A
chance look at a “pick up” library, and for $1 I
owned a copy of American
Fascists: the Christian Right and
the War on America, a book by Chris Hedges
from 2006 and the era of President
George W. Bush. It is a scary book about people
dedicated to infiltrating and
dominating American society with their
particular set of religious beliefs -
absolute truth selected from a Christian bible.
The read made me think again
about pluses and minuses of people of faith for
my Easter of 2017. It made me
worried about how the bible can be selectively
read to produce a dangerous
religion dominating “the poor” in a society that
the prophetic tradition was
most concerned about.
Hedges
completed
Harvard seminary for Presbyterian Ministers but
became a successful
newspaper foreign correspondent and a writer.
His target in this book is
dominionism: “that, like all fascist movements,
[has] a belief in magic along
with leadership adoration and a strident call
for moral and physical supremacy
of a master race, in this case American
Christians.” The sect looks to the
theocracy of John Calvin’s Geneva in the 1500s
for its political model. It
believes American Christians have been mandated
by God to make America a
Christian State. All political and intellectual
opponents are viewed as Satan. Hedges
writes that this America will be a nation:
“in which the 10
commandments form the basis of our
legal system, creationism and ‘Christian values’
form the basis of our
educational system, and the media and the
government proclaim the Good News to
one and all. Labour unions, civil rights laws
and public schools will be
abolished … etc.”
And
Hedges
goes on to show how media networks and political
figures are made to
work within this belief system. To me, it sounds
rather like a Christian
equivalent of Islamic State. In my article Volf
again August 2016, I reported Volf’s call
for politically active Christians
within a wider society of religious pluralism.
This came from Volf’s experience
of wars in Bosnia and Croatia. Hedges notes in
his book, the only thing that
cannot be tolerated by society at large is the
lack of toleration by some
social group. Caring Christians and Muslims have
found that tolerant
pluralistic societies work – whether Muslim
society in North Africa making a
place for Jewish refugees force to flee from the
newly declared Christian Spain
in the fifteenth century, or European society
receiving Muslim refugees fleeing
from the war torn Middle East in 2016.
Not
only
is the Christian religious language subverted,
but American nationalist
language is subverted too. Hedges writes
powerfully in his first chapter on faith,
giving his faith and theirs. In his childhood,
he says:
“We took the bible
seriously and therefore could not
take it literally.” “The four Gospels … were
full of factual
contradictions.”
“There are three
separate and different versions of the 10
Commandments …” “Is God loving or
vengeful?” “The book of Revelation, a crucial
text for the radical Christian
Right, appears to show Christ returning at the
head of an avenging army. It is
one of the few places … where Christ is
associated with violence.”
The
book
of Revelation was omitted from early canons, and
Martin Luther relegated
it to the back of the bible. Hedges notes that
“cherry picking” of texts is always
possible for any Christian group. But bigots can
choose really hateful
passages. Churches should not stand aside from
challenging the authority of such
hateful passages, given the many other passages
with very different messages.
Amen to that!
Hedges
writes
with understanding and respect about an Ohio
woman who has escaped from
what he calls a “culture of despair.” The
departure of manufacturing jobs from
the US “rust belt” turned steel towns into
wastelands of poverty and urban
decay. The woman is one of the dispossessed; the
tens of millions of working
poor left in jobs that pay half what is
minimally needed after former decent
middle class jobs were automated or just moved
out. Her childhood was a combination
of abuse, shame, guilt, depression and despair,
with family violence and sexual
abuse. She had an abortion as a teenager. As
part of her conversion to
Christianity she became active in the movement
to ban abortion. She has found
meaning, relief from her past experience, and a
decent family life. Hedges
notes that the Christian Right can make lost
individuals whole. It brings a
moral clarity, and also a promise to exterminate
the forces that brought the
experience of despair when the vengeful Christ
of the book of Revelation
returns.
On
the
other hand, Hedges points out that the bleakness
of life in Ohio shows that
it is a myth of the Christian Right that in such
states alone are family values
and piety nurtured and protected. These
Republican States have large
evangelical populations, but higher rates of
murder and higher illegitimate
births than the Democratic States. The lowest
divorce rate is in Massachusetts.
Loss of manufacturing in, for example, Ohio has
been compounded by cuts to
assistance programs and to elementary and
secondary school programs. This is
compounded by a belief that the hardship is the
poor’s own fault – (Hedges’
converted woman with the Christian Right says:
“the men don’t work” … “they
just live on the woman’s welfare check.”) Any
redress is limited to acts of
individual charity.
There
is a
saddening chapter about the leadership, training
and literature devoted to the
conversion process. This has little to do with
compassion or caring about
improving a person’s lot, but rather preying on
the weakness of the desperate
to increase the numbers of people following the
dictates of the group.
Hedges
has a
chapter about the cult of masculinity with a
hierarchy from God. Within the
cult comes a need for conformity with the cult
and the hierarchy and
evangelizers are not afraid to use fear of the
“rapture” – the coming of Christ
the avenger with the sudden elevation of the
chosen to heaven and abrupt
dispatching of the rest to unending torture. He
uses a dialogue with a former
evangelical youth trainer, now a family
therapist outside the Christian Right,
to tell her story of being drawn into the church
system and then being
disillusioned. Women and children have a
designated place in a scheme driven by
the fear of the rapture.
A
chapter on
persecution shows how a Christian movement is
focused on homosexuality and
imposing its “truth” about gays and “curing”
gays. Somehow the movement manages
to reverse logic. The movement is represented as
being persecuted by all these
people who do not want to know the “truth.” The
movement cannot see gays as
persecuted by the movement. Meanwhile gays and
their supporters just want
people to be who they are. Evangelicals are told
to fight to resist all those
out there who persecute them for their views and
their work.
“The
War on
Truth” is a chapter that begins with the issue
of creationism, to show how
those within the movement use their own colleges
to produce their own “Drs” to write
papers and pamphlets supporting creationism,
that will be published by their
own publishers, promoted by their own media, and
sold in their own
“creationist” theme parks that mimic public
museums and historic parks. There
are also creationist experts - “Drs” from public
colleges who hid their
embedded creationist views during the degree
program. Hardly a search for truth
– war is the right word.
A new
class
has emerged made of celebrity and plutocrat
Christians that fuses with a
consumer society where lives and opinions of
entertainers, the rich and the
powerful are news. It is the divine sanction of
the free market, of unhindered
profit and the cruelties of globalization. The
new class seeks to reduce the
American working class to serfdom by a gospel of
prosperity, raw global
capitalism, the flaunting of wealth and
privilege supposedly blessed by Jesus
Christ. Compassion is private little acts of
charity or left to churches.
Enlightenment views that were once prized have
been twisted away. And Hedges
reminds the reader of the earlier ties of some
Christian Right leaders with
racist movements.
The
chapter “Crusade”
reveals how Christian revival meetings are
thinly disguised campaign events for
Christian candidates who are expected to promote
the movement’s views from
public office.
Rhetoric creates a sense
of Christians under siege. Those who do not
conform to the ideology are slowly
dehumanized so that those within the circle can
know compassion but those
outside can be abused, silenced and stripped of
rights. For
now, the Christian right is still obliged
to fight within the system it seeks to destroy.
A
depressing
chapter describes Trinity Broadcasting, the
world’s largest televangelist
organization.
There are riches for its
leadership – seen as proof of God’s blessing,
tearful stories about answered
prayers, with warnings that those who do not
support the ministry will see God
turn against them. Constant appeals for money
and tales of angels and healing
and miracles. All this undermines any residual
critical thought and “makes the
magic, mythology and irrationality of the
Christian Right palatable.”
“Television … allows viewers to preoccupy
themselves with context-free
information.” Hedges tells of the sad side. When
trust in the magic of God is
all you need, there is no need for fiscal or
social responsibilities, no need
for social services or healthcare. This
dovetails with an end to federal taxes
and programs and an end to unions. A popular
textbook fuses the Christian
message with the celebration of unrestricted
capitalism. Income tax is
“idolatry” and property tax is “theft” and
inheritance tax should be abolished.
Readers are told that believers defy the secular
authorities.
The
book ends
with a chapter on apocalyptic violence and
discusses the End Times movement.
Hedges describes a church in Detroit – cheap
goods, neon signs and “an inhuman
disregard for beauty and balance” that is part
of a numbing assault against
community. The plagues of alcoholism, divorce,
drug abuse, poverty and domestic
violence make the internal life as depressing as
the external.
The church congregation waits for the
final
relief of purgative violence when they are
lifted to heaven “and the world they
despise will be wracked by plagues, flood and
fire until it, and all those they
blame for the debacle of their lives, are
consumed and destroyed by God.” The
chapter and the book ends returning to thoughts
about how easy it was for Nazis
or Mussolini to whip up the latent human fears
and feelings. Hedges notes
democracy makes sure there is no religion that
can let the individual citizen with
rights and freedoms be lost in a religious
crowd. The chapter ends with
warnings. You can’t use reason with the
Christian Right. The movement is not
reasonable. It does not recognize you as
Christian – unless you are part of the
movement that has appropriated the name of the
faith and you are under its
control! There is one goal – the destruction of
the other - the Constitution,
the liberals and the enlightened. He ends:
“The
attacks of this movement on the rights and
beliefs of Muslims, Jews, immigrants, gays,
lesbians, women, scholars,
scientists, those they dismiss as ‘nominal
Christians’ are an attack on all of
us, on our values, our freedoms and ultimately
our democracy. Tolerance is a
virtue, but tolerance coupled with passivity is
a vice.”
All
of
this forced me to recall the early Methodist
struggle in the UK with the
then notion that Christ’s death “saved” people
and reconciled them to God. For
the Methodists, that notion was underpinned by
equality because we humans are
all in this world together. Even though being
part of an exclusive “chosen” club
may be a better sell in today’s world of
marketing, the life, teaching and
death of Jesus of Nazareth was, in the words of
hymn writer Charles Wesley: for
all, for all, for all. Within the Methodist
doctrine of salvation, the idea
that God’s action for humanity was only for a
select few was unthinkable.
When
I worked on church policy and refugees, Canadian
ecumenical thinking about
refugees produced a booklet called “The Bible
and the Outsider.” It described
the overall biblical take on the Jesus movement
as “radically inclusive.” The
Christian right seems to have got the whole idea
of the faith outside in!