Catholic neo-Confederates

Hey, Scarlett O'Hara and her family were Catholic. I guess it shouldn't be terribly surprising there are neo-Confederate Catholic fundamantalists. Frank Cocozzelli gives some background on them in Thomas E. Woods, Jr. and the Neo-Confederate Catholic Right Talk to Action 05/01/2013:

Over the years, this column has looked at the many facets of the Catholic Right, including neo-cons, paleo-cons, Bill Donohue, Opus Dei, and more. We now come to the Neo-Confederate Catholic Right, a peculiar variation of libertarianism, which focuses almost exclusively on economics while maintaining most, if not all of the social conservative culture war issues such as opposition to reproductive rights and marriage equality. Indeed, this movement employs the long discredited states' rights theory of nullification -- the notion that any state has the right to ignore any federal court order or law which that state has deemed unconstitutional.

Among the Catholic Rightists beating the drum for nullification are Pat Buchanan, Thomas DiLorenzo, Thomas Fleming and Thomas E. Woods, Jr. All four advocate states' rights, a seething resentment of Abraham Lincoln, and as Rachel Tabachnick recently highlighted, Woods is a key member of the pro-secession League of the South, Traditional Catholicism (save possibly DiLorenzo) and Austrian-school, libertarian economics.

Woods is a convert to the type of Catholicism sought by many on the Catholic Right. As such, he is a vocal proponent for a return to a pre-Vatican II mindset. He is extreme in his economic libertarianism as well as secession and nullification. While nullification has a long and dark history on matters of race in the U.S., it is also looming as an issue for reproductive rights and marriage equality.

ags: christian dominionism, christian fundamentalism, christian right, neo-confederate

Debating with the Radical Right

I wanted to call attention to this account by WB Reeves of an on-air debate he had with Sean Hannity back before Hannity hit the big FOX time: The Nature of the Beast: My Sean Hannity Adventure Talk To Action 02/16/2013. Reeves is a new regular contributor to the Talk To Action blog and in the 1990s part of a local Georgia group called the Neighbors Network that documented and organized against hate group activity in their area.

He doesn't give the exact date of his appearance on Hannity's radio show of the time. But it came some time just after a 1994 report issued by his group, so presumably took place in 1994 or 1995. It's a good account of someone with experience understanding rightwing hate groups and in directly taking on the arguments they and their defenders of various sorts make. I encourage you to read the whole account in which he describes his confrontation with Hannity and a Christian Reconstructionist, Gary DeMar, on Hannity's radio show during an hour-long debate.

This is his conclusion:

So what's the moral of this story? I don't know that there is one but I do have some observations. Hannity is, I think, a mix of careerist and true believer. I don't think anyone motivated purely by self interest would put himself at risk by uncritically regurgitating propaganda funneled from extremist outfits. The fact that Hannity was prepared to coerce DeMar's participation suggests that any trust between them was ephemeral. At the same time it shows the lengths to which he'd go to shift responsibility away from himself and unto others. I don't think Hannity is unique. Most of the RW talkers I've heard strike me as being a similar mix.

More importantly, I think Hannity is representative in another regard. I think most of these RW talkers are wholly unprepared to deal with anyone who's ready mix it up and play hard ball. It's not impossible to beat these guy's [sic], even in their own house.

Lastly, if you're going up against scheming, devious, bastards, it's helpful to be a bit of a scheming, devious, bastard yourself.

I wish the Democrats in Congress would require every one of their caucus members to listen to a talke by WB Reeves on the same subject.

This also relates to something Rick Perlstein says in a very helpful post on dealing with local far-right groups with an ideological agenda who emphasize their identities as ordinary people who were suddenly outraged over something they discovered was going on, Nothing New Under the Wingnut Sun: 'Textbook Wars' The Nation 02/11/2013. He is discussing a particular local textbook controversy in West Virginia in the 1970s that led to some pretty serious Ku Klux Klan type violence. The one part of his article that I found troubling was this:

Kevin Bacon [in the 1984 movie Footloose], playing the out-of-town cosmopolitan kid who liberates the town from reactionary ways, taken aback, assures them it’s "a classic" — another familiar trope in these scripts: the smarter-than-thou sanctimony of the liberals. A father says, "Maybe in another town it’s a classic.” A mother insists, “Tom Sawyer is a classic!" (A clever little fillip, for as the screenwriter was surely getting at, Tom Sawyer’s sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, with its unflinching portrayal of racial wickedness and use of the "N" word — better to shelter kids from such unpleasantness, the logic went — has been a familiar a banning target, too, including, the Post reported last week, in Fairfax County.)

The mocking of the stupid philistines by the Kevin Bacon character, whom the audience is meant to identify with, against parents who wants to ban a book without even reading it, is both understandable and problematic. It feels really good to lord one's intellectual superiority and sophistication over another. It’s problematic to pass judgeent [sic] on a book you haven’t read. But in these fights intellectual arrogance might also be a temptation to be avoided. I wrote this in Nixonland about the 1960s, but it also applies to the 1970s—and our own time as well: "liberals get in the biggest political trouble ... when they presume a reform is an inevitable concomitant of progress. It is then they are the most likely to establish their reforms by top-down bureaucratic means. A blindsiding backlash often ensues."

That's good advice. Coming off as an arrogant snot is usually not the best way to persuade people to side with you in a conflict.

But then just how do people directly confronting far-right activists in particular political conflicts deal with the fact that no matter what style the "liberal" side of a controversy uses, the far right can always be expected to portray them as arrogant snobs with contempt for the regular folks? Oh, and as liars and degenerates, to boot.

Reeves' article provides us with a practical example. Key takeaways for me would be getting familiar as much as possible with your opponents' actual positions; expect evasive positions from the far-right opponent designed to make the "liberal" side look like liars; and, adopt an approach appropriate to the setting.

In Reeves' example, he prepared for the confrontation by identifying passages in DeMar's own publications that he expected DeMar to try to obfuscate in this particular confrontation. He anticipated that DeMar would try to weasel his way around a key point at issue, which was whether DeMar advocated the death penalty for homosexuals. And he knew that a confrontation on Hannity's radio show would not play out according to the rules of a League of Women Voters candidates' debate or an academic conference or a PBS documentary. As Reeves summed it up, "if you're going up against scheming, devious, bastards, it's helpful to be a bit of a scheming, devious, bastard yourself."

It's worth noting, though, that by "devious" in the example he uses, Reeves means acting in ways that you opponents may not expect. For instance, he assumed "that Hannity and DeMar would be expecting the stereotypical Liberal of their fantasies," and he planned ways to defy that expectation. And he wasn't expecting good faith or good will from Hannity or DeMar, since he understood from their records that he had no reason to expect either.

Tags: christian dominionism, christian right, radical right

Dominionist Christians in their context, for better or worse

Christian dominionists like to control their own marketing. And despite supposedly being bold in their witness for Jesus, they don't want to let their little lights shine before the unbelievers (Democrats, non-Christians, Catholics, most Protestants). It's not exactly timidity. They know that can't justify their positions in terms that most Americans and most Christians in the US or anywhere would support. So they mealy-mouth a lot.

Al Bundy - Christian dominionist theologian?

Our stumbling press is willing to facilitate the mealy-mouthing, since that's largely what our star pundits generally do anyway. So there's a discussions going on now in places that actually deal realistically with the Christian Right, like Talk to Action and Religion Dispatches, as to what the correct way to talk about the dominionists is. I understand why serious journalists and scholars like to be careful about their terminology. For scholars in particular, their work involves making careful distinctions.

This piece from Religion Dispatches is an especially good one on the topic, Beyond Alarmism and Denial in the Dominionism Debate by Sarah Posner and Anthea Butler 08/29/2011. They make an essential point in reference to the Christian Right in general and the Pentecostal New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), a group that suddenly came to new (and to them unwelcome) public attention with Rick Perry's big prayer rally:

... theological disagreements among these folks are largely inconsequential from a broad political perspective; the overarching Christian nation ideology, along with opposition to secularism, LGBT rights and abortion rights, and favoring public prayer and Ten Commandments and so forth are unifying.

But the idea that the NAR in particular — as opposed to the broader apparatus and movement the religious right has built over four decades — is somehow, in a vacuum, more powerful, or more authoritarian, or more threatening to democracy is a view that is far too narrow, ahistorical, and uninformed. [my emphasis]

What makes Posner's and Butler's piece especially good is the way they describe the networks of relationships that participants in neo-Pentecostal groups experience and how the influence of the leadership enters into that experience. As Posner puts it, this is a "crucial point here that I think is frequently overlooked by some people who focus too hard on the NAR rhetoric without contextualizing it: how people actually live and experience these movements." Their description doesn't minimize the ugly side of the neo-Pentecostal experience. It puts it in its actual context as lived by its believers.

Butler slips in a kind of disclaimer that I've seen several times lately in similar articles by people who actually know the Christian Right. She says the lack of decent research by mainstream reporters "has also led to a whole cottage industry of those who write about dominionism, the NAR, and other theocratic movements from the opposite perspective: It’s taking over everything." Now, I'm willing to believe there are people exaggerating one aspect or another of this phenomenon. But who is she talking about? I've seen this kind of comment several times lately without those guilty ones supposedly doing this being referenced, linked or specified. Without knowing who they are talking about, this kind of comment isn't helpful. In fact, it sounds suspiciously like knee-jerk rhetoric to reassure the un-assurable that the speaker/writer isn't one of those stereotypical libruls who supposedly hates "people of faith" and their faiths, too.

But, as I said, Butler's and Posner's description of the neo-Pentecostal lived experience is an exceptionally good summary. Butler:

... there are streams of people crossing each other, and what is happening can have a multiplicity of meanings. That is how to think about the NAR, dominionism, all of these movements that people are involved in. In evangelical and Pentecostal churches, most people have a home church they identify with, but you have a favorite pastor or evangelist that you listen to occasionally. Studying scripture means you don't just read the Bible, you read devotional books, and books designed to help your spiritual walk or the church broadly construed. That is the problem with focusing in only on NAR and dominionism. If you don't know the everyday context of how people, churches, and organizations deal with these broad-based movements, it can sound like a vast conspiracy theory.

People who are in that web don't often recognize differences, or they don’t care about them. They care about their spiritual lives, and that's what keeps these movements going. They can go from one meeting to the next if they have the funds to do so, and the highs are good. Who doesn’t want to go to a meeting that feeds your soul where you meet like-minded people?

All of the groups are enmeshed in a symbiotic web. These evangelists', apostles’, and leaders’ messages are the commodity, and you have to buy the books, conferences, and other materials in order to get the blessings. I know that will seem distasteful and a caricature to some, but these events are well-attended, and at a hundred bucks a person, revenues from book and DVD sales. Conferences and meetings like Lou Engles’ The Call are not just prayer meetings, they are Christian marketplaces, with all sorts of spiritual wares being sold. [my emphasis]

Posner amplifies that description:

... if you’ve ever been to a neo-Pentecostal conference or revival you’ve seen this sort of thing. And as [Carlton] Pearson's biography clearly demonstrates, if you give up that central idea that there is a hell (and hence a Satan), you'll be banished from not only friendships, but the lucrative ministries that Pearson himself helped to create.

All that said, there are different ways that people experience this, or faith healings, or other performances you find in these environments. Not everyone is in lockstep, when you sit down and talk with them. I remember vividly the 2007 event at Gimenez's church in Virginia Beach—this was before John Gimenez passed away—and there was quite a lineup of different preachers (I mean entrepreneurs)! I remember Lou Engle was on what I might, looking back, call a prophecy bender: rocking, as he does, and really doing an extended sequence on some dream he had about Jerusalem. People were wandering out of the sanctuary, as I did, and I was chatting with a woman in the hall. She commented about she hadn't seen him preach in a while. And she seemed pretty unimpressed with this one.

I point this out only to emphasize how these individual players do not necessarily always enrapture the audience; I've seen this at various events. On the other hand, I've seen others, like Rod Parsley and Kenneth Copeland, have the audience eating out of their hands (and also putting money in their hands).

These events are, like I said, performances that are carefully staged and mapped out; there may be a series of speakers who seem like they are reacting spontaneously to what's happening, moved by the holy spirit. But it's carefully orchestrated, along with mesmerizing music, for maximum impact. It's big business.

However, I suspect this ability to understand and empathize with rank-and-file participants may also contribute to the temptation to downplay that nuttiness and cultish aspects of these movements. Posner, for instance, expresses misgivings that some (unnamed) "people have been distracted by focusing too much on bizarre statements Perry’s prayer friends made (the Statue of Liberty is a demonic idol, Oprah is the harlot of Babylon, and so forth)."

But this stuff is also standard fare in the neo-Pentecostal subculture. I just clicked on the website of Charisma, a leading Pentecostal magazine, and found this article on the front page: J. Lee Grady, Unraveling the Power of Witchcraft—One Warlock at a Time 09/07/2011. Ole Jaylee apparently believes literally in the ability of witches and warlocks to magically affect people:

Just a year ago, Victor Hugo Perez Vargas was a leader in Peru’s vast but secretive occult movement. His strange ability to curse people and cause accidents seemed to be increasing. He was being mentored by a well-known satanist master and he attended witchcraft conferences. ...

Victor, who is 36, was drawn into this occultism as a teenager in the city of Moyobamba, where friends convinced him to have sex with dogs in order to receive supernatural power. Witches told him to do this so he could hear better and see in the spiritual realm. After the perverse initiation rites, he began to hear voices—and he discovered his ability to kill people with his words.

I'm sorry. People who can swallow tales about warlocks causing accidents by cursing and initiation rites involving dog-fucking are just superstitious and gullible. If it hurts their feelings to see or read someone saying that, then they just need to grow up. Ole Jaylee has his head stuck in the 19th century:

Victor’s transformation showed me how the Holy Spirit is working in Peru, where occultism has been a tradition ever since ancient Incas sacrificed children on altars to their sun god. Today, occultists from Africa, Europe and the United States attend witchcraft gatherings in Peru because they consider the country a central power center for New Age energy.

He goes on to describe an exorcism allegedly performed on the warlock's girlfriend, a description evidencing less critical thinking ability than the average illiterate backwoods hick can muster.

He goes on to describe his conversion to a brand of Christianity evidently as superstitious as the most dim-witted occultist. "I had a vision of the feet of Jesus," the redeemed and exorcised former warlock says. It reminds me of an episode of the old TV series Married...With Children in which Al Bundy has a vision of God's shoes and starts to manufacture and market them, only to later to discover they were the shoes a deceased fellow shoe salesman had invented and had never been able to sell, either.

And Pentecostalists like Jaylee often track in National Inquirer fantasies like this:

Observers say witchcraft is growing in Peru today, and human sacrifice still occurs—although it is rarely reported. (Several weeks ago, a girl’s dismembered body was found in Mayobamba.) Teresa Gomez believes this is all a last-ditch effort by satanic forces.

"These satanists want to take over the nation of Peru," she says. "Witches come here because there was so much blood sacrifice during the Inca times." She also noted that poor families, especially in jungle areas, have been known to sell their children to be sacrificed in occult rituals.

Substitute "Jews" for "poor families" and you've got the bad old medieval (and later) "blood libel" about Jews sacrificing Christian babies. This is a mean, superstitious, and militant ignorant brand of Christianity. I don't see any good reason for other Christians, journalists, scholars, Democratic politicians or anyone else who's not crouching in a corner trembling in fear of flying demons and witches' curses to treat this kind of nonsense as anything other than a sad, degenerate brand of religion that will certainly do most participants more harm than good.

Ole Jaylee is at least not so mired in the 16th century he doesn't have a Twitter account, where you can read confessions like this: "I hope this doesn't disappoint anyone...but I like Easy Listening music. It calms me." I don't know, Jaylee, sounds like you've got one of them thar Guy Lombardo demons or something. You'd better lock yourself in a room and listen to Christian contemporary for 24 hours straight. It may not git rid of yore Easy Listenin' demon, but it will strip you brain badly enough that you're unlikely to be able to hurt anybody. Also not be able to write your silly column.

Tags: anthea butler, christian dominionism, christian right, pentecostalism, sarah posner

Christian Dominionism is getting too influential for even mainstream reporters to ignore

The Christian dominionists are in a position that clearly makes them uncomfortable. They've had decades in which they could talk theocracy to their followers but the Establishment press would tip-toe around looking at their actual religious beliefs and their direct implications for democratic government. There are at least some signs their ability to fly under the radar of attention from those, including, other Christians who don't share their Christian Right worldview is diminishing significantly.

Rick Perry's prayer event this summer which was backed by the leading lights of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), the reactionary, screamingly superstitious Pentecostal trend that is theoretically a loose unity of individual churches but in fact is a stealth denomination, may have been some kind of tipping point. Michelle Bachmann's early prominence in the Republican Presidential race also helps focus attention when she says things like this:

She hailed the tea party as being common-sense Americans who understand government shouldn't spend more than it takes in, know they're taxed enough already and want government to abide by the Constitution.

"I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We've had an earthquake; we've had a hurricane. He said, 'Are you going to start listening to me here?' Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we've got to rein in the spending." (Adam Smith, Michele Bachmann rally draws over 1,000 in Sarasota, but some prefer Rick Perry St. Petersburg Times (08/29/2011)

That superstitious comment drew wider press attention, and her campaign issued a statement that it was a joke. But it's only funny if you more-or-less believe that God literally speaks through the weather, a view largely restricted to Christian fundamentalists in the US and the occasional New Ager. It actually seems even more disturbing to me if it was meant to be a joke, given it was Hurricane Irene weekend. Either way, it's an example of how it's becoming at least marginally more difficult for politicians to talk one way to Christian Right audiences and then try to deny the plain English meaning of what's they've said in other contexts. They've been able to get a way with with a great deal of impunity for the last three decades.

Sarah Posner, who is not given to being starry-eyed about such things, writes hopefully but cautiously in Political Reporters Start Reading Religious Right Books Religion Dispatches 08/29/2011:

There's a somewhat refreshing development taking place in political reporting. Not only reporters are noticing that Republican candidates coalesce with religious right leaders, but they are also discovering a crucial truth about the movement: that its followers aren't just motivated by opposition to abortion and LGBT rights. They are motivated by something more fundamental, a reimagined "truth" about what America is (and isn't) and how a "biblical worldview" should guide politics and policymaking.

The Christian Right generally shares Ron Paul's hardline Christian dominionist views, which Adele Stan accurately describes as "anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-black, anti-senior-citizen, anti-equality, anti-education, pro-communist-witch-hunt." (5 Reasons Progressives Should Treat Ron Paul with Extreme Caution -- 'Cuddly' Libertarian Has Some Very Dark Politics Alternet 08/26/2011) There are many different variations, of course. The NAR types consider Southern Baptists and Mormons to be part of churches controlled by demons. But those diversities shouldn't detract us from the remarkable degree of political agreement on basic reactionary political goals.

Far from letting their little lights shine, advocates of Christian dominionism are very anxious to not have it discussed frankly in public. They claim to have wanted to "put God back into the public square." They've at least put their own reactionary version of Christianity into the "public square." But they don't seem happy to have direct exchanges with critics.

Bachmann and dominionism by Richard Weikart McClatchy Newspapers 08/17/2011 is an example of the nothing-to-see-here-move-right-along type of Christian Right defense. This style fits in well with the white people's whine so popular among segregationists and the Christian Right, two heavily overlapping categories. We hear a version of it every year in whining about the non-existent "war on Christmas," an old anti-Semitic complaint. Rachel Tabachnick in WaPo's On Faith Columnist Calls NAR 'Previously Unknown Group' Despite 49 Articles by NAR Apostle Talk to Action 08/29/2011 explains that Weikart "Weikart is a senior fellow of the [creationist, anti-science] Center for Science and Culture of the Discovery Institute and author of 'From Darwin to Hitler.'"

Posner and Julie Ingersoll at Religion Dispatches and Tabachnick and Chip Berlet at Talk to Action are some of the best sources on Christian dominionism.

Tags: christian dominionism, christian right, rachel tabachnick, sarah posner

Three decades of neoliberalism: Sarah Posner on the Christian Right

Sarah Posner provides a capsule history of the increasing power of the Christian Right over the last 30 years in The Christian right's "dominionist" strategy Salon 08/21/2011. She warns against superficial understandings of the Christian Right that might interpret, for instance, the newly-visible New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) Pentecostals actively promoting Rick Perry's Presidential candidacy as unique among Republican Christianists in their commitment to theocracy.

Christian dominionism and wifely submission, 16th century edition: Johannes von Leiden (aka, Jan Beuckelzoon), king of the Anabaptist city of Münster, Germany, applies godly punishment (beheading) to one of his wives who failed to show the proper submission to her husband

Christian dominionism (secular rule by religious authorities or on their behalf) has been a strong factor in the Republican Party since the late 1970s. In her account, Posner describes this bit of history:

In August 1980 ... after Reagan had clinched the [Republican Presidential] nomination, he did appear at a "National Affairs Briefing" in Texas, where televangelist James Robison (also instrumental in organizing [Texas Gov. Rick] Perry's [2011 prayer] event) declared, "The stage is set. We'll either have a Hitler-type takeover, or Soviet domination, or God is going to take over this country." After Robison spoke, Reagan took the stage and declared to the 15,000 activists assembled by Moral Majority co-founder Ed McAteer, "You can't endorse me, but I endorse you."

That was also a big moment for [FOX News political commentator Mike] Huckabee, who worked as Robison's advance man. It was even imitated by then-candidate Barack Obama, who met with a group of evangelicals and charismatics in Chicago and repeated Reagan's infamous line. Obama's group included publisher Stephen Strang (an early endorser of Huckabee's 2008 presidential bid) and his son Cameron, whose magazines Charisma and Relevant help promote the careers of the self-declared modern-day prophets and apostles. Huckabee appeared with Lou Engle at his 2008 The Call rally on the National Mall (like Perry's, billed as a "solemn assembly") in which Engle exhorted his prayer warriors to battle satanic forces to defeat "Antichrist legislation." [my emphasis]

And from the time of the Reagan Administration, the Christian Right has also been heavily involved in some of the dirtiest foreign policy business, like support for the Nicaraguan Contras and the Blackwater/XE mercenary organization. So when we hear that a key official in organizing Christian Right support for Michelle Bachmann in Republican Presidential primary states has been involved in shady business providing guns to dubious political groups in Africa, it's important to remember that this is not an anomaly for the Christian Right. It's not a bug, it's a feature. (See Garance Franke-Ruta, Bachmann Staffer Arrested for Terrorism in Uganda in 2006 The Atlantic 08/17/2011)

Posner also highlights the role that The Christian Right has played in promoting the Know-Nothingism that is now so characteristic of the Republican Party:

Most chilling, though, is the willingness to engage in what's known in the Word of Faith world as "revelation knowledge," or believing, as Copeland exhorted his audience to do, that you learn nothing from journalism or academia, but rather just from the Bible and its modern "prophets." It is in this way that the self-styled prophets have had their greatest impact on our political culture: by producing a political class, and its foot soldiers, who believe that God has imparted them with divine knowledge that supersedes what all the evil secularists would have you believe. [my emphasis]

Confidence based on evidence is one thing. Certainty based on a half-baked version of the Christian faith is something very different. The latter doesn't comport well with democracy.

Tags: christian dominionism, christian fundamentalism, christian right, radical right, sarah posner

Peter Daou is right: Dems are getting "played" on freedom of religion

I'm not a witch, but I hate the First Amendment

Peter Daou has a good post on Christine "I'm not a witch" O'Donnell's supposed lack of understanding of the First Amendment, Democrats getting played: O’Donnell successfully shapes dialogue about First Amendment 10/19/2010. For the kind of reaction to which Daou is responding, see Alex Pareene, Video: Christine O'Donnell forgets her Constitution at debate Salon.

I'm going to try to be a good Lakoffian here and "frame" this in the democratic way, which is also the Democratic way, rather than put it in the negative by refuting O'Donnell rightwing talking point.

The First Amendment says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" - this is known as the Establishment Clause, meaning there should be no state church, i.e., keeping the Church out of the business of government - "or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" - to keep the government out of the business of the Church.

The 14th Amendment extended this and other provisions of the Bill of Rights to the states, as well. I'm not making a legal point here about the nuances of some obscure case. This is the basic Constitutional framework of our government.

The Founders, in this case the first Congress which passed the Bill of Rights, understood the First Amendment to separate religion and government, Church and State. The defining background for them was the Wars of Religion in the 16th century, the Thirty Years War of 1618-1648 and the English Civil Wars of (1642–1651). Sectarian religious considerations were major factors in those bloody conflicts, the 30 Years War being the bloodiest conflict in Europe prior to the First World War.

For perspective, 1791 (the year the first Congress convened) was 143 years after the end of the 30 Years War. The end of the American Civil War was 145 years ago, and our contemporary political discussions still include active discussion of that war, what it means, and the legal changes that emerged from it. It wasn't that they just thought picking out a state church was too much trouble. They understood separation of church and state as a positive good, for both government and religion. It was part of their understanding of democracy, as it is today in most democratic countries.

O'Donnell in what many progressive commentators took to be a gaffe was elaborating a favorite Christian theocratic talking point, dumb and annoying but popular. Daou gives an illustration from Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle, which is to point out that the phrase "separation of church and state" does not appear in the First Amendment. Ironically, the more someone knows about the law concerning freedom of religion, the more likely they are to stumble over that point if they aren't prepared for it. The First Amendment does separate church from state for the mutual benefit of both.

Daou quotes from an interview with Angle a couple of months back, in which she makes the theocratic talking point:

RALSTON: Oh, it doesn't? The Founding Fathers didn't believe in the separation of church and state?

ANGLE: Thomas Jefferson has been misquoted, like I've been misquoted, out of context. Thomas Jefferson was actually addressing a church and telling them through his address that there had been a wall of separation put up between the church and the state precisely to protect the church from being taken over by a state religion. That's what they meant by that. They didn't mean we couldn't bring our values to the political forum.

She's referring to a famous statement by Jefferson about having a wall separation church of state; the phrase "wall of separation" is often used in discussing this concept today. (See 'A Wall Of Eternal Separation' TPM 10/19/2010)

Here she makes a gotcha point that's typical of the dissembling manner of Christian Right candidates. No one that I've ever heard of, including Jefferson, argued that "we couldn't bring our values to the political forum." The Christian Right in more friendly context likes to talk about "putting God back into the public square."

But Democrats and supporters of freedom of religion do do argue that legislation must have a legitimate secular purpose. And it's perfectly legitimate to call out Republicans on exactly what they are their fellow Republicans mean when they talk about enacting religious values into our secular law.

Because, as we've seen for decades with the issue of teaching creationism in the public schools, the fundamentalist Christian Republicans do want to impose their specifically religious views through the power of the state. And they have gotten away for decades with campaigning to the Christian right on the basis of religion and then ducking questions about exactly what that means by saying such questions are illegitimate because they concern their very personal religious convictions.

The press has let them get away with, and there's no reason to think the press on its own will change. But Democrats have also let them get away with. And it's high time that candidates like Jack Conway in his Senate race in Kentucky against the unctuous and deceitful Rand Paul started calling them on it. Good for you, soon-to-be-Senator Conway!

And, if you are in any doubt about that line being Republican Party dogma and Constitutional scholarship, Limbaugh Defends O'Donnell: Separation Of Church And State Not In The Constitution TPMDC 10/19/2010.

Tags: christian dominionism, christian right, christianism, radical right, republican party

Calvinism and American conservatism (Updated)

John Calvin (1509-1564)

The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has been having an internal debate for years over Calvinism and what role it should play in SBC theology. I've always suspected that underlying the mind-numbing theological generalization, that "Calvinism" in this debate actually stood for a Christian dominionist view of government and politics.

The following article by Burke Gerstenschlager doesn't specifically address the SBC debates: The Kids Are All Wrong: Texas Tosses The Enlightenment Religion Dispatches 07/08/2010. But Gerstenschlager does give a good idea of how Calvin's hardcore theocratic view could would find favor among Christian Dominionists:

Throughout The Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin, a lawyer by training, comprehensively establishes and describes God’s authority and action as complete in every moment of human existence. He opens his volume with these words: Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and ourselves.

If there ever was an anti-Enlightenment axiom, this is it. ... Calvin's Divine Providence, through the exclusive salvific death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, is absolute. Everything is predestined for God's own glory and has been manifested in the Gospel for humanity's salvation and damnation. In light of this, in his very last chapter, Calvin offers his concept of government. Basically, it is The Institutes put into civil practice.

With his high view of inerrant, god-breathed Scripture, Calvin employs story after biblical story to establish God's choice in the determination of every ruler from David to Nebuchadnezzar and beyond. By Divine Providence and holy decree, God—not the people—chooses the rulers, though the people may think they have some sort of democratic power. And those who believe that laws do not come from God Calvin calls "seditious."

He writes, "the first duty of subjects towards their rulers, is to entertain the most honorable views of their office, recognizing it as a delegated jurisdiction from God, and on that account receiving and reverencing them as the ministers and ambassadors of God."

Later, he writes "let no man here deceive himself, since we cannot resist the magistrate without resisting God." In The Institutes, Calvin begins with our knowledge of God the Creator and ends with the complete manifestation of God’s will in our governments and social lives. [italics in orginal; my emphasis in bold]

On the surface, this notion that all laws come from God looks like a kind of quietist view, holding that Christians should adapt themseves to whatever legal regime under which they find themselves living.

But while Calvin would have assumed God's sovereignty even in ungodly governments, his arguments there are essentially applicable to godly government. Like, for instance, the rigid theocratic regime that Calvin eventually headed in Geneva - though it was not nearly so ferociously rigid as that of the Anabaptists in Münster. [bolded update, 07/02/2012] And Calvin understood it to be part of the duty of Christians to actively seek to realize godly government here in the fallen world.

Gerstenschlager accurately observes, "So comprehensive and extensive is Calvin’s concept of predestined government, it effectively invalidates the concept of the Separation of Church and State before it is even introduced!"

Gerstenschlager isn't just using hyperbole about Christian fundamentalists rejecting the Enlightenment. That's really the case when it comes to Enlightenment ideas of science, individual freedom and representative government. Fundamentalist theology from the start was particularly hostile to historical-critical methods of Biblical research, which was a prominent feature of classical German philosophy and scholarship of the early 19th century.

But even fundis are free of Enlightement thinking. John Maynard Keynes famously observed, "Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist." Or, as he also put it, "Even the most practical man of affairs is usually in the thrall of the ideas of some long-dead economist." And Christian fundamentalists are in many ways in thrall to the Scottish Enlightenment, from which the so-called literalist reading of the Scriptures is derived.

Tags: christian dominionism, jean calvin, christianism, christian right

Today's Republican Party

It's being more and more influenced by adherents and fans of groups like the Constitution Party and its Christian Reconstructionist ideology, as Adele Stan explains in What Rand Paul and Sharron Angle Have in Common: A Far-Right "Biblical Law" Political Party Alternet 06/15/2010.

If the Tea Party could be said to have a founding father, I'd name him as Constitution Party founder Howard Phillips. Deeply influenced by the Christian Reconstructionist theology of Rousas John Rushdoony, Phillips not only helped found the religious right, but created a political party that has served as a haven for such figures as Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry and neo-militia leader Matthew Trewhella. (Founded in 1992 as the U.S. Taxpayers Party, the organization adopted the name "Constitution Party" in 1999.)

Phillips also chairs the Conservative Caucus, a political organization that served, during the presidential campaign, as a virtual clearinghouse for anti-Obama messaging — the very messaging that would find itself amplified by the Tea Party movement. It was from Phillips' shop that I first heard the trope about Barack Obama’s birth certificate, and heard tales of the future president's socialist past.

The Caucus works closely with the John Birch Society, and has featured Ron Paul as a speaker at several of its events. It is a tireless crusader against something called the North American Union, which it claims nefarious forces are trying to create after the model of the European Union. [my emphasis]

Tags: christian dominionism, radical right, republican party

Christianist theocratic "libertarianism"

Mark Shields may think that libertarians are all a bunch of free-love hippies. But he's clueless about how leave-business-alone libertarianism is often connected to a hardlare Christianist theocratic worldview. As Julie Ingersoll explains in Rand Paul and the Influence of Christian Reconstructionism Religion Dispatches 05/25/2010, noting the close affiliation of both Rand Paul and his fatherRon with the far-right Constitution Party, which is heavily influenced by Christian Reconstructionist ideology:

How can they be theocrats and libertarians? This has puzzled those of us who write on Reconstructionists who see evidence of both libertarian and theocratic tendencies. In other words, how can they advocate limited government and, at the same time, application of biblical Law?

An understanding of the subtleties of Christian Reconstruction is really helpful here. For Reconstructionists, the civil government’s authority is limited to protecting citizens from criminals. Family and ecclesiastical authority are established to uphold (and enforce) other aspects of biblical law. That’s not to say that any of these institutions are understood as functioning autonomously; all are under the authority of God and are to function according to biblical law. But each is independent of the others. So for libertarian Reconstructionists (as many of them are) limited government means limited civil government. Their form of libertarianism is distinct from the more libertine versions of libertarianism. They are much better described as theonomic than theocratic. [my emphasis]

She elaborates with reference to the Constitution Party:

The Constitution Party platform opposes marriage and/or legal partnerships for gays and lesbians. No surprise there, but the plank regarding family articulates a notion of family as one of three governing institutions established by God. Likewise, the platform articulates support for Christian schooling and homeschooling. But it does so on the basis of Reconstructionist framing: the family is understood as a form of government, given by God, with a specific sphere of authority that includes the raising of children, without the interference of the civil government. Opposition to welfare, in the platform, is not based in more common conservative view, such as “welfare allows people to be lazy,” or “it’s unfair (or even inefficient) to tax productive people to care for those who are not.” Rather, it is based in the argument that welfare is more properly understood as charity and is legitimately within the authority of the church, not the civil government. [my emphasis]

Sarah Posner, also in Religion Dispatches, elaborates on the latter point in John Birch Society: You Can't Legislate Christian Charity (Or Integration) 05/25/2010, where she discusses the CEO of the John Birch Society (JBS), the mothership of contemporary rightwing conspiracy theories, defending Ron Paul's opposition to anti-discrimination laws:

Now this week the CEO of the John Birch Society says "forced integration by the government is wrong" and that Christians should just be trusted to do what's right, because you "can't legislate Christian charity."

In this case, the JBS sees anti-discrimination laws as a form of "charity". She continues:

Thompson never specifically addresses Paul's statements on the Civil Rights Act, but intimates that, like Paul, he believes people should be, essentially, trusted to do the right thing. He believes this, it seems, because, like Paul, if everyone acted on Christian charity, we wouldn't need any laws. "With Christian charity," Thompson concluded, "we can work together. Without Christian charity, we can't. And you just can't legislate Christian charity. It's just that simple."

Tags: christian dominionism, john birch society, radical right

A what kind of foreign policy?

The House Republican whip (the second in the House minority party hierarchy) says we need a "Judeo-Christian" Midlle East policy: Cantor: Set Mideast policies in ‘Judeo-Christian’ tradition JTA 07/21/09.

I wonder what such a thing would be. My guess is that it probably wouldn't do a lot to reduce problems with the Muslim world.

On the subject of theocracy, Sex and power inside "the C Street House" by Jeff Sharlet Salon 07/21/09 is definitelty worth a read. It's about the Christianist group that calls itself The Family and actually has a significant influence over American policies.

Tags: christian dominionism, christian fundamentalism, christian right, christianism, fanaticism

What we can expect: The Christianists

I take it for granted that the Republican opposition, most of whom will never recognize Obama's election as truly legitimate, just as the Gingrich gang never truly viewed Bill Clinton's Presidency as legitimate. If they want to prove me wrong, that would be great.

But the segregationist/Christianist Republicans, which are the Party's hardcore base, will be especially intransigent.

We get an early look at their position in Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America from James Dobson's Focus on the Family Christian Right group 10/22/08. Technically, it's from Focus on the Family Action which they say they have set up as "a cultural action organization that is completely separate from Focus on the Family, legally".

This document may be more revealing than the Focus on the Family group intended. It's framed as a look into the future, talking about Obama's first term in the past tense.

The "2012" document list all foreign-relations issues under "Military Policy". They present this picture of Obama's policy toward Russia and Russia's policy toward the West. As policy, it's not at all a serious look. But then, millions of people are willing to take memes floated by Christian Right leaders as Gospel:

As Vice President Joe Biden had predicted on Oct. 20, 2008, some hostile foreign countries “tested” President Obama in his first few months in office. The first test came from Russia. In early 2009, they followed the pattern they had begun in Georgia in 2008 and sent troops to occupy and re-take several Eastern European countries, starting with the Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. President Obama appealed to the United Nations (UN), taking the same approach he had in his initial statements when Russia invaded Georgia in August 2008: “Now is the time for Georgia and Russia to show restraint, and to avoid an escalation to full scale war," and "All sides should enter into direct talks on behalf of stability in Georgia, and the United States, the United Nations Security Council, and the international community should fully support a peaceful resolution to this crisis,” But Russia sits on the Security Council, and no U.N. action has yet been taken.

Then in the next three years, Russia occupied additional countries that had been previous Soviet satellite nations, including Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria, with no military response from the U.S. or the U.N. NATO heads of state have severely condemned Russia’s actions each time but they could never reach consensus on military action. Liberal television commentators in both the U.S. and Europe have uniformly expressed deep regret at the loss of freedom of these countries but have also observed that "the U.S. cannot be the world’s policeman.”

President Obama’s popularity dropped somewhat after each of these crises, but media criticism was remarkably muted. And Vice President Joe Biden reminded the nation that on October 20, 2008, he had predicted that Russia might be one of “four or five scenarios” where an “international crisis” would arise. “It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy,” he said. And Obama will have to make "some incredibly tough decisions," and that “it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right." [my emphasis]

1This text could have been lifted almost directly from some John Birch Society pamphlet circa 1960 and edited to change a few words here and there and add a couple of quotes from the 2008 campaign that sound to paranoid rightwingers like cowardly "appeasement". Even though Russia isn't a Communist enemy any more, those for whom this kind of thing resonates are still living in the Cold War days.

This is so goofy that anything that sounds like a fact-check risks giving it undeserved credibility. But it's also worth recognizing what a bizarre fantasy this is. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria are all NATO members. Russia is not going to invade any of them. It's policy in the Caucuses is clearly aimed at asserting political and military hegemony over Georgia and Ukraine and that is a concern for NATO and US foreign policies. But there's no good reason for anyone to expect a military takeover of either country by Russia.

This strange prediction - Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are all supposed to be conquered by the Rooskies before summer 2009! - illustrates what a high priority a hardline, neo-Cold War foreign policy is for the Christian Right.

Also, the references to the UN there sound much more sinister to the segregationist/Christianist/Bircher crowd than they would to most American readers. The UN is supposed to be an instrument of the Antichrist, and/or a big Jewish Communist plot, or a secret scheme of the Illuminati, or Lord knows what else in their view of the world.

The Christian perspective portrayed in this article isn't concerned at all about ending the torture policy. And it doesn't seem to occur to the writer than any domestic spying that can be used by the Republicans could also be used for nefarious purposes by the Obama they've spent months condemning as a socialist Marxist terrorist Arab foreigner:

President Obama directed U.S. intelligence services to cease all wiretapping of alleged terrorist phone calls unless they first obtained a warrant for each case. Terrorists captured overseas, instead of being tried in military tribunals, are given full trials in the U.S. court system, and they have to be allowed access to a number of government secrets to prepare their defense.

Since 2009, terrorist bombs have exploded in two large and two small U.S. cities, killing hundreds, and the entire country is fearful, for no place seems safe. President Obama in each case has vowed “to pursue and arrest and prosecute those responsible,” but no arrests have been made. However, he has challenged the nation to increase foreign aid to the poorer nations that were the breeding grounds for terrorism, so people could have an opportunity to escape from the cycles of poverty and violence in which generations had been trapped. [my emphasis]

That section recapitulates some of the standards justifications for torture, arbitrary arrests and secret military tribunals that the Cheney-Bush administration has used. "Foreign aid" is also an especially sinister phrase for the Christianists.

Christian Right groups were deeply involved in some of the most dubious policies of the Reagan administration in Latin America. And the writer of the "2012" letter is worried by all the Commies down yonder:

President Obama has also moved to deepen U.S. ties and U.S. trade with communist regimes in Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia, regimes that had long enjoyed the favor of far-Left factions in the Democratic Party. Several other Latin American countries seem ready to succumb to insurgent communist revolutionary factions funded and armed by millions of petrodollars from Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

It is true that Cuba has a Communist regime. The rest only illustrates their Birchite view of the world.

Most of the letter is concerned with paranoid fantasies in which sex figures very prominently. Gays and lesbians seem to worry them the most, and the "2012" manifesto is full of "dog whistle" phrases related to that. Not surprising, but still creepy. The sexual obsessions in "2012" are a reminder that lots of irrational passions can drive people in their political involvements.

The letter starts off worrying about the Supreme Court. That's probably the closest to a reality-based section of the document. Let's hope that President Obama makes their fears come true by appointing lots of solid Democratic judges to the Supreme Court and the rest of the federal bench.

Jesus is also apparently in favor of nuclear power and low taxes for the wealthy but against union organizing. And, in what is a case of political and probably psychological projection, they fear that those wicked liberals ("the far-Left" is their preferred term used) are determined to ban Christian books from bookstores and suppress the free speech of Jesus-like commentators such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

Their editors seemed to have slipped up while copying from the old Bircher pamphlets and left in a reference to the "one-world government pacifists", which pretty much means anyone who doesn't despite the whole concept of the United Nations.

Warning: you may feel a strange need to take a long, thorough shower after reading "Letter from 2012 in Obama's America".

Tags: christian dominionism, christian fundamentalism, christian right, mccain, christianism

"Joel's Army" theology and the White Princess

The "witch doctor" part of this comic cover has more relevance to the topic than you might want to think

Blogger Ruth at the TalktoAction blog looks at the brand of Pentecostal theology with which McCain's White Princess has been associated for most of her life in a two-part posting, Palin's Churches and the Third Wave 09/05/08 and in Part 2. She writes:

Sarah Palin has refused to acknowledge belonging to any specific denomination or any particular religious stream.

Since she's the heroine of the Christian Right, this fact in itself should raise a red flag.

However, it is now well documented that she spent her youth in an Assembly of God church and has regularly attended another AoG church, as well as two Independent Churches. At least three of four of these churches have close ties to prominent organizations and leaders in the Third Wave movement, also known as the New Apostolic Reformation.

This is a worldwide movement so completely ignored by the press that there is no single accepted term that has been coined for the identification for the group. In addition to Third Wave and New Apostolic Reformation, it is also referred to by the names of some of its more extreme theologies, such as Joel's Army and Manifest Sons of Destiny. Its roots are in a revival of the manifestations and beliefs of the New Order of Latter Rain which has been repeatedly condemned by the General Council of the Assemblies of God since 1949.

We saw in the case of the Rev. Jeramiah Wright earlier this year that the Establishment media are willing to scrutinize the religious beliefs of a Presidential candidate who has what the press corps and the Republicans regard as a scary black preacher. So far, the national press hasn't shown anything like a similar zeal in looking into the political-extremist and possible cultish aspects of the religious movements to which Sarah Palin has been so closely associated.

She provides this video by Bruce Wilson about the White Princess' Wasilla church and the brand of Petecostalism with which she has so closely associated herself:



Wilson gives more detailed documentation for the video in Sarah Palin's Demon Haunted Churches - The Complete Edition 09/08/08, also at the Talk to Action blog.

Ruth describes the recent organization of the "Third Wave" Dominionist movement as follows:

The movement is organized in the U.S. and around the world by networks of Apostles. The most extensive Apostolic network is headed by C. Peter Wagner, who has several hundred Apostles for whom he provides `Apostolic cover.' These Apostles then may have authority over hundreds or even thousands of churches or ministries, according to Wagner. Wagner is the founder of Global Harvest Ministries and the World Prayer Center, (sometimes jokingly referred to as the Pentagon of Spiritual Warfare) which shares the property of New Life Church in Colorado Springs. At the time of development of the center, the church was led by Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals before his scandal and departure.

Many of the unorthodox ideas of the Third Wave such as "spiritual mapping" and "strategic level spiritual warfare" were developed as missionary tools during the frenzy of missions that occurred by these groups in the lead up to the year 2000. Wagner developed a strategy for territorial spiritual warfare based on spiritual mapping. This idea came from Third Wave colleague Ed Silvoso who claimed to have used spiritual warfare to expel a warlock from the area of Arroyo Seco in Argentina which was blocking their efforts to plant churches. This supposedly cleared the way for the development of 82 new evangelical churches in the region. The methods of spiritual mapping were further developed and spread through the efforts of Wagner as a tool for world and U.S. missions.

She also focuses on some of the cult-like aspects of this movement:

The movement stresses obedience to authority. The term Shepherding has been largely dropped because of the negative connotations of groups like Maranatha which were accused of cult-like control over college students. However, structures in which members answer to someone in authority over them still exists.

Rick Warren and Tom Brokaw have asked Barack Obama and Joe Biden about the theological question of when a fetus becomes human. Will ABC's Charlie Gibson ask her about her views on notions such as the following from Third Wave Pentecostalism?

This is based on the belief that transformation of social ills can only occur through the supernatural means of a unified Christian effort. It is the presence of demons and territorial spirits, witches, and generational curses that cause problems in society. If the demons are driven out through spiritual warfare, prayer, and fasting, then the community will have conquered the enemy. Crime and corruption will decline, crops will overproduce, and enormous vegetables will grow. The problems of environment degradation, lack of water, and other severe ecological problems can only be solved if communities take the necessary steps taught by the transformation ministries to get God to heal the land. [my emphasis]

When we're talking about one of the two people who is going to become the next Dick Cheney in January 2009, this stuff matters.

And, yes, sadly, this is a singificant part of what democratic politics in America consists of today.

Tags: christian dominionism, christian right, christianism, sarah palin

Saga of the White Princess: Babies and preachers and kooks, oh my!

James Fallows at his Atlantic blog has a couple of good posts about the White Princess' speech Wednesday evening. His impression was that she was giving red meat to the base but using a sneering, being-nasty-with-a-smile attitude that is typically for Republican pundits and radio talkers but doesn't play so well with everyone else: Sarah Palin 09/04/08 and A word more on Palin and the riskiness of mockery 09/04/08.

For those of us who don't spend hours daily listening to Republican hate radio, Billmon explains the OxyContin connection of all those shots at Obama having been a "community organizer" in Why the repeated attacks on "community organizers"? 09/03/08.

This focus group of independents didn't respond very positively to the White Princess' address: Free Press voter panel reacts to Palin's speech Detroit Free Press 09/03/08.

Bob "the Daily Howler" Somerby in his post of 09/04/08 takes the national press and liberal opinion writers to task for failing to understand or tell people how blatantly Palin was lying about her reform history. Especially on the fabled "bridge to nowhere".

He doesn't phrase it exactly this way. But he's making the point that the Dems could learn a lot from the Republicans' willingness to fight attacks on their candidates. They could especially learn something from the Republicans' willingness to fight the press explicitly. Bill and Hillary Clinton are the only two leading Democrats that have done that effectively over a long term.

Anyone who watches TV journalism with a minimum of critical thought can see that it's really bad, very often. The Democratic Party has largely allowed criticism of "the media" to be framed by the Republicans' endless campaign against the so-called "liberal media", which is really not much more than a paranoid conspiracy theory. There is a developed and coherent liberal criticism of the media having to do with corporate ownership, lack of basic accuracy, poor analysis and obsession with gossip and trivia. But the Dems are letting the Republicans frame the problem as Liberal Press "elitism".

One issue on which I disagree with Somberby is whether Bristol Palin's pregnancy is important politically in some way. It is. It gets to both the rigid, completely unrealistic ideology that the James Dobsons and Sarah Palins of the world want to impose on everyone else. And also at the screaming double-standard so many of them practice when it comes to themselves and their families. The rules are for the hoi polloi, not for important Republican white folks, in their way of thinking.

Fpr more on this, see The Elephant in the Room by Dana Goldstein American Prospect Online 09/03/08 and Perspectives On Bristol Palin: Notes From A Sexologist by Logan Levkoff Huffington Post 09/02/08.

Goldstein observes:

Though the religious right promotes abstinence-only sex education, vows of chastity, and dances at which prepubescent girls pledge their virginity to dad, conservatives do live in 21st-century America, just like the rest of us. They know teen sex happens. They just also happen to believe, against all common sense, that it can be eradicated.

The truth is, conservatives are more familiar with teen parenthood than are secular liberals. On the whole, red states have higher teen pregnancy and birth rates than blue states. In Texas, the state with the highest teen birth rate, 63 out of every 1,000 young women aged 15 to 19 has had a baby. California has the lowest teen birth rate; only 39 of every 1,000 15- to 19-year-old girls there have carried a pregnancy to term. Alaska, where Bristol Palin grew up, has a typical teen birth rate of about 42.

Even though the Bristol pregnancy story has more tabloid appeal, the more serious questions have to do with the White Princess' conduct in office and abuse of power. And with just how deep they are with the most hardline Christianists and white supremacist crackpots grouped with the Alaskan Independence Party and the Constitution Party and with some of the more disturbing and cultlike elements in their Pentecostal churches. See Dobson and the Religious Right Rally for McCain/Palin by Frederick Clarkson TalktoAction blog 09/04/08 and Palin's Church May Have Shaped Controversial Worldview by Nico Pitney and Sam Stein Huffington Post 09/02/08.

This is an area where liberals need to be careful about falling into the double-reverse game the rightwingers like to play. The American liberal position is that people should be free to worship God - or not - in the way they please without getting arrested for it or discriminated against in employment or civil rights because of it. Liberals also believe in the basic democratic concept of separation of church and state.

But all that is very different than saying religion doesn't matter. Liberals as a matter of public policy aren't concerned about what theory of angels people hold. But in politics, if a candidate is involved with a cult that is taking orders from angels to impose drastic measures on the public, liberals would be out of our minds not to be concerned about it. So would conservatives for that matter, but I'm not going to go there for now.

Clarkson warns us that, once again, the endless talk about how the Christian Right is going to fade away into the sunset inside the Republican Party is, as Joe Conason predicted in his book It Can Happen Here, still alive and kicking and may even have more clout than ever:

It was not so long ago that pundits were busy telling us that the Religious Right is dead, dying or irrelevant. The selection of Sarah Palin is proof, in case anyone actually needed any, that the Religious Right remains at the center and at the top of American public life.

Palin is the most ostentatiously and authentically Religious Right major party candidate for national office in American history (with the possible exception of Jack Kemp.) Reagan was good, but he did not attend church (and it later turned out that he and Nancy consulted and astrologer on his daily schedule); Dan Quayle was good, but well, he was Quayle; George W. Bush seemed good (and from their point of view in some ways he was) but he is viewed as having betrayed the conservative movement and they are not shy about saying so. Richard Viguerie has a whole book about it titled "Betrayed." (And David Kuo's book could have very nearly had that title.) We also now know that much (but not all) of Bush's religious history was manufactured by his political inner circle.

Sarah Palin is, in the view of the Religious Right, the real deal. [my emphasis]

If I had to pick a must-read about the White Princess from the last couple of days, it would be The FundamentaList by Sarah Posner American Prospect Online 09/03/08. Posner gives us a glimpse of how crackpot a worldview people have in that corner of the political world:

The AIP -- whose founder, Joseph Vogler, once said, "The problem with you John Birchers is that you are too damn liberal!" -- is to the right of the Council on National Policy, itself founded by a group of Birchers. According to the watchdog group Political Research Associates, the John Birch Society's founder, Robert Welch, believed that "both the U.S. and Soviet governments are controlled by the same furtive conspiratorial cabal of internationalists, greedy bankers, and corrupt politicians. If left unexposed, the traitors inside the U.S. government would betray the country's sovereignty to the United Nations for a collectivist new world order managed by a "'one-world socialist government.'"

Vogler is also the one who declared, "The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government". And, speaking of Old Glory, "And I won't be buried under their damn flag." (Greg Sargent, TPM Election Central, Founder Of Group Palin Courted Professed "Hatred For The American Government"; Cursed "Damn Flag" 09/02/08).

Vogler is now deceased. He was killed in a plastic explosives deal gone bad: Remains of Alaska Separatist Are Identified New York Times 10/15/1994. The article doesn't say under which flag he was buried, if any.

The press is largely clueless, and many Democrats are apparently in denial, about how extremist today's Republican Party has become. We already have a President who claims the power to disregard any law or even Constitutional provision that he alone decides gets in the way of his "national security" prerogatives. McCain is at least as extreme. And Palin, from the available evidence, is considerably more extreme.

As Posner puts it, "The ardor of the Christian-right leadership says everything you need to know about Palin: She is an extremist who makes them confident of their access to and influence over a McCain administration."

Clarkson writes:

The Religious Right has built an extensive infrastructure of media, political organizations, institutions of higher learning including law schools -- and raised-up several generations of leaders who have found their way into their roles in public life.

Whatever else one may think of Sarah Palin: first as governor of Alaska and now the GOP nominee for Vice President -- she epitomizes this reality.

And if this headline doesn't give you the heebie-jeebies...: Bush Aides Schooling Palin In Foreign Policy. What's next? "Lessons from Dick Cheney's Staff on Operating on the Dark Side"?

Tags: authoritarianism, christian dominionism, christian right, christianism, radical right, republican party, sarah palin, sarah posner

Short Takes

As we await for the White Princess to emerge from her undisclosed location and address her adoring fans at the Christian Republican Convention ...

Lindsay Lohan writes a post sympathizing with Bristol Palin. And makes a plug for Obama. And gives a more sensible comment about teen sex than we're ever likely to hear from the Christian Right crew. (Lindsay Lohan Blogs About Bristol Palin Pregnancy: Focus On The Issues! Huffington Post 09/02/08)

Yes, it's true. Lindsay Lohan has more sensible things to say about current politics than Gloria Borger or most of the other clowns at CNN on a typical night of commentary.

Shorter MoDo, from her latest cry for help, aka, column (Life of Her Party New York Times 09/03/08): all of Sarah Palin's problems are the fault of Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary Clinton. Miracle of miracles, she didn't work in anything about Obama being a girlie-man!

Jay Rosen thinks the McCain campaign is going to use the White Princess to double-down on the "culture war". If he's right, we're going to be hearing a lot of whiny white folks the next couple of months. (The Palin Convention and the Culture War Option PressThink 09/03/08)

Lindsay's sensible comment notwithstanding, it's a legitimate issue for the Democrats and the press (if they happened to be so inclined) to ask how a hardline Christianist partisan like the White Princess reconciles her insistence on having her fringe Pentecostal values imposed by law on the rest of us with her seemingly tolerant hippie attitude toward her daughter's out-of-wedlock pregnancy. She's running to be the new Dick Cheney. We need to know lots more about her than we found out about Cheney in 2000.

Tags: christian dominionism, christianism, lindsay lohan, maureen dowd, sarah palin

Not "just" a neo-Confederate

Frederick Clarkson of the TalktoAction blog reports that Palin Was a Member of the Constitution Party in the 90s 09/02/08. It turns out the Alaskan Independence Party which Palin and her husband supported (is past tense correct?) is the state affiliate of another white supremacist group:

But what has not been reported as far as I can tell, is that the AIP is the Alaska affiliate of the Constitution Party, founded by Howard Phillips, and has been the political home to leading theocratic Christian Reconstructionism such as John Lofton, Otto Scott, Joe Morecraft and movement founder R.J. Rushdoony himself. It has also been the party of some of the most militant anti-abortion activists in the U.S. such as Matthew Trewhella and Ralph Ovadal of Missionaries to the Preborn and for many years Randall Terry -- until he decided to run (unsuccessfully) in a primary challenge to an incumbent Republican State Senator Jim King (who had stood up to the Religious Right during the Terri Schiavo episode.) More recently perennial GOP presidential candidate Alan Keyes unsuccessfully sought the Constitution Party nomination. Currently the third largest political party in the U.S. in terms of membership, it is usually on the ballot in about 35 states. [my emphasis]

The Constitution Party is the one that Swiftboater Jerome Korsi, author of Obama Nation, professes to support. Christian Reconstruction is an especially hardcore part of the wider theology of Christian dominionism. Randall Terry was not only an anti-abortion zealot but one of the key figures promoting the far-right, terrorist militia movement in the 1990s.

The "degrees of separation" between Republicans and stark raving violent white supremacists are becoming fewer and fewer.

Tags: authoritarianism, christian right, christian dominionism, mccain, sarah palin

Flag pin campaigning and countering Christianist politics

It's at least a sign of progress that so many Democrats are now articulating their outrage at some of the real failings of the national news media. The Reps have made it a basic part of their understanding of the world, it seems, that the national media is part of a gigantic Liberal Press Conspiracy. The fact that no living, breathing liberal thinks that anything remotely like that is the case doesn't dissuade them a bit, it seems.

Two veteran observers of press dysfunction weighed in today on the sad state of our press corps as illustrated by ABC's debate on Wednesday, Bob Somerby in his Daily Howler post of 04/18/08 and Joe Conason in Obama, get ready for the "Clinton rules" Salon 04/18/08. Both observe, among other things, that the Great American Maverick McCain rarely wears an American flag lapel pin himself. Why our press lords (following the GOP lead) consider that failing a sign of insufficient patriotism from Barack Obama but think it's - what? - a sign of maverickness on the Straight Talker's part, it's a bit difficult to see.

Tankwoman pointed out this essay by Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of the left-leaning Jewish magazine Tikkun. Obama's Error--and What It Would Really Take to Rectify It OpEdNews.com 04/16/08. Lerner discusses some related considerations in The Obama Phenemenon Tikkun Mar-Apr 2008. The main point Lerner makes in "Obama's Error", the "error" being his now-famous "bitter" comment, is that the need for and function of religion in the lives of many people involves an affirmation of very real, important human needs for community and for consistency between the lives we live and the values we hold.

In discussing his research and that of others at the Institute for Labor and Mental Health, he writes:

... we found that it was not only material, but spiritual deprivation that was at the heart of much of the pain that Americans experience today. That's why even at the height of American prosperity in the Clinton years, a powerful resurgence of right-wing religious forms was providing an avenue of expression for people whose needs were being ignored by the liberals in the Clinton administration, the Democratic Party, and even in parts of the liberal churches.

Similarly, the revival of a religious Left has not gotten much traction to the extent that it adopts the liberal political and economic agenda and makes it "religious" by finding some useful Bible quotes to back up the peace and justice planks of the Democrats. Valuable as that may be, it too misses the deeper pain that has led people to embrace right-wing religions.

What we discovered in groups that we ran for over ten thousand middle income working people is that most people spend their days in a work world governed by the "bottom line" that judges institutions and social practices to be efficient, rational or productive to the extent that they maximize money and power. Day after day, people breathe in the message that to be rational in this society is to "look out for number one" and treat other people instrumentally - that is, as valuable to the extent that they help us achieve our own goals and desires. People learn how to treat each other as means to our own ends.

We were struck, however, by how bitter many people feel about this way of life. Over and over again, middle income working people told us that they felt they were wasting their lives because their economic survival required them to do work that in no way connected to their hunger for a higher meaning to their lives, what Rev. Rick Warren correctly described as a desire for a purpose-driven life.

Moreover, as people bring into their personal lives the values of "looking for number one" and believing that getting their own needs met is the highest possible good, they find that their families and friendships become increasingly unstable, as more and more people switch from one relationship or marriage to another, imagining that the next one might satisfy yet more of their needs. No wonder people feel lonely, afraid, and deeply troubled by a society in which the narcissism is bred not by some peculiarities of one generation or another, but by the fundamental notions of rationality that predominate in all of the major economic and social institutions. (my emphasis)

In terms of its theological meaning, religion involves a relationship between people and God, a supernatural deity that exists outside our normal, day-to-day material reality. (I'll specify here I'm talking about Christianity, Judaism and Islam, the group that theologians sometimes call the "transcendence series" because of their conception of the relation of God to our material reality.)

But few of us see visions like Saul of Tarsus experienced on the road to Damascus. The Archangel Gabriel may have revealed the Qu'ran directly to the Prophet Muhammad, but most of us have to rely on other, less celestial intermediaries. Not many of us get to quarrel in person with God on a regular basis the way Moses did.

And the kinds of experiences Lerner talks about in that article are all part of the ways people connect to religion. Churches and religious groups are social organizations. People are social animals and that is one avenue in which many people realize that need. Religious ceremonies like church services and prayer give people a chance to step back from the noise of daily life and reflect their situations in terms of where they want to go and what they really value in life.

None of these experiences exclude the more mystical aspects of religion. The fact that someone can use prayer as a time to reflect on their lives doesn't exclude their experiencing it as a special communication with God, and vice versa.

Now, we all have our ways of framing these things for ourselves. I'm a big fan of the ecumenical Swiss theologian Hans Küng and the German psychoanalyst theologian Eugen Drewermann. And I have a lot of sympathy for the notion expressed by that old Deist Thomas Jefferson to his nephew that he should question even the existence of God because if God does exist, He surely respects honest disbelief more than unthinking faith.

Küng encourages Christian thinkers to engage with the work of thoughtful atheists, like Frederick Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud. Few believers have as much respect for and understanding of religion as the atheist, philosophically materialist Freud did. I know a French theologian who researched Freud's childhood family Bible, which was a full Christian Bible (Old and New Testament) with Jewish commentary throughout. This was a book Freud had studied carefully, and this researcher discovered that a lot of Freud's understanding of psychological symbolism was stimulated by this particular Jewish edition of the Christian Bible.

Drewermann tells a story about a British group that scheduled an event in St. Andrew's Cathedral in London to commemorate Freud on the 100th anniversary of his birth in 1954. (Freud died in England in 1940.) Some critics objected to the notion of putting a church at the service of honoring a man who was a convinced atheist. The group responded with a statement that they were quite sure that Dr. Freud was no longer an atheist.

How does this rambling relate to Lerner's article? Lerner makes a big deal about what he calls the "the anti-religious culture of the Left". In fact, his useful observations about the appeal of religion are made within an argumentative framework that basically accepts the Republican accusation that liberals are anti-religious. It's a common pitch from some prominent figures associated with the "religious left", including Lerner, Jim Wallis, and Amy Sullivan.

It's perhaps a measure of the problem of that argument that up until a week or so ago, I would have included Barack Obama in that list. Because one of the things that has worried me about him as a candidate is that he was way too willing to play the Republican game of scolding the Democrats for not reaching out to "people of faith", as our current odd phrase for "religious people" has it. Now Obama is being lectured in much the same way he previously lectured those unnamed Democrats who he said were insufficiently appreciative of "people of faith".

My basic response to this notion that Democrats are anti-religion is, since when? Who are these nasty Dems who sneer at religious people? Some of the most prominent liberal Dems of the last 30 years have some kind of notably religious background. Gary Hart studied theology in college. George McGovern had been a Methodist minister. Jerry Brown was a Jesuit novitiate (meaning he lived in a monastery) for four years, and after he was Governor he did a stint working with Mother Theresa in India and studying Zen Buddhism in Japan. And has anyone ever heard of a labor union that was hostile to religion or sneered at religious people? Maybe there is one, but I couldn't tell you what it is.

That's one of those issues where I sometimes wonder if I haven't crossed over into some alternative universe. Because in the one that I remember living in all my life, the Democrats have not been anti-religion or contemptuous of religious people.

Are non-believers more likely to vote Democratic? The polls tell us that this is so. But are non-believers anti-religious? If we look at it as in a "those who aren't for us are against us" way, yes, they're anti-religious by definition. My own experience tends to be that non-believers don't much care what others believe about the supernatural as long as they don't hurt anybody in pursuit of those beliefs.

I try to keep in mind a few key things in this particular discussion. One is that religion is good for some people, and it's bad for others. Some people find religious faith helps them affirm positive things in life. Others find religious faith out of desperation. Some embrace forms of religious practice that provide them an authoritarian psychological structure in which to operate. Chris Hedges in his very unfortunately titled, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America (2007), provides some excellent case studies of people who embrace fundamentalist religion out of fear or desperation. The title is unfortunate, because it is likely to make many people brush it off as an "anti-religious" tract, which it is not. I would expect to see his case studies of individuals cited in future studies of Christian fundamentalism.

Another thing is that freedom of religion, including separation of church and state, is an essential element of democracy. This is an area in which the fundis may well come to wish that they had been more careful in what they prayed for. They haven't achieved a merger of church and government quite yet, but they have achieved the merger of fundamentalist Christianity with the Republican Party. For instance, we can no longer discuss US Middle East policy without some understanding of the crackpot apocalyptic theories of the "premillenial dispensationalists". Since it's based on bad Biblical interpretation and reeks with anti-Semitism, the advocates of that theology may find themselves more exposed to public scrutiny than they would prefer.

The fact is that most of what the fundis call "anti-religious" on the part of Democrats ("the Left", as Lerner puts it) are actually church-state issues: Christian prayer in schools, public funding for religious proselyting, stem-cell research, abortion rights. The latter two are very much church-state issues. Because the notion that Christians once called "ensoulment", i.e., at what point a fetus becomes a human life in the eyes of God, is very much a religious judgment. Despite the imaginative claims of the anti-abortionists, my understanding is that no medical development has changed the biological and medical reality that existed in 1973 when Roe v. Wade was decided, which is that the fetus cannot survive independently of the mother's body until around the end of the second trimester. There is no clear Christian position on this. Jesus himself in the Bible doesn't mention a word about abortion - and a form of abortion was practiced in Roman times.

Which brings me to another point. The Democratic Party is not going to be able to make itself a "Christian left" party in any parallel sense to the Republicans and the Christian Right. Because the whole idea of the Christianist movement involves Christian dominionism, though many Christianists don't like the marketing sound of that term yet. If "left" is going to include meaning defending democracy, then defending freedom of religion and the secular state, i.e., the separation of church and state, will have to be a part of it. And the Christianists like the Liberty Regent University law graduates who apparently put the higher values of Christianist politics above following the law in their prominent role at the Justice Department under this administration are going to attack any movement that believes in democratic freedom of religion and separation of church and state as "anti-religion".

Finally, Democrats should have any illusions about the heavy overlap between the group we call Christian Right voters and white people who just don't like blacks very much. There's nothing new about the fact that this is a touchy topic in many ways. But it's real.

Political campaigns aren't the place for religious revivals or reformation movements. For those, religious or not, who believe in the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth that society needs to care about the weakest and most vulnerable, to protect the rights of women and to respect the dignity of all people, to not steal from others (through crony-capitalist contracts or otherwise) the Democrats can find ways to express their shared values with them.

Not even many Christians fully embrace what would seem to be the radical pacifism that Jesus expresses in the Gospels. But plenty of us think it's a violation of the Christian Just War doctrine to make up lies to justify attacking Iraq and to keep the war going when any reasonable possibility of the gains exceeding the costs have long since past. For Christians who believe the religious doctrine that Jesus was God Incarnate who was tortured to death by an unjust government, most will not find torture an acceptable practice.

The Democrats can speak to the religious values of those "people of faith" without turning themselves into a Left Christianist party.

Tags: authoritarianism, barack obama, christian dominionism, christian fundamentalism, christian right, christianism, eugen drewermann, hans küng