[ Long but worth of reading ]
Through a Glass, Darkly
How the Christian right is reimagining U.S. history
Posted on Wednesday, January 10, 2007. Originally from December 2006. By
Jeff Sharlet.
http://www.harpers.org/ThroughAGlassDarkly-12838838.html
We keep trying to explain away American fundamentalism. Those of us not
engaged personally or emotionally in the biggest political and cultural
movement of our times—those on the sidelines of history—keep trying to come
up with theories with which to discredit the evident allure of this
punishing yet oddly comforting idea of a deity, this strange god. His
invisible hand is everywhere, say His citizen-theologians, caressing and
fixing every outcome: Little League games, job searches, test scores, the
spread of sexually transmitted diseases, the success or failure of
terrorist attacks (also known as “signs”), victory or defeat in battle, at
the ballot box, in bed. Those unable to feel His soothing touch at moments
such as these snort at the notion of a god with the patience or the
prurience to monitor every tick and twitch of desire, a supreme being able
to make a lion and a lamb cuddle but unable to abide two men kissing. A
divine love that speaks through hurricanes. Who would worship such a god?
His followers must be dupes, or saps, or fools, their faith illiterate,
insane, or misinformed, their strength fleeting, hollow, an aberration. A
burp in American history. An unpleasant odor that will pass.
We don’t like to consider the possibility that they are not newcomers to
power but returnees, that the revivals that have been sweeping America with
generational regularity since its inception are not flare-ups but the
natural temperature of the nation. We can’t conceive of the possibility
that the dupes, the saps, the fools—the believers—have been with us from
the very beginning, that their story about what America once was and should
be seems to some great portion of the population more compelling, more
just, and more beautiful than the perfunctory processes of secular
democracy. Thus we are at a loss to account for this recurring American
mood.
Is “fundamentalism” too limited a word for a belief system of such scope
and intimacy? Lately, some scholars prefer “maximalism,” a term meant to
convey the movement’s ambition to conform every aspect of society to God.
In contemporary America—from the Cold War to the Iraq War, the period of
the current incarnation’s ascendancy—that means a culture born again in the
image of a Jesus strong but tender, a warrior who hates the carnage he must
cause, a man-god ordinary men will follow. These are days of the sword,
literally; affluent members of the movement gift one another with real
blades crafted to medieval standards, a fad inspired by a bestselling book
called Wild at Heart. As jargon, then, “maximalism” isn’t bad, an
unintended tribute to Maximus, the fighting hero of Gladiator, which is a
film celebrated in Christian manhood guides as almost supplemental
scripture. But I think “fundamentalism”—coined in 1920 as self-designation
by those ready to do “battle royal for the fundamentals,” hushed up now as
too crude for today’s chevaliers—still strikes closest to the movement’s
desire for a story that never changes, a story to redeem all that seems
random, a rock upon which history can rise.
If the term “fundamentalism” endures, the classic means of explaining it
away—class envy, sexual anxiety—do not. We cannot, like H. L. Mencken,
writing from the Scopes “monkey” trial of 1925, dismiss the Christian right
as a carnival of backward buffoons jealous of modernity’s privileges. We
cannot, like the Washington Post, in 1993, explain away the movement as
“largely poor, uneducated and easy to command.” We cannot, like the writer
Theodor Adorno, a refugee from Nazi Germany who sat squinting in the white
light of L.A., unhappily scribbling notes about angry radio preachers,
attribute radical religion—nascent fascism?—to Freudian yearning for a
father figure.
[end excerpt]
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You are invited to check out the following:
The Rise of the Theocratic States of America
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocracy.htm
American Theocrats - Past and Present
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocrats.htm
The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
[and to join the discussion group for the above site and/or Separation of
Church and State in general, listed below]
HRSepCnS · Hampton Roads [Virginia] SepChurch&State
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HRSepCnS/
[Its not just Hampton Roads folks who are members, there are members from
all over the US and a couple from overseas as well]
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.. . . You can't understand a phrase such as "Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion" by syllogistic reasoning. Words
take their meaning from social as well as textual contexts, which is why "a
page of history is worth a volume of logic." New York Trust Co. v. Eisner,
256 U.S. 345, 349, 41 S.Ct. 506, 507, 65 L.Ed. 963 (1921) (Holmes, J.).
Sherman v. Community Consol. Dist. 21, 980 F.2d 437, 445 (7th Cir. 1992)
.. . .
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USAF LT. COL (Ret) Buffman (Glen P. Goffin) wrote
"You pilot always into an unknown future;
facts are your only clue. Get the facts!"
That philosophy 'snipit' helped to get me, and my crew, through a good
many combat missions and far too many scary, inflight, emergencies.
It has also played a significant role in helping me to expose the
plethora of radical Christian propaganda and lies that we find at
almost every media turn.
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THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE:
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
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