web site: House Retreats On Stopping Religious Bias At Air Force Academy 06/21/05.

In May, Americans United sent an extensive 14-page report to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld listing examples of officially sanctioned favoritism toward evangelical Christianity at the Academy. In response, Air Force officials formed a task force to look into the matter. The task force is expected to issue a report this week.

During yesterday's floor debate, Obey and other supporters of his measure noted that recently Lt. Gen. John Rosa, the superintendent of the Academy, publicly acknowledged problems at the institution that could take years to correct. He told the Anti-Defamation League, "I have problems in my cadet wing, I have issues in my staff, and I have issues in my faculty." He added that concerns over aggressive proselytizing at the Academy keeps him awake at nights.

Allen's story from the Washington Post wire on the Web site of the Indianapolis Star 06/21/05 includes this paragraph:

Barry W. Lynn, director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a group that has taken on the cause of several disgruntled cadets, said that Hostettler had misrepresented the controversy, and that it did not pit Christians against non-Christians as the congressman had suggested on the House floor. "Most of the cadets who complained to us originally and who continue to send us new complaints are Christians," Lynn said. "They simply don't share the fundamentalist Christian views of those in the command." (my emphasis)

This is also important. The Christian Right demands the power in this case to impose their own particular version of Christianity on other Christians. Despite their signature whining about how Christians are persecuted, they don't even respect the freedom of conscience and the freedom of religion of other Christians in this case.

Despite the complaints having mostly been generated by Christians, we shouldn't ignore the strong anti-Semitic undertones of Hostettler's comments. Because a very large number of those attracted by Christian Right ideas will certainly understand the identity of those who are waging "the long war on Christianity in America" and trying to "eradicate any vestige of our Christian heritage" and "denigrating and demonizing Christians" to be The Jews.

It's also a signal of support to the Radical Right that Hostettler used the phrase "aid and comfort" in describing the Democrats' support for the anti-Christians. That phrase is part of the definition in the US Costitution itself for treason. I'm sure it was also not lost on his Christian Right fans that, according to the AP report, one of those to whom he was addressing his comments was Congressman Steve Israel of New York.

This is a continuation of the same game behind the Justice Sunday event celebrated by leading Christian Rightists and addressed by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, held during Passover, that was portrayed as an effort to stop the Republican-dominated federal judiciary from being anti-Christian and opposed to "people of faith."

As David Neiwert wrote with particular reference to that event(Black Robes 04/20/05):

Huh? Where did this come from? This wasn't even an issue in the last election! It all seems like it's coming out of far right field, doesn't it?

Well, duh.

In fact, this very subject - especially the rhetoric involving "black robed traitors" and "betrayal of our Christian heritage" - has long been a hoary staple of the extremist right in America. You used to hear this kind of talk all the time at militia meetings ten years ago, and at Aryan Nations congresses ten years before that. Hatred of the judiciary is a centerpiece for the Posse Comitatus, the tax-protester extremists and Identity adherents like the Montana Freemen, and the Bircherite paranoids who have accused the judiciary of harboring Communist subversives since the days of, well, Brown v. Board of Education. Funny, that.

Nowadays, these themes enjoy much more powerful - and supposedly mainstream - proponents, as well as their respective audiences. Case in point: this coming Sunday's right-wing hatefest, dubbed "Justice Sunday", though as the New York Times reports, it really is a chance to promote Bill Frist's campaign to portray Democrats as "against people of faith" for opposing Bush's most radical nominees to the federal bench. ...

This is how the far-right echo chamber works: Ideas and policies bubble up all the time on the right, but those from the far right typically have a history of long-term traction in its meeting halls. Once they have that traction, it seems only a matter of time before a transmitter picks the idea up, massages it, and presents it as "conservative."

Politics makes strange bedfellows, the old saying goes. The bedfellows on the Republican side are looking stranger and stranger all the time these days.

[NOTE: This post was edited after its orginal posting to add one sentence.]

Tags: authoritarianism, christian dominionism, christian right, christianism, duncan hunter, john hostettler