| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Gandalf Grey" |
| Date: |
20 Jul 2006 11:48:22 AM |
| Object: |
The Growing Threat of Right-Wing Christians |
Onnesha Roychoudhuri: 'The growing threat of right-wing Christians'
Michelle Goldberg says progressives need to wake up and pay attention to the
enormous -- and growing -- influence of the radical Christian right.
Onnesha Roychoudhuri, AlterNet
"I don't want to be alarmist, but this is actually quite alarming," Michelle
Goldberg said. She was referring to the subject of her new book, "Kingdom
Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism," which chronicles the steady rise
of the neocons of Christianity.
Whether she's attending a Ten Commandments conference or joining Tony
Perkins' conference calls to listen in on what D.C. agenda will be passed on
to congregations, Goldberg's reporting offers insight into a movement that
has reshaped the nation's political and cultural landscape. Goldberg did not
go undercover, nor wear any disguise. Rather, she simply showed up, listened
and learned. And what she has learned is definitely alarming.
Traveling around the country on her book tour, Goldberg notes that many
people have approached her with stories that illustrate the religious
intolerance that is the hallmark of an aggressive Christian movement. On a
muggy day in Brooklyn, Goldberg sat down with me to discuss the need for
Americans -- particularly progressives and liberals -- to recognize the
sophisticated intellectual structure of Christian Nationalism, and how it
has succeeded in constructing a parallel reality based on Biblical rhetoric
and revisionist history.
Onnesha Roychoudhuri: How did the idea for the book come about?
Michelle Goldberg: I've done reporting on the subject for a long time. One
of the first pieces I did on the Christian right was on the ex-gay movement.
What struck me going to the Exodus Conference was that it takes place in
this whole entire parallel universe. They have their own psychologists,
psychological institutions and their own version of professional medical
literature. The amount of books, magazines and media, and the way it almost
duplicated everything that we have in our so-called reality, is remarkable.
What struck me years later when I was reporting on the Bush administration
was that the parallel institutions that I had first come into contact with
were replacing the mainstream institutions -- especially in the federal
bureaucracy.
Roychoudhuri: Can you give an example?
Goldberg: In the Department of Health and Human Services, the people they
hired to formulate sex education policy, at both the national and
international level, didn't come from the American Medical Association or
the big medical schools. They're coming from places like the Medical
Institute for Sexual Health, which is this Christian Nationalist medical
group. [The group says it is a "nonprofit scientific, educational
organization to confront the global epidemics of non-marital pregnancy."]
One of the earlier stories I did for Salon was on the UNFPA (United Nations
Population Fund) which does family planning, but they don't do abortion,
mostly safe childcare and reproductive health through clinics all over the
world. Congress had appropriated $35 million to the UNFPA. There's this
group called the Population Research Institute -- another one of these
parallel institutions. They're radically anti-family planning and claim that
population control policies are part of this "one-world conspiracy" to cull
the population of the faithful so that the "one-world government" can more
easily assert its control. On the website it said that not only is
overpopulation a myth, but all the people on Earth could live comfortably in
the state of Texas. I did this story in 2002. I still had this naïve idea
that this kind of thing would remain marginal.
But what's amazing is that Population Research Institution went on to
testify before Congress saying that the UNFPA promotes forced abortions in
China. These kinds of accusations start echoing up the ladder to the point
where Bush froze the UNFPA funding. This despite the fact that the State
Department had already sent a delegation to China to investigate and said
there was nothing to these accusations at all.
There's a myth on the left that's been fostered by Thomas Frank. I think
it's a mistake to think that the religious right hasn't got anything. Frank
has fostered this idea that the right votes to end abortion and gets a
repeal of the estate tax. They've actually gotten quite a bit. One of the
main ways they are rewarded below the radar is by being given vast amounts
of control over American family planning policy abroad.
Roychoudhuri: What is "Christian Nationalism" and what characterizes it as a
political movement?
Goldberg: Christian Nationalism is a political ideology separate from
evangelicals. Evangelicals are about 30 percent of the American population.
Christian Nationalism is a subset of 10-15 percent. It's less a religion
than it is an ideology about the way America should be governed. It has this
whole revisionist history claiming that America was founded as a Christian
nation, that the separation of church and state is a fraud perpetrated by
seculars. What follows from that are ideas about Christianization of
institutions in American life, and that the courts have vastly overstepped
their authority in the enforcement of the separation of church and state.
Roychoudhuri: Throughout the book, you show examples of the Christian
Nationalist movement pushing for special privileges under the banner of
equal rights. The change in the hiring rights of faith-based social programs
seems to epitomize this.
Goldberg: The words that they use for that is "religious freedom in hiring
rights." Religious groups have been able to get government checks for a long
time. But they used to have to abide by 1956 civil rights law which has an
exemption for religious groups. So, if you're a church you can prefer
Christians, mosques can prefer Muslims, but the catch has always been that
if you're contracting with the government, then you have to abide by the
same civil rights laws as everybody else. Bush, by executive order,
overturned that so that government-funded charities are no longer bound by
the laws. Now, there is job training, drug treatment and preschool programs
that are totally separate. The job is 100-percent taxpayer funded, but they
can say in the help-wanted ad, "Christians only."
Bush wanted to get the Salvation Army aboard the faith-based initiatives.
The Salvation Army then brought in a consultant to Christianize certain
divisions. He asked the human resources director at the Salvation Army
headquarters, Maureen Schmidt, whether one of the human resource staffers at
the social services division, Margaret Geissman, was Jewish, because she had
a "Jewish sounding name." Schmidt told him that she wasn't. So then he went
to her and said, "I want a list of homosexuals who work there."
She said no. She's a really conservative lady, but she was totally appalled
and refused to do it.
Roychoudhuri: How did this kind of shift occur? Is there an architect behind
these faith-based programs?
Goldberg: The architect of the faith-based initiative is Marvin Olasky. He
was an advisor of Bush's campaign. Bush wrote the foreword to Olasky's book,
Compassionate Conservatism, I think people hear "compassionate
conservatism," and it sounds like a banality, but if you know Olasky's book,
you know it's outlining something very specific. Olasky believes that
America is in moral decline and that we need to return social services to
churches. He also believes that conversion is an important part of the
process. This book laid out exactly what he thought we should be doing, and
Bush went and did it.
Roychoudhuri: Your book discusses the role that megachurches play in the
politics of the right. Can you explain the ties?
Goldberg: It's not all of the megachurches, but it is many of them. There's
different kinds of connections. New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Ted
Haggard is the pastor there. He has a call with the White House every single
week. Other churches are networked in through the Family Research Council in
D.C. It's run by Tony Perkins who has these conference calls that I actually
got the number for and started listening in on. All these pastors call in
and Perkins basically updates them on his latest conversations with the
White House and the congressional leadership. He tells them what kind of
issues he needs to focus their congregations on. So he would say you need to
have your congregants write to their senators about abolishing the
filibuster or about confirming a certain judge. He's literally relaying
marching orders from Washington, D.C.
Roychoudhuri: Do you think congregants are aware of the connection?
Goldberg: I kind of doubt that people in the congregations know that but I'm
not sure that they would be particularly angry or outraged about it. It
would only outrage you if you believe in the separation of church and state,
that church shouldn't be a political party.
Roychoudhuri: You frequently discuss the similarities between Christian
Nationalism and fascism and totalitarianism. Were you conflicted about
broaching this?
Goldberg: Among liberals, there is always talk about fascism and there's a
kind of agreement that you can't talk about it more publicly without
sounding like a lunatic. You don't want to sound like you're comparing Bush
to Hitler. We have no language to talk about the intermediate stages of this
kind of thing. But there are these really unmistakable parallels to fascism,
not as a government system, but to fascism in its early stages. Before
fascism is a government, it's a movement. It's not born in power, it comes
to power. I think it's time to talk about fascism or another word for it.
Christian Nationalism is one way to talk about it. But there are things that
are going on that are not normal, they're not politics usual.
These things are always subtle and gradual, but there are moments when all
of a sudden you think "Oh, they're drawing up lists of people who are gay at
public agencies." I don't want to be alarmist, but this is actually quite
alarming. Just recently, there was a story about a Jewish family in Delaware
who moved after fearing retaliation for filing a lawsuit regarding
state-sponsored religion. As I've been traveling around the country, and
I've been traveling a lot, I keep hearing about things like this happening
all over the place.
There's one abortion clinic in Mississippi right now and Operation Rescue is
planning to close it down. In parts of the country, doctors are living under
constant terrorist threat and it's a daily battle. If you're in other parts
of the country, you can be completely unaware of it. I keep hearing from
people on the coasts who say, well, I'm sure the pendulum will swing back.
But my sense is that, for instance, gay people who are living in
conservative states or Jews who are living in places where there aren't a
lot of other Jews, definitely feel something is going on and it's affecting
them on a day to day basis.
Roychoudhuri: You see this becoming an even more polarized battle in the
future -- the secular vs. religious. Barack Obama recently gave a speech in
which he advocated for a middle ground, and for progressives to embrace
their faith. Do you think that's a viable option?
Goldberg: Obama's speech to me was interesting. I thought that there were
some things about it that were really valuable, and some things that were
really destructive. What he said about people feeling that there's something
missing in their life, and speaking to that, was right on. The religious
right gives people the narrative arc both for their own lives and then the
country as a whole and it's very comforting to people. Giving someone a list
of policies -- even policies that will make their lives better can't really
compare to that.
But what was destructive was that he took for granted right-wing rhetoric
that has no basis in fact. He said, "What's the matter with the Pledge of
Allegiance, I don't think anybody is really bothered by the 'under God.'"
He's right; most people aren't bothered by it. It's a myth that liberals,
not to mention Democrats, have done anything against the Pledge of
Allegiance. The only people trying to take the "under God" out are a few
individuals representing themselves. When that California guy sued to have
the "under God" taken out of the pledge of allegiance, he wasn't being
represented by the ACLU, or the Americans United for the Separation of
Church and State. He was representing himself.
Roychoudhuri: What do you think it's going to take for progressives and
liberals to gain more currency?
Goldberg: One thing that the right does have that you don't have on the left
are these umbrella organizations. Most years, I go to the Conservative
Political Action Conference which brings together the religious right, but
also the neocons, the hate government people like Grover Norquist, and the
gun owners. They see each other there once a year, they have weekly meetings
that Grover Norquist holds where he brings together representatives from all
the different right-wing groups. Then there are institutions like the
Heritage Foundation that has religious right social policy thinkers but also
neocon defense people. Not everybody believes everything in the movement,
but there are these interlocking circles and this social milieu where people
meet and ideas circulate. We don't have that.
We don't have one meeting that brings together the feminist groups, gay
groups, civil liberties and environmental groups. I feel like I'm always
talking to like-minded organizations, and they don't know what the other
group is up to.
Roychoudhuri: Any sense why that is?
Goldberg: There is progressive funding available for programs, but not for
institution-building. It's just now that they're starting to come up with
journals about these ideas that should underlie where the progressive
Democrats should go. There has been a real neglect in part because people
held the right in such contempt. There was never any appreciation for the
depths of the intellectual infrastructure. Even though the stereotype is
that liberals are the academics, there is, in certain senses,
anti-intellectualism among policy and political people who don't see how
that structure roots people, shapes ideas. It's more than just crafting a
message; it creates this whole interwoven skein of values and assumptions.
Now we're starting to see an attempt to create that on the left.
The other thing that I think is really necessary is creating something
parallel to the right's Concerned Women for America. Let's say it gets in
the news that the Dover school board is talking about introducing
creationism. We know the ACLU is great when it gets to the legal issues, but
even before it gets to that stage, we need consultants calling up the people
on our side saying, "Here's what we're up against, this is what to expect,
this is how you can talk about it in a way that will resonate with people."
You have the information, but it's just not getting to those people.
Whereas, on the other side, you do have consultants calling up coaching
people through it before it even gets to the table.
Roychoudhuri: You're very solution-oriented in the last chapter of the book,
but you clearly state that you think it's going to get worse before it gets
better.
Goldberg: It's already worse since the book came out. There's an idea out
there that once Bush is gone, or maybe if the Republicans lose Congress,
then we'll all be free and clear. Obviously, there's nothing more important
to me than seeing the Republicans lose Congress. But, it's entirely possible
that most Americans are going to vote Democratic in the polls but that
Republicans will still control Congress. The huge structural advantages the
Republicans have created for themselves have to be addressed before anything
else can be solved. I would say the collapse of the Republican Party is
really important, but the Christian Nationalist movement is not a majority.
I don't think there needs to be a majority to affect policy.
Roychoudhuri: You write of a pretty enormous communication chasm: "Dialogue
is impossible without some shared sense of reality... What's lacking isn't
just truth, it's the entire social mechanism by which truth is distinguished
from falsehood." How can we regain that?
Goldberg: I found the last chapter the hardest to write because I do feel
like in certain ways the problem is much larger than any solutions I've come
up with. There are all these voices on the right that can say almost
anything without consequence. You would never see Kerry joining hands with
someone from the Black Panther Party or someone from the ANSWER coalition.
But there are people on the right who are calling for theocracy and almost
nothing they say discredits them; they're still treated as respectable
mainstream voices.
It's important to get people to pay attention to who these people really
are. People don't know what Reconstructionism is, so it doesn't occur to
them to be shocked when they see a Reconstructionist on a panel or at a
banquet table with congressmen. That should be politically damaging; that
should be embarrassing. And the media needs to stop treating it as "some
people say this" and "some people say that" as though it's balanced, as
though they're legitimate points of view.
Also, journalists should take these religious groups seriously enough to ask
about them. I'm totally agnostic on the question of whether Bush is a true
believer or totally cynical, I think he's some combination. Somebody asked
Bush at a public meeting whether any of his Middle East policies are
informed by his vision of the End Times. That to me is a totally legitimate
question and he didn't really answer it. If these people are saying they
take their religion seriously, then people have a right to ask what is it
and do you believe x, y or z.
Onnesha Roychoudhuri is a former assistant editor of AlterNet.
© 2006 Independent Media Institute.
Source: AlterNet
http://alternet.org/story/38830/
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
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