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Monday, August 14, 2006

Keeping out the sheaves

One of the favorite Republican pitches to conservative Protestant and Catholic voters, especially to the white Southern varieties, is the whine that Christians are being persecuted in America. Kathleen Parker, who also defends the persecuted affluent white guys at Duke who are on trial for rape, seems to have noticed that mainstream Christians and ordinary voters are starting to turn a critical eye on just what the Chrisitian Right stands for in terms of public policies. And on their justifications for it: The Christians are coming, the Christians are coming! Orlando Sentinel 08/06/06.

The Christian Right has been saying for decades that they wanted to put God "back" into the "public square". Well, if he ever left, he's back big-time. At least the Christian Right's version of him. And now Parker is shocked - I think she may really be surprised - that the rest of the country is starting to take what the Christian Right says seriously. And not only about politics, but about God and the Bible, too:

Among paranoiacs who see a Jerry Falwell or a John Hagee in every burning bush, U.S. support for Israel isn't about protecting the only healthy democracy in the Middle East, but about advancing Armageddon and, yes, the Second Coming.

At last, we'll get to know what Jesus would drive. Most likely, he'd drive out the conspiracy theorists on both sides of this imagined apocalypse.

For those who do not spend their days pulling imaginary bugs out of their eye sockets, "Christianist" is a relatively new term that roughly refers to a virulent strain of right-wing political Christianity that, supposedly, parallels Islamist lunacy.

Although both groups may be "true believers," those who try to connect the dots of Christian belief, specifically evangelical Christianity, to Islamism seem willing to overlook the fact that Islamists praise Allah and fly airplanes into buildings while Christianists praise Jesus and pass the mustard.

Parker trots out one of the favorite themes of the Christian Right - Christians are nice, sweet people who only cheer for killing tens of thousands of Iraqis by bombing them from the air, while Muslims are violent, evil people who bomb innocent people in terrorist acts - and at the same time brushes off criticism of the very theories that the Christian Right leaders themselves put in the forefront of their "support for Israel".

Nevertheless, people like John Hagee, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and James Dobson are influential leaders among the Christian Right. And they and the Christian Right lobby groups that support them do "support Israel" because they want to advance the timetable for "Armageddon and, yes, the Second Coming". That would be the second coming of Jesus, not of the Twelfth Imam.

The respectable Christian Rightists promote the most aggressive, nationalistic policies in the Middle East, which makes them the allies of Jewish and secular neoconservatives and hardcore nationalists like Dick Cheney and Rummy. We saw the "messengers" to the Southern Baptists Convention earlier this year giving repeated ovations to Condi-Condi when she addressed their convention defending Cheney's and Bush's foreign policy. None of these fine conservative Christians protested to Condi (either in public or private, so far as I've seen) about the Cheney-Bush torture policy, or challenged her about the morality of making war on a country that was no imminent threat, or raised the huge cost in civilian lives that that the air war in Iraq is creating.

It's also very true that violent, extreme versions of Christianity are very popular among violent far-right groups in the US right now. Christian Identity was one of the major influences on Christian terrorist Timothy McVeigh in bombing the Oklahoma City federal building, for instance. For just a sampler, check out these articles from the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report magazine: Christian Identity: For his wife, authorities say, he wanted a head Fall 2005; A Hard Rain by Mark Potok Winter 2005; Extremist Crimes: Synagogue arsonist injures jail guard Fall 2002.

Parker's argument is a canary-in-the-coal-mine kind of sign that the Reps are starting to worry that their Christian Right base is becoming more of a double-edged sword. The essence of Parker's counter-pitch is: critics of the Christian Right actually are criticizing Christianity; Bush listens to Christian Right types (and appoints them to office, though Parker bleeps over that in this column) but he doesn't take that Apocalypse stuff seriously; and, the Reps only make nice to the Christian Right type to sucker those rubes into voting for the Party.

Keep in mind that today's neosegregationist Republican Party is in so many ways the direct intellectual and spiritual descendant of the Southern Democratic Party of segregation days. Only without the more liberal ideas that some of the latter had. Parker specializes in giving alibi lines to white folks who see themselves as respectable middle-class, not like those low-class religious zealots and bigots. She provides the "respectable" arguments for them to use to disavow their fellow Party devotees while endorsing the same policy positions.

This was a chronic, obsessive feature of Southern segregation. We're respectable, you see, because we don't use the n-word; we say "nigra" or "colored person" instead. We don't hate the "coloreds"; we just know it's better for them to have their own schools, restrooms and water fountains. We don't support those rude things that the Klan types and the White Citizens Council do to the "nigras"; we just don't want any of those federal anti-lynching laws to violate our States Rights. And so on, and so on, ad nauseum.

My favorite line in Parker's column is, referring to the critics of the Christian Right and the Bush policies: "What's missing, however, is a basic understanding of reality ..." This is in defense of the Party of WMDs in Iraq and of "premillenial dispensationalism".

My bottom line thought after reading Parker's no-we're-respectable-white-folks columns was, what did you Republicans think was going to happen when you made yourself into a conservative Christian religious party?

Here are a few articles providing some background on John Hagee in particular:

Israel, the US, and the Christian Right: The Menage a Trois From Hell by Max Blumenthal, Talk2Action blog 08/10/06

Birth Pangs of a New Christian Zionism by Max Blumenthal Nation Online 08/08/06.

Pastor Strangelove by Sarah Posner American Prospect 06/06/06 issue:

[John]Hagee, who serves as head pastor of the 18,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, hosts his own television program that is seen twice a day on TBN. He argues that the United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God’s plan for both Israel and the West. Shortly after the release of his book last January, he launched Christians United for Israel (CUFI), a lobbying organization intended, he says, to be a Christian version of the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee. With CUFI, which Hagee has said will cause a “political earthquake,” the televangelist aims to put the political organizing muscle of the conservative evangelical movement behind his grand plan for a biblically prophesied end-time confrontation with Iran, which will lead to the Rapture, Tribulation, and Second Coming of Christ.

While Washington insiders wonder and worry whether President Bush really is bent on a military strike against Iran, Hagee already has spent months mobilizing the shock troops in support of another war. As diplomats, experts, and pundits debate how many years Iran will need to develop a viable nuclear weapon, Hagee says the mullahs already possess the means to destroy Israel and America. And although Bush insists that diplomatic options are still on the table, Hagee has dismissed pussyfooting diplomacy and primed his followers for a conflagration.

Indeed, Hagee wields “a very large megaphone” that reaches “a very large group of people,” said Rabbi James Rudin of the American Jewish Committee, who has studied the Christian right for 30 years. With CUFI, the Texas pastor has exponentially expanded the reach of his megaphone beyond his television audience. Thanks to the viral marketing made possible by the hundreds of evangelical leaders who have signed on to his new organization, his warmongering has rippled through mega-churches across America for months.

But, not to worry, Kathleen Parker says. Even though these folks have access to Bush, and even though Cheney and Bush are generally pursuing the foreign policies that the John Hagees are lobbying for, it doesn't mean he supports them, oh no. He just likes to make it look like he does to bamboozle the rubes. Of course, it's not us Republicans who think they're rubes. It's the anti-Christian Democrats who look down on "people of faith".

Gee, the Christian Right fought for years to "put God back in the public square". Now they've got everyone paying attention to their religious message and how it affects the public square. And good respectable Republican white folks don't want to be identified with them! It's enough to get a fundamentalist really confused about terrestrial matters, no matter how certain they are of things divine.

posted at 2:37:00 PM by Bruce Miller

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