The Growing Threat of Right-Wing Christians
By Onnesha Roychoudhuri, AlterNet Posted on July 19, 2006, Printed on January 2, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/38830/

"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.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/38830/

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| ~ Thaddeus Stevens ~ |
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___________________________________________________________________

A reasonably just and well-ordered democratic society might be possible,
and . . . justice as fairness should have a special place among the political
conceptions in its political and social world. . . [M]any are prepared to accept the
conclusion that a just and well-ordered democratic society is not possible, and even
regard it as obvious. Isn't admitting it part of growing up, part of the inevitable
loss of innocence? But is this conclusion one we can so easily accept?
The answer we give to the question of whether a just democratic society is
possible and can be stable for the right reasons affects our background thoughts and
attitudes about the world as a whole. And it affects these thoughts and attitudes
before we come to actual politics, and limits or inspires how we take part in it. . .
If we take for granted as common knowledge that a just and well-ordered democratic
society is impossible, then the quality and tone of those attitudes will reflect that
knowledge. A cause of the fall of Weimar's constitutional regime was that none of the
traditional elites of Germany supported its constitution or were willing to cooperate
to make it work. They no longer believed a decent liberal parliamentary regime was
possible. Its time had past.
The regime fell first to a series of authoritarian cabinet governments from 1930 to
1932. When these were increasingly weakened by their lack of popular support,
President Hindenburg was finally persuaded to turn to Hitler, who had such support and
whom conservatives thought they could control.
~ John Rawls "Political Liberalism" pg. lx

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"Fearful people are more dependent, more easily manipulated and controlled, more
susceptible to deceptively simple, strong, tough measures and hard-line postures. ...
They may accept and even welcome repression if it promises to relieve their
insecurities." ~ George Gerbner ~ Annenberg School for Communication

--- In some ways she was far more acute than Winston, and far less susceptible to
Party propaganda. Once when he happened in some connection to mention the war against
Eurasia, she startled him by saying casually that in her opinion the war was not
happening. The rocket bombs which fell daily on London were probably fired by the
Government of Oceania itself, "Just to keep the People frightened."
-- George Orwell, 1984, 127
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"Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress
of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been
born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing,
and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it
does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor
freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the
ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening.They want the ocean without the
awful roar of its many waters."
"This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both
moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a
demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly
submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will
be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words
or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those
whom they oppress."
~ Frederick Douglass, 1857
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